Let Black Sox enjoy view from top of world

Until this week, the answer to the poser — “Name New Zealand’s most successful international sports team” — would probably have drawn responses along the lines of the All Blacks, the Black Ferns or the Silver Ferns.

We now know, after the news from Whitehorse in the Yukon, that the Black Sox could have a legitimate claim to the crown, though shearing teams might beg to differ.

The men’s softball side won their seventh world title in the small Canadian town, defeating old foes Australia in the final. Few if any national sides could hold a candle to that record.

Softball is a family sport in New Zealand.

In the Black Sox squad there were three Enoka brothers. Catcher Kallan Compain is their cousin. The head coach, Mark Sorenson, is in world softball’s Hall of Fame with his father Dave, the only father- and- son combination so honoured.

Two of the players in Canada — Brad Rona and captain Nathan Nukunuku — played their 100th internationals at the tournament, a tribute to their fitness and commitment to an amateur sport.

There have been some meanspirited comments to the effect that softball is a minor sport which ranks behind baseball as an elite endeavour. Perhaps, but it is a well- organised activity played and enjoyed in communities across the country.

Let Sorenson have the last word. After the final, the coach was rightly jubilant.

“It’s not often,” he remarked, “that you get to sit on top of the world and look down.”

After seven times, it’s a view the Black Sox have come to command.