The Quest to Make Baseball Relevant In Its Birthplace

Researchers have proven in the last few years that baseball, or at least some incarnation of it, can be traced back to 18th-century Britain. Technically, the region can claim more ownership over baseball's origins than Cooperstown. And yet, baseball has never quite found its footing in the United Kingdom. Blame soccer, cricket or darts—sports that are all far more popular than baseball.

For the most part, the majority of Brits—who could probably name the starting lineup of a third division English soccer team—couldn't tell you the difference between a third baseman and a right fielder.

And that's the challenge that newly named British national baseball team manager Liam Carroll faces: Building a formidable team to represent Britain in international tournaments in a country where a rather small number of people actually play the game. Baseball-Softball UK—the development wing of the British Baseball Federation—estimates that approximately 20,000 people play baseball or softball in a region of more than 64 million. Carroll's task is enormous.

So each day, Carroll—a native Londoner who played junior college baseball in the U.S. and then coached at UNLV—spends the majority of his time trying to promote the sport, raising money so that his team can travel to tournaments, and jotting down an organizational mantra he has dubbed the "G.B. Way"—a literal ideological handbook he hopes to create that will set the standard for the national team's future.

Sometimes Carroll gets so consumed with his new managing gig that he forgets he also has to actually make a living. Carroll only works for the federation as a volunteer. In order to pay his bills, Carroll also gives private baseball lessons.

So far Carroll has assembled a small staff: a pitching coordinator, bench coach, and several friends of the program located in different parts of the world who are constantly on the look out for players who would be eligible for a British passport.

Funds are limited. Carroll said the entire federation's budget is only about a couple hundred thousand pounds per year, which must be used not only for the national team, but also to help grow and promote the sport, any administrative costs, and to help maintain the country's one full time national baseball facility. For the most part, players have to pay for at least part of their travel for tournaments.

"On the surface it sounds like it should be a difficult sell," Carroll said of trying to recruit players and coaches. "Everyone is a volunteer. I struggle to help people with their expenses let alone getting paid for their time at the type of level where it would be assumed that staff would be paid for their time. But when you dig a little bit deeper, it's international baseball and it becomes a little bit of an easier sell, especially for any coaches that have dug a little bit deeper and are aware baseball has been and could be again an Olympic sport."

Most everyone in the international baseball community believes that baseball will return to the Olympics for the 2020 games in Tokyo. And while an Olympic berth would be an extreme longshot, Carroll believes that it could happen under the right circumstances. Britain is also expected to be invited back into the World Baseball Classic qualifying round, as it was in 2013. So Carroll tells all prospective players, coaches and donors that they have an opportunity to start a legacy if they can help Britain—where baseball was created—obtain some international prominence.

"As much as we've had some success on the world stage, we are in our infancy in terms of development and building a program from top to bottom," Carroll said.

A major part of Carroll's challenge will be to fulfill the federation's goal of incorporating more domestic players onto the squad. For the most part, the national team—whose best ever performance in a major tournament was a silver medal at the 2007 European Championships—has always been mostly made up of dual nationals, players from other countries, usually the U.S. or Australia, who have at least one parent born in the U.K.

For the most part, domestic players get squeezed out of national team opportunities.

"We're all working to get home grown players," British Baseball Federation president Earl Dix said. "Just so that our kids don't hit that glass ceiling. So they know it's possible for them to get into that senior team and to play baseball at the highest level…We want them to think and to believe that they have a shot at making the team. It's a good philosophy to develop our own players."

But the inclusion of more domestic players would likely come at a cost: a drop in performance at the international level.

"The gap in talent between the top teams in Europe and the typical players, even the better players coming out of the British system, is enormous," said former British national team coach Stephan Rapaglia, who led the team to that silver medal finish in 2007. "British baseball really is very weak when compared to Dutch baseball or Italian baseball or even German baseball, Czech baseball, Spanish baseball. It's just not a lot of people playing baseball in Britain. And very few playing high level baseball."

Dix said that federation expects for Britain to remain in the International Baseball Federation's A-pool—the highest level of international baseball in the existing promotion/relegation system—and to possibly medal at next year's European championship. For that reason, Dix said he realizes the federation must be realistic about fielding a domestic player heavy roster while competing in the short term internationally.

"It is a delicate balance," Dix said. "But we'll leave it up to the coaches."

Even Dix acknowledges that the federation is still at least 15-20 years from being able to field a team with mostly domestic players.

In the meantime, the federation continues to try to grow the game. BSUK, which receives funding from the British government, travels to schools around Britain to hold clinics and to assist in starting youth leagues. Additionally, MLB said it has sent envoy coaches into the region since 1993, and has supported the Great Britain Academy with equipment, visiting coaches and funding.

The hope is that these efforts will help usher kids into one of the two national academies—one for players of all levels, and the other for Britain's elite, which helps prepare players for the various junior national teams.

Also, MLB games are also now televised in the U.K. and are available online, which Carroll believes has also helped raise baseball's profile in the region.

"We've seen some growth at the youth levels but not enough and we need to focus so much more attention and resources to youth development for us to achieve what I would like to see at the world stage with a truly homegrown national team," Carroll said. "But we have a long way to go."

Carroll said often accompanies BSUK officials when they go on their trips to schools. He'll often see several kids wearing baseball caps, usually Yankees hats. At this point, Carroll said he realizes baseball caps are more of a cultural phenomenon than anything. But he likes to remind the students that Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio wore a Yankees hat before Jay-Z did.

"You know it's a baseball hat?" he tells the kids.

Some day soon Carroll hopes they will answer yes.