Marc Wik - 2015-16 Adelaide Bite

Wik is an American import from the Houston Astros organisation who played with the Adelaide Bite during the 2015-16 ABL season. Wik spent 2015, playing for the Astros' Advanced A affiliate, the Lancaster JetHawks in the California League.

2015-16 Adelaide Bite Marc Wik card front - ©2016 Adam East

The photo for Wik's card is from the 2015-16 ABL playoff game in Canberra last Saturday that was suspended by a freak hailstorm. The game only lasted 7 pitches before large hailstones started pelting the ground and everyone went scampering for cover.

Large hailstones falling during the 2015-16 ABL Playoff game between Canberra and Adelaide - ©2016 Adam East

Groundtsaff in the hail during the 2015-16 ABL Playoff game between Canberra and Adelaide - ©2016 Adam East

Covering the infield during the 2015-16 ABL Playoff game between Canberra and Adelaide - ©2016 Adam East

What to do with piles of hailstones? - 2015-16 ABL Playoff game between Canberra and Adelaide - ©2016 Adam East

After the hail ceased many of the players had fun playing as the groundstaff worked out how to get several hundred kilos (500+ pounds) of hail off the ground. In the photo for Wik'scard you can just tell that it's still raining in the photo. Wik has a hand full of the large hailstones and is throwing them at other Bite players

If you're interested, the hailstorm can be seen in the following video just after the 15 minute mark.

Halloween False Start - Marcus Lemon - 2014-15 Pre-season Canberra Cavalry

Well, the Canberra Cavalry advertised an exhibition game last Saturday with a Halloween theme - their only pres-season game of the year before their first game on Thursday. I dutifully rocked up with my trusty camera to get a bunch of photos of all the new Cavalry players. I figured it would be good to get as many of the Cavalry players as I could - I could then focus on taking shots of the visiting players throughout the season. Plus, I thought, with two teams made up Cavalry players, I was bound to get shots of most of the Cavalry roster.

However, as they say about the best laid plans ....

To go with the Halloween theme, the players weren't in uniform, they were in various states of costume. Mixed into the playing group were what were being called "local celebrities" - sportsmen from other Canberran teams, media personalities, etc. There was no program or handout for the game either, and the enw players haven't been assigned numbers yet that we know of.

The upshot of this was, I had almost no idea of who on the field was actually a Cavalry player. In fact I had almost no way of knowing who anyone was. The ground announcer did try and do intros to the teams (The Vampires and the Werewolves), but they were difficult to follow, and the players didn't actually present to the crowd when they were introduced. The players didn't play in position either (eg Catcher Jack Murphy pitched and played outfield)

So in the end, I got nothing I can use for my season photos. I will put up a couple of shots I took as "pre-season cards" of a few players I was able to identify. The first "pres-season card" is of Marcus Lemon, dressed in a hula grass skirt with a lei wristband.

Marcus Lemon is the son of former MLB All Star Chet Lemon. In 2014, Marcus played for both the Double and Triple-A minor league teams of the Detroit Tigers. I'm unsure as to whethr he's still contracted to the Tigers or not though. The Cavalry listed him as an American import, not as an affiliated player in their pre-season blurb. Having said that, I couldn't find anything saying that the Tigers had released Marcus. He's listed as number 00 as I have no idea of player numbers yet.

2014-15 Canberra Cavalry Marcus Lemon pre-season card front - ©2014 Adam East

Reflections on the ABL Opening Day and Series

The Australian Baseball League Opening Day was last Thursday, featuring a game between the Canberra Cavalry and the Melbourne Aces. Official attendance for the game was 1842, which is a good crowd by ABL standards. Most things went fairly smoothly, with my only pet peeve being the disorganisation around player identification.

Apparently there have been some issues with the naming kits for the uniforms not having arrived, meaning that none of the players had their names on their uniforms throughout the series.

Melbourne Aces players line up before the anthem is sung on Opening Night © 2013 Adam East

 Just to make things even more difficult, players didn't seem to have settled on their numbers either, with both the series program and the ABL website failing to list the uniform numbers for most players. That made it even harder to try and identify which player was whom. It didn't help when the Aces management accidentally put their players in the wrong positions on their team sheet one night as well, which resulted in the PA announcer calling out the wrong player names at various times.

The Cavalry wore a special uniform for the opening game. It was a typical white home uniform from last year, but with gold trim and patches proclaiming  them as the Centenary Champions. Canberra celebrated it's 100th birthday in 2013, so it's a dual reference to it being Canberra's first game since winning the 2012-13 championship, and celebrating Canberra's Centenary.

Robbie Perkins and other Cavalry players in the Centenary Champion uniforms © 2013 Adam East

The Manager and GM were presented with a championship banner and a key to the city of Canberra by the Deputy Government Leader before the start of the game.

