Kingsley Collins

10 December 2014

Just like the fabled bushland feline of our southernmost state, Tasmanian baseball has refused to acquiesce to extinction, with a recently reformed competition continuing to gather momentum.

Played in Tasmania as far back as 1913, the sport never gained serious traction until the formation of the Tasmanian Baseball Association in 1950, at a time when baseball was booming in the mainland states as the Claxton Shield remained the pinnacle of national achievement.

Although the Launceston Baseball Association had been in action for some time then, it was only when the Southern Association – reformed in Hobart after 36 years – entered the equation that baseball aficionados took great heart from the possibilities created by intrastate rivalry between the two leagues.

The new league, according to the Launceston Examiner in July 1950, would “control all matters relating as a whole to baseball in Tasmania, which will enter competition for Claxton Shield next year.”

“With new players coming forward each week, a great expansion of the game is certain in the near future,” the Examiner predicted.

“We are after new men, experienced or otherwise,” a league official said. “If they can’t play, we will teach them.”

While baseball in the Apple Isle never fully lived up to those lofty expectations, it flourished during the 1970s and 1980s, with the two leagues running concurrently.  However - by the late 1980s - the Launceston League began to struggle for players and it ultimately disbanded.

Fielding several teams in Kingston - a town just to the south of Hobart – Tasmanian Baseball Association continued to function successfully until the competition collapsed with financial problems and the sport went into recess in the early 1990s.

The rise of the sport from the Tasmanian baseball ashes was partly coincidental - although it is largely a testament to the commitment of some older persons who had previously been involved as players and administrators.

Arguably Tasmania’s best known baseball export, Ian Hubble – who achieved at the highest levels of Australian domestic baseball after crossing to Victoria in the late 1970s – had by the early 2000s become heavily involved in Masters baseball on the mainland.

Encouraged by Ian’s foray into Masters, his brother Peter become one of the guiding forces in the creation of a Tasmanian Masters team to enter the annual Victorian Masters Baseball Carnival - a remarkable, rollicking  event that will celebrate its nineteenth birthday in 2015.

For the past decade, Tasmania has been a regular, competitive and popular participant in the Victorian Masters, which returned to its Ballarat home in 2011 after several drought years at Geelong Baseball Complex.

Involvement in the Victorian Masters Carnival was more than enough to feed the enthusiasm of a group of Tasmanian players, who had already resolved to resurrect baseball in the island state.

In 2007, after a fifteen year hiatus, a baseball competition returned to Hobart under the banner of Baseball Tasmania. The competition continued under this name until the 2013/4 season when it was rebadged the Hobart Summer Baseball League, with Baseball Tasmania the governing body.

Supportive of the project since it was first mooted, Hobart Mercury ran a series of promotional articles encouraging players, former players and other interested parties to join. The Mercury - ir should be said - continues to promote baseball in an active manner that puts some of our limited mainland media coverage to shame.