Kick off for new European Professional Baseball League

Today the new European Association of Professional Baseball was founded in Amsterdam. This new EAPB will be the governing body of the new Euro League Baseball, a professional baseball league in Europe. The goal is to start this league in 2016.

The inaugural meeting was attended by Co Haspels, Peter van ‘t Klooster (both Vaessen Pioniers), Jerry van den Oever (Curacao Neptunus), Keino Perez, Owen Ozanich (both Rouen Huskies, France) and Mauro Mazzotti of San Marino, who joined the founders Wim van den Hurk (Initiator and President and father of Dutch pitchr Rick van den Hurk), Jan van der Sande (Press Officer) and Jan Maarten Kops (Initiator).

The EAPB aims to have two clubs from every participating country. France will be represented by Rouen Huskies, Templiers de Senart. Germany by Buchbinder Legionaere (from Regensburg) and (probably) Heidenheim Heidekoepfe. Italy will be represented by San Marino and (probably) Fortitudo Bologna, Spain by CB Barcelona and CBS Sant Boi and the Netherlands by Vaessen Pioniers and Curacao Neptunus.

This professional league will run next to the national competitions, so no club will leave their own competition. How things will be arranged regarding logistics, money, format, rosters and structure is still under discussion.

Fact is that the Global Baseball Match in March between the European All-Star team and Samurai Japan, showed that baseball in Europe has quite some potential. Maybe it is too soon to tell that there is a need for a pro league like this, but European baseball surely will benefit from it. What is better than a European championship in which more countries than the Netherlands and Italy can contend?

I hope that the founders of this league will look to the mistakes that the IBL (the Italian Pro League) has made. That league was started but in fact many teams weren’t ready for it.