William Germaine has left the Tübingen Hawks after one season and signed with the six-time German champion Heidenheim Heideköpfe for the 2023 Bundesliga campaign, bolstering a Heideneheim squad that will enter the new season as one of the heavy favorites for the 2023 German championship.
Germaine joined the Hawks after two successful seasons in Stuttgart (2020-21) and helped the small club in Germany’s southwest avoid relegation in 2022, with the Hawks triumphing over the second-division Baldham Boars in the best-of-three relegation series in early October.
In 29 regular-season games for the Hawks, Germaine slashed .322/.483/.678, with 10 homers, and upped his game as the club fought to stay in the league, with a .435/.509/.935 slash line and five homers in 12 games in the relegation stage.
Tübingen was left with a depleted roster following a number of key departures after the completion of the season, however, and the club’s management chose to drop down into the second division, making Germaine’s departure only a matter of time.
The Canadian-born Germaine played for Germany at the World Baseball Classic Qualifier in Regensburg in September, where he hit two homers, and now joins a Heidenheim squad that includes six fellow German internationals, along with Dutch ace Mike Bolsenbroek and the talented Belgium IF/P Drew Janssen.
Germaine’s Early Career
Germaine, the Bundesliga South’s 2020 Batter of the Year in a season in which he recorded a 1.743 OPS, played collegiately at Hill Junior College in Texas and NCAA Division 2’s Southern Arkansas (2015-16) before starting his professional career with the Southern Illinois Miners of the independent Frontier League in 2017.
The catcher, who can also play the corner infield positions, outfield, and has pitched some (he recorded a win and a loss for the Brock de Drummondville in Quebec’s top division (LBMQ) in 2021), made his name in Germany with the Laufer Wölfe (Wolves) of the second division in 2018. He hit eight home runs in just 90 at-bats and slugged 1.056 for the club located just east of Nuremberg.
Despite finishing at the top of the league, the Wolves decided not to pursue promotion to the first division and Germaine signed on with the IT sure Falcons Ulm for 2019. He showed that his success the previous season had not been a fluke, hitting 14 home runs for the Falcons. For his efforts, Baseball Jobs Overseas named Germaine its twelfth-best overseas batter of the 2019 season.