Euro League Baseball officially ceased to exist

After one year the Euro League Baseball did not return. It did not signal its end right away, but it was an omen what was about to come. Eventually, what many expected to happen after a year of silence, happened. The league ceased to exist. 

After its inaugural year, the Euro League Baseball did not return. The initiative was opposed from the start by the KNBSB and the CEB (now WBSC Europe). The CEB blamed the initiators they did not contact the European federation before they presented the plans of the alternate European competition. The legit excuse was that the CEB and local federations would have opposed it right away, sabotaging the league from the start. And of course, it is what happened.

In the ranks of the KNBSB (Dutch baseball and softball federation), there were a few board members who had a positive attitude towards the ELB. But several, led by Frits Mulder, opposed the initiative aggressively.
Mulder and his supporters mainly used the excuse that the ELB was illegal. Teams were not allowed to participate in outlaw leagues since the KNBSB was the sole representative of baseball in the Netherlands.

Dutch representatives in the upstart league would be L&D Amsterdam Pirates and Curacao Neptunus. But after a while, Neptunus decided to withdraw as it did not dare to take a big financial risk. The main reason, of course, was the lack of a big sponsor that would support the league financially. But L&D Amsterdam Pirates was still interested to participate. As expected the KNBSB refused to give permission to the Amsterdam based club to participate.

After a lot of talks, a solution seemed to be found. Except for the players that played for the Dutch national team, L&D Amsterdam would lend its players to Amsterdam Baseball, a team run by the ELB. Also, Keiji Uezono, the newly acquired pitcher of De Glaskoning Twins, would pitch fort he team.

But behind the scenes, Jan Esselman, chairman of the CEB has been pushing Frits Mulder, to prevent Amsterdam Baseball to participate. Esselman allegedly even changed CEB rules single-handedly just to make sure, L&D Amsterdam Pirates backed out. At one point, a rule was introduced that prevented players to participate in a foreign team. Players who ignored this rule, would not be eligible to participate in the European Champions Cup. All of a sudden, the KNBSB reversed the permission it previously gave to Amsterdam Baseball. L&D Amsterdam did not want to take the risk of losing its players to a ban in the ECC and decided to step back.
As a result, only three teams remained in the ELB: Regensburg Legionäre, Munich-Haar Disciples, and Draci Brno. Without the participation of Amsterdam Baseball, things were not as interesting anymore.

Eventually, the ELB season was played with three teams. In the next year, Regensburg Legionäre stepped back because the club organized the European Champions Cup. Because of that, the club said not to have the resources to participate in the ELB as well.

According to one of the founders of the ELB, it became clear that most (candidate) members of the ELB, rather leaned back and preferred to wait for the big bag of money, provided by a main sponsor.
Since that sponsor never came, the league was destined to cease activities. A few days ago, this was confirmed by one of the founders. The website of the ELB is for sale.

Perhaps, without all the opposition by Jan Esselman of the CEB and Frits Mulder of the KNBSB, the league still would have been alive. But the refusal of teams to take some initiative by themselves did not help the league either.

Fact is that those who opposed the ELB and did everything to make this initiative, that could have helped baseball in Europe grow, fail, are now voted out of their positions in the CEB and the KNBSB.

What comes around goes around?