John Miller, head coach of the Brussels Kangaroos and a reporter for a major American newspaper, is chronicling his team’s 2008 season in a column that will appear every Monday on mister-baseball.com. It is the first of several Mister-Baseball Blogs this year.
In Belgium, a man must be registered with the league and own a license to play baseball. The concept isn’t illogical: Players need insurance in case they get hurt. The rule also prevents teams from picking up strays to beef up for an important game.
The system breaks down when it creates absurd situations like the one that presented itself Saturday at Kangaroo Field. The (Antwerp) Mortsel Stars, a frequent national champion, forgot to bring along its binder of player licenses to our field. At game time, the umpires presented me with a decision: Did I want an automatic win because the Stars were unlicensed to play baseball? I said no. It would violate the spirit of the game, especially on Opening Day.
OK, said the man in blue. But at 3:45 p.m., if the licenses aren’t in our hands, you win. All eyes turned toward the parking lot. At 3:41 p.m., a car screeched to a halt. A man emerged, dressed in Stars black, carrying a black folder. He sprinted — 37 seconds by my count — to the first base dugout.
Thus began the 2008 Belgian first division baseball season. (Rain cancelled all the other games that day.)
The game, although delayed three times by rain, was not uninteresting. Harold pitched well into the 5th, when a couple two-out walks (on pitches oh so close) and some timely hitting gave Mortsel a 6-3 lead. We pushed across runs in the 5th and 7th but couldn’t close the deal.
Clay made his Belgian debut in style, pitching 4 shutout innings despite loading the bases three times. He threw with no sleeves or t-shirt, his pink skin glowing under his mesh jersey. There are tougher days, though, where he used to be, stationed in Iraq.
Sunday presented me with another endless Belgian problem: missing ballplayers. Reasons for absence included job hunting in London, a ski trip, a custody battle and homework.
Thing is, I can’t say I blame the guys. The season is too long (7 months) and the games too poorly scheduled (3:30pm Saturday and Sunday, spiking the whole weekend) to demand total commitment. Commitment becomes a worthless value because you can’t reasonably expect it. It then comes to not matter at all, instead of mattering a little bit.
Scattered dedication switches the focus from building quality to simply getting enough players to show up for every game and practice. Want to hear about the law of diminishing returns? Ask me about baseball in September, around day 150 of our season.
The war-length – yet unfocused – season and demanding hours drive good people and players away from the game and kill family life. I think many American amateur ballplayers would fall out of love with baseball if they had to show up from 1 to 7 pm every Saturday and Sunday for 7 straight months. American kids play three months of Little League, and teens play three months of high school. Practices and games are after school, or on Saturdays, and never last longer than two hours.
If I were dictator of Belgian baseball, I’d set up two 10-week seasons, spring and fall. During the 6-week break in the middle, regular guys could take a vacation and elite players could play national team tournaments and attend special camps.
I’d schedule games more reasonably; double-headers on Saturday (like most amateur leagues); games Saturday evening and Sunday morning; or games Wednesday evening and Saturday; I’d get rid of batting practice; anything to escape the weekend-killing grind.
But old ways are hard to change. (An attempt two years ago to restructure the schedule failed after some clubs complained they’d lose beer revenue.) We soldier on.
On Sunday, Many, our third baseman, came out after taking a pitch on the wrist. The only bench player, this writer, replaced him. Cedric, our (cup-less) starting pitcher, took a zinger to the balls. That knocked us down to eight players — and back to Brussels.
Does your baseball season last 7 months? Send your best ideas for building a better baseball league to oldworldpastime@gmail.com
Previous Columns:
Playing and Coaching in Europe
My Country, Delayed by Rain
Wanted: Pitcher-Shortstop-Catcher With Homerun Power
Wanna play catch?
To my understanding the baseball season does not last 7 months in Belgium.
The first round is played in 7 weekends.
The second round for ELITE is played in 12 weekends which lead up to the Belgian series for only 2 teams for 2 more weekends.
A 10 week season would mean only 6 teams in 1 BB which is OK for me but probably not for the teams.
This year 6 weeks are “lost” due to other organisations (2x Belgian Cump, 1 x BOBT, 1 x EC country, 1 x EC club and 1 x 4 nations)
DH on saturday? OK for me but where do we put in the following divisions : U19, RSD and 2SHS.
The fact that most teams only have 1 field on which all their teams have to play;
The fact that only 4 of the 31 teams competing in belgian baseball have decent lights refrains Belgian Besaball much more then people are aware of
This limits the possibility of playing on evenings, especially in spring and fall.
Having games scheduled on sunday morning means a total rework of the whole youth competition structure.
As a dutch writer one wrote : “tussen droom en daad staan wetten en practische bezwaren.”
Nevertheless keep up the good work at Brussels, we’ll have plenty of time to discuss these things in the future.