AT 4PM TODAY, the Irish baseball team will take on Finland in their opening game of the European Championships C-pool.
Last year, the side were disappointed not to win the competition and hope to make amends in 2016 as they celebrate their 20th year of competing internationally.
Co-captain Nat Anglin has been involved with the team for over half that time and he admits he has seen some huge changes in the sport in Ireland over the course of the past 10 years in particular.
“When I first joined in 2006, it was a good team and we were playing at a very high level winning a silver medal in the B-pool.
“I wasn’t an every day player at that stage but we’d a good mix of Irish and international talent.
“However the strength over the last decade has definitely been the investment into the youth structures and that’s really grown a lot in the last ten years.
“Baseball Ireland have really done a lot of good work in that regard and I think if we want to see the sport continue to grow here we have to follow hurling and rugby’s example and catch players when they’re young and teach them the game from an early age.
“The other big change is that I think we’re much more of a team now. Don’t get me wrong, that 2006 team was great, but I think we now all understand that it’s not just about playing the game, it’s about the older players in the squad coaching and sharing their knowledge with the up-and-coming players.
“Our coach Sean Mitchell always does a great job of convincing guys to show up every day, some of them driving crazy distances, just to practise but, at the end of the day ,you’re playing for your flag and our motto is ‘pride and honour’ and the whole team really shares that.”
A pitcher and first-baseman, Anglin may not have grown up in this country but the Boston-born rapper — who now lives and works out of LA — knew he had to represent Ireland as soon as the opportunity arose.
“I was raised in Boston, Massachusetts. I grew up in an Irish-American neighbourhood with grandparents on both sides from Ireland.
“It was great being in touch with that aspect but it wasn’t just about looking at the past and my Irish heritage, it was about celebrating the present and my family and I always took a lot of pride in that.
“My uncle Jimmy was running an Irish bar in Boston that was really popular with the Irish community. After he died, another uncle took over the running of the bar and it was during his time in charge that it was mentioned by someone that there was an Irish international baseball team.
“My dad and I investigated online and contacted the team. I’d played a bit of college baseball and I really wanted to play for Ireland. They sent a scout out to look at me and he thought I could make the team and I have done since.
I guess, really, you could say it was all organised by word of mouth in the Irish community.”
Anglin says that competitions such as the one taking place in Slovenia this week are a reminder of the growth of the sport in Europe and he would not be surprised to see more and more baseball scouts looking towards this part of the world as well as their traditional hunting grounds of Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Japan.
It really is growing as a worldwide sport and I’m hoping that it gets back into the Olympics for 2020 as I think that will only help grow it’s popularity.
“It’s just crazy how it’s building around the world. There are excellent athletes and players in Europe and we always joke about the baseball factories in the Netherlands because they just seem to churn out these great players.
“But as far back as a decade ago, when I first started playing around Europe, you’d meet scouts and team representatives, not necessarily from major league teams but from minor league outfits or affiliate programmes and that’s definitely a career path for European talent.”
As for this year’s competition, Anglin believes that qualification for the B-pool is well within Ireland’s grasp with the hosts, perhaps, proving the biggest obstacle.
“Last time we were here we put ourselves in a really good position to win and ended up losing to Slovenia and it took us out of the final.
“They’re great hosts and probably our biggest threat in terms of qualifying for the final and hoping to reach the B-pool too.
“They work really hard and definitely don’t cut corners but people probably sleep on a lot on European teams and we certainly won’t be so we’ll be treating all games equally and giving 100% every time we go out there.”
