The end of the British baseball season is always a melancholy moment, writes Rob Jones.

I wouldn’t say that it is “sad”, as such. You shouldn’t be sad when something finite ends — that is what gives it its quality. I’m not sad when Christmas ends — if it went on and on, it would not be special.

So I am not sad when the baseball year ends. But it is a melancholy moment. A pensive moment, a time for reflection.

On a positive note I should start by saying that my team, the Herts Raptors, achieved a .500 record in the Single-A league this year, which is the baseball baseline for “doing OK”. So we can tick that box.

We had a great bunch of guys, and I always enjoyed getting together to play. The 2018 manager, Matt Jackson, led us all with dedication and the right attitude.

Stunning walkoff

Overall, the club had some real high points in the year. The Herts Falcons reached the NBL final for the first time in six years with some superb playoff wins.

The Under-11s reached the final of their age group at the Youth National Baseball Championships, the first Herts youth side to reach a final since 2013. And they did it with a stunning walkoff victory, which was an added bonus for the kids.

But for me, as for many people involved in British baseball in 2018, it was an odd season. Frustrating. Disappointing. Deflating.

First of all, I have to link all of this into my old man shtick – my body feels each season more keenly, and you always think to yourself “how many more years can I keep doing this?”

I grant you that I am probably being melodramatic. 46 is twice the age of some of our players, but I’m hardly ready for my slippers in the retirement home yet. We had guys come on board late in the season who are, in fact, older than I am.

However, I try to play as many games as I can each year, and at what point does that end? At what point do you become just a substitute, or occasional participant?

Passion

One of my fellow travellers in the Old Guys brigade, Paul Auchterlounie, hung up his playing gear at the end of 2018 to concentrate on umpiring. I wish him all the best – and he’ll be excellent – but that is kind of melancholy, too.

Paul was with the club before I arrived, and has always played with absolute passion to do his best. At times, in those early years, he could become extremely frustrated by his own flaws – and I fully understood that!

But he also approached baseball as a sport, something which should be fun. What’s more, I’ve seen him make some amazing plays in the outfield. He reached the AA playoffs as a Hawks catcher.

And when he joined the Raptors in recent years to act as a mentoring catcher to young pitchers, he in fact ended up as one of our most reliable and effective starters on the mound!

The club will miss him on the field but will, I’m sure, see him often in his new role.

The loss of a veteran makes it feel more real that, at some point, you have to move on. That nagging concern was exacerbated this year by the confusion surrounding the organisation of the game nationally.

If every moment on the diamond is increasingly precious, you don’t want to lose opportunities because of forfeits, or scheduling mistakes.

Washout

The set-up of the leagues in 2018 meant chances of post-season play for the Raptors were exceptionally slim. And during most of the summer, teams had little idea of what the results or standings were. The “race for the post-season” was a blindfolded race.

It is perhaps a fitting metaphor that attempts to stage the Single-A final have so far failed, and the teams which made it through the confusion have not had the chance to play. It’s nobody’s fault, as such, since the weather has intervened repeatedly. But I can’t help but think that a damp squib season has had an appropriate conclusion with a washout.

British baseball has a tremendous opportunity in 2019 to spread the word about the game and attract more players, particularly young players. MLB has finally followed American football’s NFL, and basketball’s NBA, in playing regular season games in London. The choice of the Red Sox and Yankees shows that this is a serious attempt to break the market.

We need to capitalise on this moment. To do that, we will all need to do better.

One incident from 2018 hopefully ties together my old man melancholy with a more positive note.

On the opening day of the season, one of our new winter recruits Liam Roberts – a promising speedster with a love of baseball, and lots to contribute to the club – played his first league game.

He led off with a walk. Then went to steal second base.

But a freak accident on the slide left him with a broken arm. He had surgery in the course of the year, and is thankfully recovering, but was advised not to try baseball again.

It brings home how lucky I have been to get to play this game for so many years. Every moment is an upside.

I’m here fretting to you all about how much longer I can steal bases, and make dazzling plays at shortstop, when I should perhaps be focussing only on those high points I have already experienced.

The off-season will give me a chance to mull all that over. Whilst oiling the glove, cleaning the cleats, and buying my London Series tickets.

And dreaming of great things. Because no matter what the body can or can’t do, it doesn’t stop me dreaming.

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POSTSCRIPT: It is only fair to add that the delayed Single-A final has now taken place. It was hosted at a sun-drenched Grovehill Ballpark, and the Long Eaton Storm and the London Musketeers played out a tremendous game.

Storm won 16-14, but I am going to take a positive message from it for all clubs.