Sarge, Manager Tubby Collins and GM Thom Carter with championship banner and key to the city © Adam East

I discovered that each team this year has three possible uniforms they can wear - both the home white uniforms and grey away uniforms from last year, but also the "coloured top" uniforms used as home uniforms in 2010-11 and away uniforms in 2011-12.

I really hope they continue with wearing the coloured top uniforms - they give the teams a far more distinctive look and feel than the more generically bland white or grey uniforms. I reckon they look better on cards too. Melbourne wore their coloured top uniforms throughout the series, whilst Canberra also wore those each night apart from the Centenary Champions uniforms on opening night.

Canberra players in their orange top uniforms. © 2013 Adam East

On a side note it was funny to see some of the players a bit perturbed by the tens of thousands of bogong moths that descended on the ground on Saturday night when the lights were on. Canberra is in a migratory route for these moths, and they certainly came out in numbers during the evening, and even in the crowd you would occasionally get hit by moths that were a part of the huge ensemble.

Bogong moths invade Fort Narrabundah - © 2013 Adam East

Eating HuMLBe Pie

In a post at the start of last week, I was critical of the cost of the tickets for the Sydney 2014 MLB Opening Series, saying that I believed that "the promoters are treating this like a rock concert and are expecting the tickets to sell out in a couple of hours, without realising that baseball struggles to get fans through the gate, and that Sydney sports fans are particularly fickle about attending games."

Advertising spot for the Sydney 2014 MLb Opening Series

Well, I'm going to have to eat humble pie. Despite the exorbitant prices and the poor seating, the tickets have been selling, in the words of the ABL, "like hot cakes". The last I checked, ticket availability for the game I had been considering going to was:

Saturday night game (22nd Mar 2014). Ticket availability and costs in $AU*
Grandstand Outfield tickets $69 ea - Sold Out
Outfield tickets $99 ea - Sold Out
Bronze tickets $169 ea - Sold Out
Silver tickets $259 ea - only single tickets available
Gold $369 and Platinum $499 tickets - only single tickets available.
*(For Americans not familiar with the current $AU/$US exchange rate, they are roughly about the same in value - $AU1.00 has been worth between $US0.92 and $US1.03 over the last couple of months.)

For the Sunday game, sales have been a little bit slower, but are still going well, with all Outfield and Bronze tickets sold, and the Silver level only having single tickets available.

I was wrong - people are forking out the money. Lets hope that this translates through to increased levels of interest in the Australian Baseball League.

MLB Marketing Fail - 2014 Opening Series Sydney

Like many other Australian baseball supporters, I was excited at the announcement that the 2014 MLB Opening Series will be held in Sydney. Sydney is a 3½ hour drive away for me, but it's a trip we do fairly regularly for major events. After several days suspense, the ticketing information was released last Thursday ... and the immediate response from a number of supporters was ... seriously???

The Australian Baseball League's Facebook banner advertising the series

The prices for tickets to each game are as follows:

Categories	Price Range
Platinum	$499.00*
Gold Grandstand	$369.00*
Gold Concourse	$369.00*
Silver	$259.00*
Bronze	$189.00*
Outfield	$99.00*
Grandstand Outfield	$69.00*

*A one-off service/delivery fee from $5.10 per transaction applies. A credit/debit card processing fee from 1.95% will apply.

Understand that baseball is a minor sport in Australia. The premier attended sports league in Australia is the Australian Football League - averaging around 35,000 per game over the last decade. The comparative summer sport, the Big Bash League (Twenty20 Cricket) averages around 14,000 people per game. By contrast, the Australian Baseball League has averaged just under about 1100 people per game across it's first three seasons.

The home games for me are at Fort Nurrabundah in Canberra, which is the smallest ABL market (It's a city of 367K people.) The five other ABL teams are all in cities of over 1 million people or larger. Melbourne has 4.2 million, whilst Sydney has 4.6 million. Whilst Canberra is the smallest market, it has some of the biggest crowds, with some games reaching the ground's capacity at just over 2000 people.

By contrast, the Sydney Blue Sox in a city 12 times the size, draw crowds slightly smaller than Canberra's. Melbourne have been struggling with their crowds and would be on average a lot smaller I believe. I don't know the exact numbers but would be surprised if they're averaging 1000 per game. Keep in mind that ABL ticket prices are reasonably cheap too - I'm generally sitting behind the home team dugout for less than $20 admission.

Here is the matching ground configuration for the games at the Sydney Cricket Ground (from the Ticketek.com website.) to put the ticket prices into context.

