Touching base

Watching baseball at Rooty Hill’s former Olympics site is like stepping into a scene from one of those cheesy “high school jock makes it good” movies. In fact, the newly-renamed Blue Sox Stadium, in Sydney’s west, more closely resembles an open-air amphitheatre than an actual stadium. There’s enough seating for about 2000 spectators, and just enough pizza, nachos, hot chips and beer on sale to last everyone about three hours. But the playing surface is in mint condition; the diamond is pristine, its orange dirt infield equal in crispness to any of those found at the big ballparks across America, the sport’s spiritual home.

We’re here to watch Team Australia play an exhibition series against the Australian Baseball League’s Sydney Blue Sox. Team Australia is using these three games as a warm-up for this month’s prestigious World Baseball Classic.

Through the dugout struts Jon Deeble, national coach and long-time scout for the famed Boston Red Sox. Baseball is knitted into this man’s DNA. Despite being in America for many decades, there’s no twang to his thick, Aussie accent. He’s dressed in the same spotless green, gold and glowing-white-panted uniform his players are wearing. It sits on him perfectly, like he was born for it ... He looks like he could still play at the drop of a cap if needed.

His squad for this series features a heap of kids – 18, 19, 20-year-olds, most of them recent graduates from the Major League Baseball Australian Academy on the Gold Coast. An hour before the first pitch, Deeble yelps and whistles his young brigade to his knee. Half the squad takes a concrete step, the other a bum-width of bench bolted into the dugout wall. He clearly outlines what he wants from his group ‒ which also includes one-time Major Leaguers Justin Huber and Luke Hughes.

“We’re about being perfect defensively,” he orders. “In a baseball game, you have to get 27 outs. We want to have 27 opportunities, and get 27 outs. We control our destiny. If a guy comes up and hits a homer, we can’t control that, but when there’s an opportunity to get an out ... It’s about executing; executing your skills and doing it the right way. If we’re perfect defensively, we’ll be a chance to win. If we’re not, if we make four, five, six fielding errors, we can’t win the game. It’s an area we have to really concentrate on.”

If this sounds too simple a game plan, Deeble makes no apologies. Regular day-in, day-out baseball is full of second, third and fourth chances. Hell, an MLB regular season lasts 162 games, enough outings for a man to hang himself and bring himself back to life three times over before the playoffs even appear in the far-distance. No such luxuries exist in the World Baseball Classic’s cruel tournament structure. There are four pools of four teams. Australia has been placed in the Taiwan-based Pool B alongside South Korea, The Netherlands and Chinese Taipei for the March 2-19 event. Japan, winner of the two other Classics in 2006 and 2009, has been grouped with China, Brazil and Cuba. The top two teams from each pool advance to the second round, to be held at the Tokyo Dome in Japan and Marlins Park in Florida. There is no room for error.

The final will be held at the home of Major League Baseball’s San Francisco Giants, AT&T Park. Deeble is desperate for his team’s name to be up in lights on the big screen when that comes around. “Back when I played, there was an emphasis on winning, but now, we go out and expect to win every time we play,” he tells Inside Sport. “This killer instinct was evident in 2004 when we finished second to Cuba at the Athens Olympics. On top of that, at the last two World Championships we’ve had our best-ever results. Our aim now, every time we go out, is to win – not ‘We can’t beat these guys’.

“It’s a bloody tough tournament, the WBC. At the World Championships, we’re fifth in the world. Now we get to this, with all the professional guys playing for every team. Even the Americans will be fielding a very strong line-up of Major League players [including New York Yankees first baseman Mark Texeira, NY Mets knuckle-baller RA Dickey and the Milwaukee Brewers’ Ryan Braun, the National League’s 2011 MVP]. But we have a good chance of going to the second round, maybe even the final, which would be amazing.”

So just who is this new wave of young Australian ballplayers? Deeble says baseball attracts every conceivable physical and personality type, and it’s up to the coaching and development staff, including veteran team psychologist Phil Jauncey, to squeeze every last ounce of potential from each player. “We have cheat sheets, written up by Jauncey, containing personality profiles of all our players, which he’s taught me to use. For example, this young kid who has just walked over, Darryl George, I know how I have to talk to him to get the best out of him. I know this kid’s profile inside-out, from when he was 16 years old at the Academy. So we know how to coach them, what makes them tick, what doesn’t make them tick ...

