Baseball is uniquely American, but Irish fans of the sport will be watching the World Series, which kicks off tonight, writes Will Sullivan.
Thousands of people throughout the country will be tuning in this weekend to the largest event in the calendar of the US's national pastime, as baseball's World Series kicks off tonight in Boston.
The Boston Red Sox meet the St Louis Cardinals in what's being billed as a historic meeting between the two teams. St Louis last won the World Series in 1982 but Boston, a team with a record of painful collapses in championship play, hasn't won a world title since 1918.
A recent surge in subscriptions to the North American Sports Network (NASN) in Ireland, which broadcasts the games on the cable TV network NTL, indicates the significant Irish interest in this World Series. According to the network, Ireland comprises 5 per cent of the station's total audience in Ireland and Britain, but in just the last week, subscriptions to the channel have increased sharply. Customers are paying €15.95 to view the whole series.
"The response in Ireland for this particular league championship series has been massive," says an NASN spokeswoman. "We've been flooded with e-mails and calls about the games."
However, the popularity of baseball in Ireland is not only due to the American professional game. In 1989, the Irish Baseball and Softball Federation was founded to promote baseball in Ireland and participation has doubled in less than 10 years, with roughly 200 players at adult level and more than 500 at youth level. Teams are located as far north as Portstewart, Co Derry, and as far south as Tralee, Co Kerry.
"The game at youth level has increased exponentially," says federation spokesman and Irish national team player Tom Kelley. "The kids love the game."
The federation established the Irish national team in 1995. In August of this year, the Irish squad made history by claiming its first medal in international competition, coming third with a victory over Serbia-Montenegro during the B-pool European Championships in Regensburg, Germany.
The popularity of the game and the success of the team, however, have been a double-edged sword. During the early days of the league's development, teams received support from Major League Baseball, the official US professional organisation, in the form of coaching and player development. But as Irish players have increased in skill, that support has dropped off, leaving much of the organisational work, including the games promotion, in the hands of former players.
League director Sean Mitchell says Irish baseball has struggled for continued funding, finding it difficult to compete against the larger, more established sports in the Republic. The team has one regulation complex at Corkagh Park in Clondalkin. In 2001, Ireland played an exhibition game in Boston's Fenway Park, the site of tonight's opening game of the World Series.
Both the Boston Red Sox and the St Louis Cardinals are legendary teams with large, fiercely loyal fan bases. Boston has long suffered the stigma of losing dramatically in championship competition, but may have put that behind them with their recent, historic win over the New York Yankees in the American League Championship Series, a precursor to the World Series. The teams, which both enjoy wide support in Ireland, battled it out through seven games, with Boston coming back from three games down against New York to win the series, a feat no other team in the history of the game has accomplished.
The entire World Series is available to NASN subscribers on tape delay in Ireland, as Channel 5 in the UK has exclusive rights to broadcast the live telecasts. The official website of Major League Baseball, www.mlb.com, broadcasts the games live or archived to the computer over the Internet for $2.95 (€2.34) per game.
According to NASN, the only public establishment in Ireland to subscribe to the network is the Front Lounge in Dublin's Temple Bar, who will be showing the series on Sunday at noon. The general manager of the bar, Tony McCabe, explains it has sister bars in Boston, and so there is bound to be great interest in the series in Dublin.