Let’s see this as a parting of those clouds which I complained about above. Let’s see this sunshine as a good omen of what’s to come in 2019.

I have written elsewhere on these pages about how the last act of the drama is the one which leaves the most powerful imprint. And this was definitely a good final act. Forward together.

Playing catcher on a hot day is perhaps the greatest weight loss programme yet to be discovered, writes Rob Jones.

Well, it’s yet to be featured by the Sunday supplements as a craze to go alongside eating pureed kale while sniffing bath salts. It’s yet to be promoted as a miracle by the Daily Mail, then debunked a week later.

But of course, everyone in the baseball community knows that the hottest place to be when the sun is glaring down is in the mask and armour of the catcher. Perhaps some of my larger-framed colleagues — as catchers are often on the solid side — opted for the position precisely because of its healthy side-effects.

As for me? Since I am made from a handful of sticks tied together, I don’t really get that benefit. But I found my five innings of work at Guildford Millers on Sunday quite hot enough, thanks. My jersey has the tide marks to prove it.

I perversely like the position, even if my 45 year old legs don’t. It keeps you involved on every single pitch of the game. You can’t get much better than that when you show up for one of the handful of baseball games you get to play each summer.

And as a former cricketer and football goalkeeper, I understand both the need for good blocking, and the technique for it.  After seeing one too many volunteers who liked the macho aspects of catching but then hopped up and blocked everything with their shin pads, I started volunteering.

I’d never been an obvious catcher (see previous comparison involving sticks). And I have never had a cannon for an arm. But to be honest, most lower level catchers don’t either. So I figured my good elements outweighed my bad!

If you want to try out as a catcher, Guildford is a good place. Their temporary backstop is pretty close to the plate, and is springy enough that wild pitches and pass balls bounce back to you. That really helps take off the pressure which you get elsewhere – such as Grovehill — where a runner can score from third quite handily on every errant play as the ball goes to the fence.

Naturally, Paul and I were a pretty flawless combination on Sunday, so that issue never came up! (ahem) One runner did have a go at it when a ball in the dirt caromed away, but I had time to fetch it back and tag him out.

Catching is one of the jobs on the diamond which is quite different between Single-A and the top levels, whereas many others are actually quite comparable.

The pitcher for example — if he’s sharp, he’s dominant. Same for MLB and A-league. The shortstop. A close play on a grounder is close at both levels, it’s just that everyone at A-league will have moved a bit slower!

Whereas the Single-A catcher, lacking that cannon arm, can do little to control the running game. That’s a vital job for the Major League guys, but down in our basement level everyone knows that the runner is going to steal and you probably can’t stop him.

Similarly, top guys are calling the pitch sequences artfully. Yes, we do that in Single-A, but unless the pitcher has a full repertoire of reliable pitches that’s far less important. You just want it in the strike zone!

Similarly, the level of scouting reports and expertise on each batter is far less. You can spot well enough who are the really big hitters, but any batter can surprise you at this level.

Honestly, I do think we did a decent job as a battery at Guildford. The Raptors pitchers this year and in recent memory are more accurate than we have sometimes had in the past. So we are able to take our thinking to the next level.

I should of course add that I caught only five innings, with one of our new recruits Harvey taking over for the final three innings. Younger, stronger, better legs!

It was his first appearance as a catcher, though he has clearly been studying. Harvey did a really solid job, including calling pitches, and has good fundamentals to develop his blocking.

He had to learn the hard way on both conceding an interference call, and on giving up a run with an un unnecessary throw when there were runners on first and third. But the hard way is the best way to learn, and when you’re being told a thousand things, those ones will sink in the quickest.

Physically, I feel that I survived this one fairly well. The legs do ache, but not in the way they sometimes have on a Monday when I can barely move.

On Monday, my left thumb felt bruised. On Tuesday, it is tingly and numb. Although I fared much better than usual by borrowing Paul’s broken-in catching mitt, I still banged my thumb three times when taking a pitch.

Actually, the catching fraternity out there might be able to help me with this.

I have a terrible habit of receiving the ball and banging my thumb in a direction it doesn’t want to go. It really bloody hurts, and takes days to clear.

Are there any great tips on how to avoid this? Tricks? Things to “visualise”? If any of you say, “visualise yourself being a less bad catcher”, I might sulk.

I might not. I might be so overwhelmed with relief that we finally got to play baseball after weeks of interruptions, that I won’t care.

It’s been disappointing to have two games forfeited to us, as wins mean little to us if we don’t get the chance to play to earn them! The game at Guildford was the closest of the three we have managed in 2018. Here’s hoping for another close one next time, with us coming out on top. And my thumb feeling much healthier.

