To be a British, UK-based baseball fan is to be an alien in your own country. In most parts of the UK the most popular sports, in order of their importance are: football (i.e. what the US calls soccer), football, rugby, football, football, cricket and football. Those aren’t typos by the way: football for the vast majority of sports fans is the be all and end all, and everything else just gets in the way. So, when you make a new friend or get chatting to someone in a bar and they say, “So which team do you support?” you know they’re talking about football…and you also know that they’ll be looking over your shoulder for someone else to talk to when you reply, “I don’t follow football – I’m into baseball.”

Seriously, it’s like having a contagious illness. People suddenly lean back and look at you strangely – “Really? I’ve never met a baseball fan before” – and they’re suddenly lost for words. You can see them wondering what to talk about next, and that’s when the conversation turns to work or girls or cars, and not in that order necessarily. (And I know a little less than nothing about cars, which never helps my cause, I tell you.)
But the reality is that the baseball community in the UK is thriving. Five friends and I are moderators for a baseball website that has over 12,000 registered members, promotes vigorous debate, has a popular and busy chat-room and runs a fantasy game that’s supported by one of our major TV channels.

During Spring Training I’m going to try to give you a flavour of what it’s like to be a baseball fan in this country – and we do spell “flavour” with a “u” – and the numerous challenges that many of us face; from the time difference – West Coast games tend to start at 3.00 in the morning UK time – to the indifferent media coverage (other than the from the channel with which our website is associated). Once the regular season starts I’ll change tack and report on how events Stateside are being viewed here, by fans and the media, and the hot baseball topics amongst my fellow Brits.
Baseball fans in this country fall into one of three categories: those of us who followed the game – or tried to – before the Internet; those who discovered it on TV late on a Wednesday or Sunday night and had their interest piqued (ESPN games on those nights are shown live here); and those who saw a game when on vacation in the US, and whose love for the game grew from there.
I fall into the first category…which tells you more about my age than my rapidly receding hairline ever could. In 1982 the NFL was shown on TV here on a weekly basis for the first time, and the Super Bowl was shown live. My father and I would watch the highlights programme each Sunday – he was a Raiders fan while I rooted for the Redskins. And then one Sunday night in 1985 I was fiddling with the dial on my radio in an effort to find coverage of a game and came across baseball on AFRTS, without even knowing it at the time. To borrow a line from Garrison Keillor, it was like watching a foreign language film: interesting but not informative. I was intrigued by the excitement and the terms but understood almost nothing. And then everything changed a couple months later.
Everything changed because at Christmas a 90-minute special on the 1985 World Series was shown. There was a five-minute explanation of some of the rules, followed by five minutes of history, and then highlights from every game. I watched it and was instantly hooked. I didn’t know how the Series played out, so every moment was intensely exciting. I can still remember Al Michaels screaming, “We go to a seventh!” as Jim Sundberg slid under Darrell Porter’s glove, and I felt goose bumps – I knew I was onto something. I decided there and then that I was a Royals fan, and did so before the commercial break that preceded the highlights of Game 7.
I tried my best to learn all I could about the game, but learning any subject without a teacher is difficult. We Brits don’t have the upbringing that most Americans have, of being taken to a game by a parent and gently educated as to the beauty of what we’re witnessing, so I was flying solo. Stores invariably sold no baseball books, so whenever I found one I snapped it up. It was a slow process.
And then, the following year, highlights of the playoffs and the World Series were shown on TV – not in another 90-minute special, but the day after each game was played. I had no frame of reference, really, but even then I could tell that the Mets-Astros series was something special, and I stayed up all night listening to games rather than waiting for the highlights. It was during that Mets-Astros series that I decided once and for all that I’d have to go see some games live, which I did the following year, for the first of many such trips.
So right now we’re all gearing up for Spring Training just like you guys, and frantically preparing for our upcoming fantasy drafts as well. We’re joining new fantasy leagues and renewing friendships made in existing leagues. It’s a great time for all baseball fans, and your British cousins enjoy it as much as you do, I promise you.
Comments, thoughts and questions are most welcome. You can reach me at thebun@breathemail.net.
 Until next time…
Tony in Hitchin
CEO – The Islington Pfeiffers