BUILDING AN EMPIRE
AN ambitious plan to make new ABL club Geelong-Korea the city’s “summer Cats” is starting to gain momentum. Addy reporter JACOB GRAMS explores how baseball officials are hoping to win Geelong over.
AN ambitious plan to make Geelong-Korea the city’s “summer Cats” is set to rely on all stakeholders from the grassroots up driving a community-minded approach to capitalise on a sporting opportunity.
The newly announced Geelong-based ABL franchise has fans of the sport from both nations abuzz, but all parties to the landmark deal are aware how much work is ahead to convince the community this is their team come the first pitch in November.
Those on the diamonds today will be the reliable diehards on the bleachers when the ABL starts.
Some may scoff at the notion, but Geelong Baycats president Nathan Holmes is convinced baseball can be Geelong’s summer love to the tune of our most successful franchise.
“Geelong people are rabid fans of their local clubs, and you look at the support Geelong Football Club gets and the Geelong Supercats get on a
regular basis, I think we can replicate that with baseball, but only if the club is part of the community,” Holmes said.
“Whether it’s the Baycats or the local clubs, this is about baseball as a whole and our job is to be the bridge between the broader community and the ABL team here in Geelong, so I hope we’re all involved.”
With the help of Baseball Australia, the co-operation of Winterball Korea, government funding and the push from within, Geelong baseball stands to enjoy a timely boost for the long-term sustainability of the sport.
About 600 players — roughly one-fifth of those juniors — hit the diamonds in winter, many of those making up Geelong Baycats’ 200 summer players.
Holmes said as the anticipation built, those at the helm of the sport had the ideal opportunity to perfect their entry-level offering, even before details of their role in the franchise emerged.
“We have a very good senior club and have a good junior program that’s relatively strong, but for a small sport in a region like Geelong with a lot of competition for participation for juniors, we really need to do more, and I think this is an opportunity for us to revisit our programs,” he said.
“We need to make it so when people come to watch the ABL team and want to connect to the sport, that it’s easy to join, fun to play and there’s some idea of a pathway through the sport for themselves.
“That’s our focus and I’m encouraging all involved in baseball now, yes, we want to know the details and we want to be involved with the ABL team, but all our focus needs to be on making sure all of our energy goes into capturing all those people who come into the sport to watch it, figure how we get them to play it so it’s a valuable experience they never want to leave.”
Baseball Australia chief executive Cam Vale said enhancing the game day experience would be a key aspect to attracting new people to baseball, but plans were afoot to build interest through schools — much of which would need to happen before the ABL started.
The sport’s growth had been steady at 34 per cent a year since the latest incarnation of the national league was founded in 2009, leading to a desire for a regional push.
“It’s about balancing priorities. Certainly for us, in terms of Baseball Australia supporting this team, that community engagement and connection and really emphasising this is a team representing the city of Geelong is going to be really important,” Vale said.
“We’ll certainly work with the local clubs in terms of making sure that whether it’s for use of the players or interactions we do with the game — all the normal things that would happen with any professional team — to create a really good experience to encourage particularly younger people to consider baseball as a sport and take it up through schools and broader things we want to do nationally.”
BA will spend the next few months consulting on nicknames, colours and overall team presentation strategies, as franchisee Winterball Korea chases sponsors and broadcast partners before a delegation visits in August to assess facilities in Geelong and ABL diamonds nationally.
The delivery to the community will be the key point to whether — as Vale professes, a second-tier sport — baseball fever takes hold, according to Deakin University business school sports management lecturer Michael Naraine.
The language barrier between the players, some who don’t speak a word of English, will make it “a struggle at the get-go”, but not impassable with some strong planning, taking lessons from how the US embraces Asian imports to the top echelon.
Naraine, who grew up on baseball in the US, said there would be high expectations on the incoming team to at least match the efforts of other highly successful “sporting properties” in Geelong and around regional Victoria.
“It will be interesting to see how the managers and organisers of this team and of the league really try to integrate these athletes in the community and have them go out and run baseball clinics, go to the classroom and meet students,” he said.
“While the language barrier remains, it doesn’t mean they can’t go and teach the game, and so it’s about showing you care about the place in which you play, that you care about the community, and those are things that transcend language.
“The people of Geelong and regional Victoria expect that. There’s a standard that's been put down. It can be done, but whether it will be done is a different story.”
But making the players feel connected to Geelong could ultimately be the most valuable legacy, at least economically.
Naraine said advertising the games via streaming and from players sharing their experiences on social media to fans back home would be the key to tapping into a percentage of the population of 51 million South Korean residents.
“Any time you can inject global sport into regional Victoria, it’s definitely a win,” he said.
“There’s no doubt bringing a Korean baseball team into the ABL is going to be fantastic not only for region Victoria, but Geelong specifically, and having another tenant of that calibre is going to inject some muchneeded sports tourism dollars into that economy.”
Former San Diego Padres pitcher Josh Spence, who came through the grades at Geelong club Guild to become the 29th Australian to play Major League Baseball, believed the best way for Geelong-Korea to build a relationship may well be through the stomachs of the locals.
The 30-year-old, who now coaches college ball in Phoenix, Arizona, said grassroots players had to seize the opportunity to learn from professional players in any capacity.
“Having the opportunity is one thing but seizing the chance to learn is another,” Spence said.
“Like any sport, there’s many lessons to learn. These tangible lessons overlap and can occur away from the ball, which is the general focus area.
“The field may be your classroom but there are many subject areas being taught
“Generally speaking, a valuable lesson to learn is establishing your pre-game routine.
“If you’re interested in a position, watch how the players there prepare and what processes do they have to execute during the game.”
Spence expected further infrastructure upgrades to enhance the chances of Geelong juniors to follow his lead, which, from his experience, was a vital part of putting them as close to the US facilities benchmark as any baseball club in Australia.