John Miller, player/coach of the Brussels Kangaroos and a reporter for a major American newspaper, is back chronicling his team’s 2009 season in his weekly column that will appear every Monday on mister-baseball.com.
The Kangaroos closed out the regular season in improbable fashion. A three hour and 45 minutes 15-14 triumph over the Borgerhout Squirrels, ending with a pitching crisis, and this writer getting three outs in the bottom of the 9th for the first save of his life.
A bunch of belt-high two-seamers down the middle turned into two loud fly balls and a groundball up the middle our second baseman Scott made a webgem play on, diving full extension to his right and kicking second base for the force out while lying belly to the ground.
So now we get three weeks off until the marathon campaign (“play-downs”, for the right to stay in first division) picks up and keeps on ticking until early October.
Not hard to figure out why so many players quit. A monastic dedication is for the chosen few. Most hit age 22 and decide Belgian baseball isn’t worth giving up a normal life. A three or four month season would maintain the skills of the top players, avoid volunteer administrator burnout and keep enough guys in the game to establish the sport for real.
Whatever. Far from the petty concerns of Low Countries baseball, I checked out the Russian version a couple weeks ago. Mrs. Miller and I were staying in Moscow with an American family whose son I coached for many years.
The kid’s younger brother plays for a Moscow second-division team, the 78ers, so called because so many of its players were born that year. On a lazy Saturday, my friend had a game. My wife had a good book to read.
So it was off to an old Soviet military sports base – with all kinds of fields and an outdoor gym I’m sure Ivan Drago trained at before fighting Rocky — somewhere in the suburbs of that mammoth city to watch the 78ers take on SVR.
It was good weekend-warrior stuff: skilled guys in their 30s slow on defense and with little zip left on their fastballs, but still plenty capable of sticking line drives all day. The 78ers won 16-1. The sweet-swinging catcher, whose full properly-spelled name I didn’t catch, had seven hits.
That evening, my American friends invited him for dinner. My understanding of the current state of Russian baseball, based on what he said, is this:
There was a glory period in the 1990s, when coaches and some money to develop the sport, poured into the country. That led to success in the early 2000s, including several players signed and trips to the Little League World Series.
Russia still has terrific national programs, its first division is good but only has four teams, and its players get signed because they’re strong and athletic, but its clubs are poor and need more fields and players. If only an oligarch would fall in love with the game, the catcher mused, they could get lights on their field right away.
Interestingly, Russian teams don’t seem to have any import players. The teams are made up of native Russians and some Moscow residents from Cuba and the U.S. Perhaps it’s because they don’t have any money. In any case, my bet is it’s healthier than packing the roster with mercenaries, a favorite tactic here, including on our club.
At the game, I also met up with Nicolai Lobanov, the one-time Twins minor league lefty pitcher who signed to play with the Kangaroos this year, then was denied a visa by the Belgian Ministry of the Interior. He is shutting down teams and hitting dingers in the Russian first division, he said, but wishes he could get another shot in the U.S.
Russians, talk to me. Tell me about baseball in the land of Kerzhakov, Zyryanov and Pavlyuchenko (Who are they? Look’em up yourself!) at oldworldpastime@gmail.com