“We had a kid at the Athens Olympics who was a real, what psychologists call ‘thinker feeler’ on the pitching staff who had to be patted on the arse instead of being yelled at. He pitched great for us because we knew what worked for him. I’ve spent ages with Jauncey on that sort of stuff.”

Playing for Team Australia in America’s Greatest Pastime doesn’t mean you have to be a pretend Yank. Each player carries on to the field a unique Australian story which, when collected with others, combines to make this outfit about as American as a meat pie.

Every time infielder Luke Hughes approaches the plate in the ABL, the crowd shuts up; better to appreciate this bloke they’ve seen on TV playing for the Minnesota Twins and the Oakland A’s. The Perth Heat star and WA native’s roots are as Aussie as they come, and make the listener forget he’s talking about his introduction to an American game. “Since I was three or four years old, I’d followed my parents’ best friends’ son around,” he tells Inside Sport half an hour before game two of the Blue Sox series (he’s accommodating like that – likes to help promote the Aussie game where possible). “He was three years older than me. He played footy down at Bassendean Football Club, so I played footy down there. He played tee-ball down at Morley Eagles T-Ball club, so I played tee-ball there. When we were a bit older, the natural progression led us into baseball. I’d played tee-ball since I was six, and then moved to baseball when I was 11 or 12. I’ve sat down with him and talked to him about how I used to follow him around. It’s funny.”

Hughes may have stood on first base at places like Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park, but he values the Australian-ness of gatherings like this. Big contracts are one thing, but this local flavour of the game is priceless to blokes like Hughsey.

“Baseball in this country is such a small community, so everybody knows each other. Most of us have grown up playing against each other. Everyone fits right back in. I’ve got great mates in NSW, in Melbourne, Adelaide, and when we all get back together it’s like nothing’s changed; we just pick up from where we left off the last time we got together. I think that comes from just being Australian. It’s just the Australian way. Once you put on the jersey, everyone is playing for the country; you’re not playing for individual statistics. That’s something that gets carried away with in the States.”

Life in this dugout is as relaxed as it could possibly be. There are no bullpen phones smashed into sockets or other histrionics, as highlight reels from the US are renowned for. “It’s normally pretty casual around here,” Hughes confirms. “We make sure we go out there and get our work done, so that when we come in we can chill out. We talk about different things – the footy, the cricket, life, girlfriends, wives, stuff like that. We talk a bit of smack back and forward to each other ... ”

Justin Huber has an Australian story which sounds as if it could’ve been delivered by a Ricky Ponting or an Adam Gilchrist, not a baseballer. Huber signed with the New York Mets in 2000, but had to wait until 2005 to make his Major League debut for Kansas City. He went on to play 45 games for the Royals over five seasons. This is his sixth Australian selection.

Huber’s Dad migrated from Switzerland to Australia (where he met Justin’s Mum, originally from Wollongong). After a while, the family set up digs in Melbourne. Walking through a shopping mall one day, the Hubers, collectively boasting zero baseball exposure between them, happened upon a stall being manned by the Upwey Ferntree Gully Tigers Tee-Ball Club, who were handing out info pamphlets. “Lo and behold,” Huber recalls, “we picked a brochure up and Mum and Dad thought it would be a great idea for me to give it a go. I was six years old at the time, so I joined the tee-ball program and just fell in love with the sport.

“I grew up on the suburban fringe, probably more country than suburbia, and very cricket and footy-centric. Out of a class of 30, probably 15 of the boys played on the local footy team, and played cricket in the summer. You might’ve had one kid playing basketball, one kid playing soccer and that was about it. To say you were a baseball player, you were looked at like you were a freak, a leper: ‘What are you doing playing that? That’s an American sport.’ Nobody knew about it, nobody knew the rules. I didn’t have anybody to play it with at school.”