I have been playing mostly shortstop for some years now, writes Rob Jones. A little bit of third when we needed it, second base, and even first – as well as a chunk of catching, which I enjoy but my legs don’t so much.

But what you find as a Single-A shortstop is that, although it is generally seen as the central role in the infield, you can go entire games with barely a chance coming your way.

I don’t really know why. Why is it that, at the lower level of the game, the truisms go out of the window?  Shouldn’t it all be the same, but maybe a bit slower, a bit less efficient?  Maybe the combination of amateurishness on the part of the pitcher and the batter — and the fielder — somehow combine to rewrite the rule book.

On Sunday, however, I started at shortstop in our opening league game of the season and had three chances come my way in the top of the first inning.

Sadly for me (and for the pitcher) only one of them led to an out. And I want to look briefly at those plays to think about what happened.

The Raptors as a whole perhaps showed some of the rust which came from 2018’s washout (and occasionally white-out) pre-season. We had played only one game, nearly a month ago. We were not as slick and as confident as we can be.

Lucky old me, I got to exemplify all of this when one of the first London batters hit a towering pop-up.

It should have been all mine, I will make that clear before I start. But instead, the ball ended up on the floor, the runner was safe and I had a bruised wrist and chest to show for it.

They say one of the truisms about how to field a fly ball well (or in this case a pop-up – same difference, shorter distance) is about taking a great route to the ball. In other words, seeing and feeling immediately where it is going, how hard, how fast, and getting to the best spot to catch it.

Well, on this pop-up my brain tried to calculate that great route – and all the gears slipped into neutral. At first I thought it was going deeper than it really was, perhaps fooled by its height.

So I didn’t move as sharply as I should’ve done to get back and beyond the ball. Looking up at it, I also started to lose my bearings a bit. Laser focus was lacking.

The slow feet meant that when the ball ultimately came down, around the edge of the dirt and the grass, it was dropping over my shoulder and through my breadbasket. My attempts to make the Willie Mays catch ended in a tumble, and the bruises mentioned earlier. And, metaphorically, egg on my face.

It wasn’t long before another chance came my way. This was an infield dribbler, sneaking past the pitcher. I fielded it on the run, heading towards first base.

But when I threw it a combination of rushing, whilst also easing off the throw as I came close to first, meant that the ball died apologetically at Beppe’s feet. He did his best to scoop it but couldn’t. He should never have needed to.

For regular readers and viewers, I can tell you this was very like the incident at home plate in that one pre-season game. You’re not really supposed to make the same mistake twice, I think that’s accepted as “a bad thing”. But maybe making the same mistake once a month isn’t soooo bad??

The final chance followed swiftly. This was an actual, normal, proper shortstop play. A rarity! A hard-hit ground ball right at me. Got that one, made the toss to second for the force-out and finally ended the inning.

On the plus side, I have to say that I fielded both of the ground balls cleanly. I can’t tell you how, so I am taking that as a good sign that it was simply instinctive.

Maybe those training sessions throwing the ball against the wall in the park were good for something! But what it all showed was that there is no replacement for live, game action. It’s about putting together your brain, your feet, and your hands.

For the Raptors, Opening Day was a disappointing and slightly flat experience, as we quickly fell behind and didn’t show enough skills to get back into it.

The first-inning injury to Liam, our centre fielder, obviously took the wind out of everybody’s sails. It’s never good to see people get hurt. Fortunately he seems to be on the mend, and we wish him a speedy and smooth recovery. But his arm injury looked nasty and I don’t underestimate that.

The team did put in a bit of a rally late in the game, stringing together some hits and loading the bases as we tried to stave off a mercy rule defeat. There was some good fielding, too – a great outfield catch by Oliver, a great relay by Jamie for Ken to nail a runner at the plate. So there are positives.

Days after the game, I ache even more than usual. Judging from he exact nature of my bruise, I wonder now if the ball actually hit me as I missed that pop-up. Without video replay, we’l never know. And I feel loath to complain about my pains, given how Liam must be feeling.

But no matter what happened, we are all happy to get back to playing baseball.

For any new readers worried about my apparent tendency towards self-flagellation online, I offer my annual reassurance. These little articles are all about sharing the frustrations of the small-time British ball-player – I’m happy enough to be the one to do it out loud.

And the upside always outweighs the down. It just needs fewer words to express it: “we played baseball.”

This blog is rarely preoccupied with shoes, or hats. Normally you would have to look at Vogue if you wanted that. But 2017 was not like other baseball years for your correspondent, writes Rob Jones.

