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Baseball-Ireland pitches for the big time
(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-07-26 12:49

The Irish National Baseball Facility -- nicknamed the "Field of Dreams" after the Kevin Costner baseball movie -- is not what you might expect of a national home ground.

Part of a public park, it has no bleachers or box seats -- just grass banks for spectators to sit on -- no hot dogs and no fuzzy mascots. Players rake and mow the field themselves because there are no ground staff.

Nevertheless, getting a home gave the national side a boost and they had high hopes for the 2000 Championships in Croatia.

Things did not start well. Their luggage got lost in transit so the side turned up for the opening proceedings in hastily bought shorts and flip-flops while their opponents were lined up in crisp national uniforms.

It got worse. After heavy defeats against Denmark, Finland and Croatia, and with a final match against highly favoured Hungary, the Irish faced the possibility of going home without a single win.

So, captain John Dillon says, they went out, had a few beers and came out the next day "relaxed". The Irish won 10-9 and followed that shock success with a bronze medal in 2004.

Now they are hoping for gold in next month's European B-Pool contest in Belgium, which would catapult them into the premier league with France and Spain.

"We definitely have the strongest team this year that we've ever had," Mitchell told Reuters ahead of the August 1-5 event in Antwerp.

EMERALD DIAMOND

Given the vast numbers of Americans who claim Irish ancestry, the team could easily pack the side with American-based players whose closest links to the Emerald Isle were an Irish-born grandparent.

They work hard, however, to keep a high number of local players. Dillon estimates about a third of the team are non-Irish based.

Filmmaker John Fitzgerald had hoped to be one of those select few when he stumbled across Baseball Ireland's Web site. He trained for three months before the embassy told him that though his grandmother had Irish citizenship he was not eligible.

Instead Fitzgerald, who had worked as a production assistant but never made a full-length movie or documentary, decided to turn the story of Irish baseball into a film.