When overseas, Huber draws on the growing network of Aussie players which peppers America’s major and minor leagues for his Aussie fix of the game he still loves as a 30-year-old. “Especially when you’re in America, you’re usually the only Australian on the team,” says the Melbourne Aces utility. “You might be in a league where there are a couple of other Aussies playing on other teams.

It’s always good to go into that town and catch up for a bite to eat afterwards. You say ‘hi’ to each other on the field and there’s that sort of ‘Hey, you know where I’ve come from’ mentality. That’s great.”

In fact, make the Australian baseball team and you’ll see a lot more of the world than our baggy-greeners do. “The national side is always going somewhere peculiar ‒ that’s the thing about baseball, you’re not travelling to the traditional places,” Huber says. “Last year we were in Panama, playing in the World Championships down there. None of our players had ever been there before. The towns we were playing in weren’t exactly on the tourist trail. That always adds excitement. Some of the dugouts you play in are just dirt and ... it’s nothing like here: chickens running around; everything you’d see in a corny movie. I spent time playing in the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Mexico. The Australian team goes to Taiwan pretty regularly, Japan, Korea, as well as North America, obviously. The opportunities to travel are vast. It’s something that baseball has which a lot of other sports don’t – that opportunity to go abroad.”

Watching all this world-class Aussie talent on show creates warm and fuzzy feelings for Phil Dale. Still a towering man, the deep-voiced 50-year-old is considered a legend of Australian baseball, becoming the first Australian to win a baseball scholarship in the United States back in the 1980s. As national pitching coach, Dale has been mentoring Australia’s finest throwing talent for years. His role this weekend is very much in a development capacity as he monitors the progress of our next gen of hurlers. Our current crop, the men who will throw for us in the World Baseball Classic, couldn’t make it to Blacktown, but only for the best possible reason: these months are the traditional rest time for the stars of the MLB. Aussies currently pitching in MLB club systems are Oakland A’s reliever Grant Balfour; his MLB team-mate Travis Blackley; Liam Hendricks of the Minnesota Twins; former Atlanta Braves, now LA Dodger minor-leaguer Peter Moylan; New York Yankee flamethrower Josh Spence; and former Seattle Mariners, Houston Astros and now Chicago Cubs’ minor-leaguer Ryan Rowland-Smith.

“In Australia we’re phenomenal at pitching,” reports Dale, another relaxed soul around the dugout. “It’s to do with body size, quick-twitch ... I guess similar to fast bowlers in cricket. We’re a ball sports country, we tend to gravitate towards that. We like to throw the ball. It’s a mixture of talent, athleticism ... Genetics has a lot to do with it, I guess ... The nature of our country and the nature of our sporting background.”

Dale’s directive to today’s fill-in pitchers also centres around getting it right the first time. “You just can’t be lazy with a certain kind of pitch,” he explains. “Every pitch has to have intent.

“Out of these games, there’s always exciting developments. We had a pitcher here yesterday, young Richard Olson. He’s been to college, he throws it up to 90 miles an hour, a little short guy. He showed some presence – that will be handy for us down the track.

We have two pitchers today that I’m very interested in. One has just dropped from overhand to side-arm – I want to see him. I also want to see Tim Kennelly, whose only just learning to pitch. That’s why we’re here. To see how they can help us in future tournaments.”

The side-armer, Dushan Ruzic, moves around the dugout like a happy giraffe, keeping the mood light. “When I first made the Australian Team, I was throwing three-quarter over the top, but every year since I’ve been throwing side-arm,” he tells us. “It’s something they really like about me, being two metres tall and having that side-arm delivery, running the ball up, high 80s-90 miles an hour.

It’s definitely unique and something there isn’t too much of in baseball in general. I guess it’s something they like and why I’m here.”

In fact, it’s why all these blokes are here, playing in this series (won 2-1 by Team Australia): they’re world-class players at this “foreign” game. We like Peter Moylan’s description of this whole Aussie baseball sojourn of theirs, which he uses on his Twitter profile description: “Just an Aussie bloke living the American dream.”

- Inside Sport, March 2013