National baseball team plan

Andrew Mathieson
GEELONG could be a home of Melbourne’s new national baseball team under a plan to utilise Victoria’s best facility for the sport, officials have revealed.
A lack of suitable venues in Melbourne has turned their attention to Geelong Regional Baseball Centre at Waurn Ponds.
Geelong Baseball Club vice-president Barry Mills said the centre’s playing surface was the city’s strongest selling point to host games in the new Australian Baseball League.
Victoria played some of its traditional Claxton Shield games in Geelong last season.
“When you look at venues, we’ve got the best in Australia,” Mr Mills said.
“When you look at everything else, our problem was just a lack of support and publicity that hurt us big time last year.”
Geelong missed a spot in the revamped ABL, which will be relaunched this November after it dissolved in 1999.
But Australian Baseball Federation chairman Mark Peters told the Independent earlier this year Geelong would be in contention for an expanded eight or 10-team competition within the next three years.
Victoria’s only side in the competition, Melbourne Aces, plays rivals from Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Canberra.
The ABL is an extension on the Claxton Shield but with more games and stronger marketing, including free-to-air television coverage on OneHD.
Mr Mills said the Geelong Baycats state league club would be interested in sharing facilities with Melbourne’s new national league franchise.
“We’re pursuing the league to try see whether they’re willing to bring games down here,” he said.
“In the last discussions we had with them they were thinking they’d like to send one game out of the four-game series to Geelong.”
Mr Mills expected former Geelong players in US minor leagues to return home for the Aces.
Geelong Mayor John Mitchell said televised baseball games would be a “great fillip” for the Geelong venue.
City officers had already been in discussions with ABL officials on the future use of the baseball centre, he said.
“The actual playing surface of the baseball centre at Grovedale/Waurn Ponds is certainly second to none, so we’re certainly open to some national baseball games being played or we’d certainly seriously look at it.”
Cr Mitchell said the City hoped to bring college baseball teams out for pre-season training after the previous visits of Japanese club Chiba Lotte Marines.