Senators get behind "Let's do it Canberra" baseball bid

Did anyone expect the politicians to oppose something like this? If a professional baseball team needs government handouts to get started then it’s clearly not a viable business and hence a waste of money.

Oh, there you are.

I see you’ve learned to use Wikipedia. See my post to Thumper. Are you really trying to claim that there isn’t a British national baseball league, and that the game they play isn’t exactly the same as the game played in the US (it sort of has to be, you see, for it to be an MBL franchise), and that they’ve played it exactly the same way as the Yanks for at least 120 years? Because that would make you an idiot or a liar. “Played less than here”? I must have missed the announcement about a forty team MBL franchise being launched here.

Give up. You lost three posts ago.

What part of ‘four tier national league with over 40 teams’ didn’t you understand? Are you trying to claim that it doesn’t exist? Are the National Youth Baseball Championships being played this weekend in Finsbury a shared hallucination? The AAA BBF National Champs last weekend at Harrogate? THE NBL and Single-A champs the weekend before that at Roundshaw? The London Baseball Tournament the weekend before that? Just because none of you know the first thing about it doesn’t mean it isn’t real.

Oh dear, I seem to have touched a raw nerve here with Woody.

My apologies for daring to suggest that as this was not an Australian sport, in fact one with little local interest in it, it may need sponsorship from those who do not enjoy the sport.

Oh, hang on, it’s not me, it’s the article itself which suggests that those with no interest in the sport dip into their pockets.

And as others, as well as myself, have suggested, it’s not widely played in the UK,(less than here in fact,) group D in the world league as you point out.

Something you may like to consider Woody;

The rules too, are subtly different – a mix of cricket, softball and American baseball.

British Baseball has been a recognised sport since the end of the 19th Century – its stronghold was in port cities like Cardiff, Newport, Glasgow and Liverpool.

British baseball is now only really played in Cardiff, in Newport and in Liverpool – but it has a loyal and vocal support.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/8200569.stm

But you are right, I should be ever so grateful for mteh late entry of the Yanks into WW2, and pay a dollar a day rt support baseball in Australia due to this. (Eh?)

Tootle pip old chin, time for tiffin…

I am a big fan of baseball, my kids both played baseball here in Canberra as a summer sport from the ages of 8, one playing right through to the A grade level.
Although they no longer play the sport, we are still involved in the baseball scene. We have made many great friends ourselves through the game, and know for a fact that the baseball scene here is Canberra is going strong, and that Canberra has produced more major league players per capita than any other Australian state or territory.
This fact has been recognised and we have been given this as a one off opportunity.
Its now or never.
I cant wait for this to happen, to be able to attend major league baseball games at our existing, but improved, baseball park in Narrabundah will just be fantastic, and will add to the diversity of activities available for the families of Canberra in the future, and will give so many young players direct opportunities to pursue their sporting careers.
I have pledged my $20, and so have many others. I would urge any one who loves sport and has an interest in baseball, and who believes that Canberra should make the most of this famtastic opportunity to pledge at http://www.letsdoitCanberra.com.au.

Ermmm Woody,if you actually believe that baseball, in its contemporary state, is in any way more of an English than American game, you are sadly deluded.

I’m deluded? It was invented by Englishmen, taken by Englishmen to the colonies, where it was still referred to as ‘English baseball’ in the US and Canada decades later. Baseball ‘in its contemporary state’ has been played at a professional level in the UK since the 19th century. The National Baseball League of Great Britain and Ireland was established in 1890. Great Britain won the first ever baseball World Cup. Today, the British Baseball Federation has over 40 teams in a four tier professional league. Great Britain will play with baseball-mad Japan in Group D of the 2009 IBAF World Cup. So, you invented it, you exported it, and you have played it in exactly the same form as it is played in the US continuously for at least 120 years, nationally and internationally. You teabaggers seem pretty fond of it for a stupid American game nobody cares about.

And your point is rather unrelated to the topic at hand

The topic at hand is – wait for it – BASEBALL. You’re the one who claimed nobody would want to support it here because *gasp* it’s AMERICAN, and we all know everything from AMERICA is rubbish (unless you need somebody to save you from the Germans).

Except you’re wrong on both counts, so you know where you can stick your indignant Hugh Grant ‘erm, is it, that is to say, does it not, old chum’ routine. If it’s good enough for your p.ssant little island of inbred misanthropes to have a national baseball league, why not Australia?

ACT Baseball President Theo Vassalakis said gaining support from Senators Lundy and Humphries shows the significance of the opportunity that lies on Canberra’s doorstep that Senators like self-promotion.

Surely if the brumbies can manage to milk the assembly for $720k, something as (apparently) profitable as baseball should have no worries milking 10% of that from the government. Unless maybe its not such a useful thing for Canberra to have afterall?

I had no idea that there was such a want for a league team in Canberra – all for it if people will actually go. But will people attend? And where are they getting $100k of sponsorship from a year?? Also, where are they going to play?

Aren’t we also bidding for a soccer team at present also? How many different codes of sprt could the ACT actually support?

Woody Mann-Caruso said :

There are few things quite so delicious as finding an opportunity to call out anti-American snobbery from an Englishman ignorant of his own history. From Wikipedia:

blah, blah, blah, the english once played the game.

…and so on, and so forth. Old chum, indeed.

I really don’t get the point of your argument. So the English once played the game were responsible for it’s arrival in the US and then one day decided you know what, Baseball is crap lets concentrate on Criket.

People once thought the Sun rotated around the Earth. Then they learnt better, evolved and ditched that idea. The English once thought slavery was a good idea, then they changed their minds and outlawed it. The Americans as with it appears baseball took longer to come to their senses.

Ermmm Woody,if you actually believe that baseball, in its contemporary state, is in any way more of an English than American game, you are sadly deluded. And your point is rather unrelated to the topic at hand, is it not? (Sore over the Ashes old chum?)

Out goes AFL, in comes ABL!

There are few things quite so delicious as finding an opportunity to call out anti-American snobbery from an Englishman ignorant of his own history. From Wikipedia:

“Evolving from older bat-and-ball games, an early form of baseball was being played in England by the mid-eighteenth century. This game and the related rounders were brought by British and Irish immigrants to North America…rounders and early baseball were actually regional variants of each other…The earliest known reference to baseball is in a 1744 British publication, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, by John Newbery. It contains a rhymed description of “base-ball”…English lawyer William Bray recorded a game of baseball on Easter Monday 1755 in Guildford, Surrey…This early form of the game was apparently brought to North America by English immigrants…”

…and so on, and so forth. Old chum, indeed.

I thinking about starting the French Cricket revolution in Australia. The league will lack credibility if there’s no team from Canberra in it… um… world stage…smell the fear… can I have some money please?

“We can’t rely on the baseball community alone, for us to be successful we need the entire community get behind the ‘Let’s do it Canberra’ bid,” Theo concluded.

So, they need the (financial) support of those with no interest in the sport to succeed? On to a loser there old chum.

It makes you wonder why such an “incredible opportunity to join one of the world’s most prestigious and influential sporting organisations”[sic], requires those with no interest in this American sport to put their hands in their pockets, does it not?