History of baseball in Australia

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The history of baseball in Australia dates to the 1857.

History

The first baseball game in Australia was played in 1857. At the end of the 19th century, Americans also tried to set up baseball leagues and competitions in Australia, with some success. On January 3, 1914, the Chicago White Sox and New York Giants played an exhibition game in front of 10,000 spectators at the Sydney Cricket Ground as part of their world tour. In 1928, the varsity team from Stanford University came to Australia and played against local sides and the Australian national team, once again drawing large crowds. It was the first time the team had an opportunity to play against an outside opponent. A national league was initiated in 1934.

Australia in international baseball

The national team entered World Championship competition in the late 1970s. Prior to winning the silver medal at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Australia had finished 7th in the Olympics twice, which is also the highest position reached in World Championships. Australia has taken part in the first four editions of the World Baseball Classic, although it has not managed to advance beyond the first round and had to go through te qualifiers in 2017.

A national-level competition still exists, as well as lower-level club competitions, but the game attracts comparatively little spectator or media interest. Several Australians, however, have attracted the attention of American scouts and have gone on to play in the major leagues in the United States and Japan.

In 2014, Major League Baseball opened its regular season in Australia with a pair of games between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Arizona Diamondbacks at the Sydney Cricket Ground on March 22-23.

Further Reading

• Joe Clark: A History of Australian Baseball: Time and Game, Bison Books, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE, 2003. ISBN 978-0803264403 [1]
• Tyler Maas: "Australian Invasion: Aussies have been slowly invading major league baseball", sportsonearth.com, March 16, 2014. [http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/69417532/australians-have-been-slowly-invading-major-league-baseball
• Ray W. Nickson: "An Epoch in Australian Baseball: Stanford University's Tour of 1928", Baseball Research Journal, SABR, Vol. 47, Nr. 1 (spring 2018), pp. 23-28.
• Manny Randhawa: "The history of baseball in Australia", mlb.com, February 13, 2022. [2]

Related Sites

• Australian Baseball History

Some or all content from this article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "History of baseball outside the United States".