Shoes were central to this year’s experience. Or, more specifically, cleats. Red cleats.

Way back when I started playing baseball, I stumbled across a pair of red Converse cleats going cheap from a guy who ran a baseball shop out of an industrial lot in north London. I bought them because I had credit with him, and just because they were there. But they became an emotional part of my game.

When my young children first came to see me play, they could identify Daddy from all these guys on the field by the fact he had red shoes on. One of our team-mates with a talent for photography immortalised the red cleats one year with a close-up picture.

They became me, and I became them.

In early 2017, they finally gave up the ghost. I don’t actually play that often, and would sometimes use different shoes on hard ground (the pair in question have metal cleats). So they had lasted years. But, in the end, they had too many holes and cracks to make them viable.

And so they were retired. And when I travelled to the United States this Spring, for the first time in about 8 years, my mission was to find new red, metal cleats. That was my request to each of the sports stores we visited.

And shiny Nike “Mike Trout” shoes were the result. I joke to my children that Mike Trout wears “Rob Jones” shoes, but I don’t think they are convinced.

Now, I accept this is all frippery. I mean, really, shoes?? But in the sporting world, good luck and superstitions can come in all shapes and sizes (a size 8, in this case). And a bit of bling never hurts.

Those old cleats had won the famous 2016 playoff game in Tonbridge. They helped me to a couple of batting titles (no, I didn’t hit the ball with my feet, but you know what I mean). I could read into all of this a message about breaking down, and wearing out. But I am choosing to find a message of longevity, and of renewal.

The cleats won their last game, in the Herts Spring League.

And the new guys won theirs too, at home to the Bracknell Inferno.

This was the start of the serious business of baseball. It was a season with lots of promise for the Herts Raptors, after winning their first ever playoff game in 2016. Lots of the guys who contributed that that run were still on board — though we lost some to higher divisions — and fresh new talent arrived, too.

My season started with an early 1.000 batting average. The last time that happened there were comparisons to the great Ty Cobb, and I became Rob Cobb. But fortunately that name didn’t last. The batting was a bit up and down this year, but it evened out just over .500 which was acceptable.

In the Kent Mariners game, I debunked my own theory that my bat gets slower and weaker as the game goes on with my biggest hit in a last-inning attempt at a rally. Not actually a hit, in scoring terms, as it was caught in the outfield. But enough to give me late-game optimism!

The cleats and I played almost all of the season at shortstop, barring a few moments as catcher. Again, it started pretty well, building to the home game against the London Musketeers as the defensive pinnacle of my year. At that point, I thought the magic shoes might finally take me to an infield gold glove.

But as the year wore on, maybe I slowed down a smidgen (see previous batting theories). But I did get to turn a double play at Guildford, and hopefully my work helped to keep the team in games on other occasions.

The Raptors ended with a 7-7 record, an excellent recovery from a hole we got into in the middle of the season. We just missed the playoffs but everyone is keen to come back for more next year and get into post-season action again. The shoes are definitely keen for more.

The other sartorial element of 2017 to be mentioned  is hats. I also acquired a new Herts cap this year, because I had lost mine on a ride at Disney World in Florida. There are worse — or more boring – places to lose a hat. It ruined my plans to represent the club when we went to a Minor League baseball game on the same holiday, but it does mean that somewhere deep in Disney World, a mysterious black cap with a red H is repping Herts for an American audience.

Luckily, my son was able to represent Herts at the ball game with his hat. He had only lost his Red Sox cap!

Even while visiting one of the world’s leading entertainment attractions, I couldn’t help but take note of all the baseball caps I saw. And I ended up, essentially, counting them.

Most common were Cubs and Red Sox. But right up there with them were the Detroit Tigers. Which felt strange, as you don’t see a whole lot of Detroit hats in the UK. I don’t know what that tells us — are the Tigers way bigger in the US? Or do people from Detroit go on vacation in Florida?

San Francisco Giants fans seemed to prefer Animal Kingdom, as I saw more there than anywhere else. I was slightly surprised by the number of Blue Jays hats.

And according to my deeply unscientific poll, the Seattle Mariners are the least popular club in America, as I didn’t see a single one of their hats. Sorry, M’s. Following close behind, with maybe one or two hats spotted during the fortnight, were the Colorado Rockies, the Oakland A’s, the San Diego Padres and the Houston Astros.

Clearly, the fact that lots of these teams are on the west coast might simply mean that their fans go to Disneyland in California, instead of travelling thousands of miles to Florida! And if the Houston Astros win the World Series, they probably won’t care that I have just suggested they’re among the least popular teams in the US. If they do win, they might even celebrate by buying some new shoes….