So, in the end, what is the point of this post? Well, first to say - good idea to try and promote baseball by bringing out some MLB teams. However ... there are two main issues.
1. The Sydney Cricket Ground is not a baseball stadium. It is a cricket ground, which is oval in shape, which is being modified to fit in a baseball game. As you can see from the field layout, the majority of the sub$100 seats are a LONG way away from the playing field. We're not just talking at the home run fence, we're talking about starting an extra 100+ feet even further back. Meanwhile, even the seats close to home plate and the dugouts are a fair distance away from the action. Whilst baseball fans in the US may be used to this distance, Australian fans are used to being much closer to the action at dedicated sporting venues. The viewing experience is going to be quite compromised, and may lead to some negative feedback after the games I suspect from people who don't realise how far away from the action they will be. Still, it's not like there are many high capacity baseball stadiums in Australia - the largest baseball dedicated stadiums can currently only hold around 4½-5000 fans, so it's not like there are a lot of alternatives. However, this leads me to the next issue.

2. Price gouging. The ticket prices are ridiculous. Remember, the Sydney Blue Sox ABL team would be lucky to get 2000 fans at $20 each. The promoters here are expecting fans to pay $69 for extremely poor seats, or more on average, $300+ to get semi-reasonable views, for what they're used to paying $20 for. The quality of baseball may be higher, but I suspect the demand is just not going to be there. Sydney is well known in Australia for being fickle at turning out to sports events. Despite being Australia's largest city, it doesn't produce the record crowds. Melbourne is seen as the sporting capital, and is known for attending sports events. In fact, the Melbourne Cricket Ground held the record for attendance at a baseball game for over 50 years (1956 until 2008.). Around 114,000 saw an exhibition game between an Australian National Team and a US Armed Services team as an exhibition game for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics.If I was the promoter, I would have been pushing for the MCG, not the SCG. I know it's going to cost a lot to bring everybody out from the US to Australia, but really, that much extra? The feeling I get, rightly or wrongly, from baseball fans in Australia is that the promoters are treating this like a rock concert and are expecting the tickets to sell out in a couple of hours, without realising that baseball struggles to get fans through the gate, and that Sydney sports fans are particularly fickle about attending games.

There appears to have been a lot of criticisms raised about the prices - the Australian Baseball League has been quick to post comments on Facebook that the prices for this series are set by the promoter and that MLB and the ABL do not have any control over them. It appears to be damage control.

Whilst this series is great in theory, I can see a lot of risk. I know a number of fans from outside Sydney who were 100% gung ho that they would be going to Sydney to attend this. Now, a number of them have said - nope, too expensive. I fear that Australian fans will not support the game at these prices, and for those that do attend, there will be negative comments after the game about the value of the viewing experience that they did get. If the players are simply dots in the distance that you can't make out, does it matter that they're MLB level dots?

I still don't know if I'll be going. I'd like to, but the game is on my wife's birthday, and she's not a baseball fan. (Loathes it in fact :)). Regardless of whether I get to it or not, I hope this series has a positive effect for the game in Australia, but with the decisions that have been made, the pricing already appears to have left a bad taste in some fan's mouths, and I fear they won't be the last once the actual games have been held  ...

Australian Baseball League 2013-14 Schedule Review

The Australian Baseball League has released it's schedule for the 2013-14 season, so I've been studying it today to determine what that means for next season's cards.

Same Number of Games
Again it's a 46 game season, split across 6 home and 6 away series. Some home series will be 3 games, some will be 4 games. Nearly all games are scheduled Thursday through Sunday, with 4 Monday night games scheduled during the Christmas School Holidays. I generally only get to Friday or Saturday games, so doesn't effect me a whole lot.

Less Doubleheaders
From my point of view, as an amateur photographer, I love Saturday double headers. My camera kit isn't good enough to capture decent shots once games go under lights, so I rely on getting shots during warm ups and during the first couple of innings of night games. This often means that I miss out on action shots of the pitching staff, with most of the bullpen coming on too late during night games. In contrast, double headers give me the opportunity to get far more usable shots, especially of pitchers.

Historically, almost every series contained a Saturday double header during the first two ABL seasons, however that was cut back during the 2012-13 ABL season, with only 3 doubleheaders played locally. Next season, there will only be two doubleheaders played here.  That means less action shots, and less shots of pitchers. :(

Playing the Heat Twice at Home
The ABL is a 6 team competition  Each ABL team play 6 home series, one home series against 4 of the other 5 teams and two home series against the remaining team. The first two ABL seasons featured 10 series of 5 home and away series, however the ABL acknowledged feedback from the teams that they didn't have the pitching depth to maintain regular 4 and 5 game series. Subsequently in 2012-13, they increased the number of series, but reduced the number of games per series. The increase in series means that there's the luck of the draw as to who you play twice. Last season the Cavalry played Sydney twice at home. In the 2013-14 season it will be the Perth Heat. That's effectively a tough draw for the Cavalry, noting that out of the three total ABL seasons to date, Perth have come 1st, 1st and 2nd.

From a card point of view, it means that I'll likely get more shots of Perth players. Given that most teams only bring 20-22 of their roster to Canberra for each series, multiple series means potentially a greater player spread for photos. Besides the Cavalry who are the team in the city I live in, the two teams I got the most different number of player photos of last season were the Perth Heat and the Sydney Blue Sox. Why? Because Canberra played two home series against Sydney, and played two series in Canberra (one home series and the Championship series) against Perth.

Overall
Not a bad schedule, but the lack of doubleheaders is the real killer for me. Maybe I can sweet talk the GM to getting me a Media Pass to try and get closer to the action with the limited shooting time I'll have. :)

Congrats to the Canberra Cavalry - 2012-13 ABL Champions

I managed to attend both the 1st game and the last three innings of the 2nd game of the 2012-13 Australian Baseball League Championship Series in Canberra over the previous 2 nights. The advantage of catching the end of the 2nd game was I got to see the Cavalry take out the championship, as well as the post game awards and festivities. Congratulations to the Canberra Cavalry on winning the Championship.

Even though I'm historically a Perth Heat supporter (since the original ABL started back in 1989), I do support the Cavalry when attending their home games.  As much as previously I've been a proud wearer of my Perth Heat cap during Cavalry home games, one of the Canberra General Managers asked me who I would be supporting if it was a Canberra vs Perth final. When it's been Perth vs Canberra series, I've always gone for Perth. It was a big call, but I decided I would be supporting the Cavalry in the ABLCS ... not because I no longer supported the Heat, but because after 2 successive Championships to Perth, I thought it would be "Good For Baseball" to have the Cavalry win the ABL, rather than a Perth threepeat. The level of interest in baseball in Canberra has definitely skyrocketed with the Cavalry's success this year, and will hopefully continue to foster more kids into the game.

Now that the Cavalry have won one, I'll be more than happy for Perth to get back to winning the Championship next year ... and I'll still support the Cavalry ... unless they're playing the Heat :)

Sad to see some  opposition supporters labelling the Cavalry as Team USA and complaining about all their imports. As I point out - why weren't you complaining when their imports left them in last place for the previous two seasons?

They also seem to casually ignore the fact that other ABL teams have been luring Aussie Cavalry players interstate. The Crawford brothers moved up to the Bandits, Tim Atherton went to the Blue Sox (where he joined another former Cavalry Aussie - Luke Wilkins) and that even Perth manged to get a game out of former Cavalry relief pitcher Phil Brassington. And although not an Aussie, even Adelaide are using Cavalry's original Indian import - Rinkhu Singh.It's hard to get a good core of Aussies when they get lured to the "big smoke" when they start showing some promise.

Anyway, thought I'd share a couple of photos. The first is a panorama of the storms in the background of Fort Narrabundah during Game 1 of the ABLCS.

Fort Narrabundah - ABL Championship Series Game 1- Panorama (click image to enlarge) © 2013 Adam East

And a couple from the post-game celebrations of Game 2. My lenses are rather slow, so not the best for night photography, but thought I'd grab a few happy snaps anyway.

Cavalry players pile on pitcher Sean Toler after the final out - © 2013 Adam East

The Claxton Shield - © 2013 Adam East

The Cavalry celebrations begin - © 2013 Adam East

Kudos to the Adelaide Bite Players

Just a quick note giving praise to the Adelaide Bite players for being friendly and promoting the game of baseball well. I will quite often try and spend time taking shots of players during their warm-ups before their ABL games. Most players will simply ignore me and get on with their job. A couple will give me the evil eye and a couple like Matthew Williams from the Blue Sox and Aces import Fumikazu Kimaru have joked around with me, but they're usually the exception rather than the rule.

Shooting the Adelaide players this weekend, many of the players seemed to be in good moods and were very conscious of me being there, with players such as Josh Cakebread, Jeremy Cresswell and  import Ji-Man Choi hamming it up for the camera. In addition, both Chris Adamson and Darren Fidge came over and had several minute chats with me. Well done guys! I came out with a very positive view of the club and it's players - friendly, fan-savvy, approachable and positive. Thanks for providing a positive experience with your club. I'm looking forward to getting some of my 2012-13 Adelaide Bite cards up soon.

Adelaide Bite players Jeremy Cresswell and Josh Cakebread decide to make sure I get a good shot of them
© 2012 Adam East

Adelaide Bite import Ji-Man Choi deuces up for the camera © 2012 Adam East