Cantincrode Baseball and Softball Stars Withdraws From Belgian Division 1

With sixteen players leaving the club, according to the transaction overview, provided by the KBBSF, one knew something was going on with the former Mortsel Stars. No team can overcome an exodus like this.

After being made aware of this list, yours truly contacted the chairman of the club. All he wanted to say was that the club won’t have a team in the Division 1 for the 2024 season.
He didn’t want to comment on the reason for the exodus, which is understandable, as it is an internal affair.

But it is a sad state of affairs. The Canticrode Baseball Stars are the sixth club since 2020 that has decided to pull back from Division 1 baseball. After the 2020 season, the Royal Greys withdrew. After the 2021 season, Belgium’s oldest club, Antwerp Eagles, decided to withdraw from Division 1. After the 2022 season, the Brussels Kangaroos, the Sunville Tigers, and the Ghent Knights pulled back, and now the former Mortsel Stars.

The 2023 season was rather troublesome for the Cantincrode Baseball Stars. The former Mortsel Stars used to play on a piece of land that was owned by the Province of Antwerp. Apparently, the governance of the province thought it was more important to hand over the land to a commercial party that wanted to build a commercial children’s playground, leaving the club without a ballpark. And even though the club was forced to move, the Province of Antwerp demanded that the club would pay for the demolition of the ballpark.
The city of Mortsel provided a new piece of land where the club got a brand new ballpark. But it lacks opportunities, as it does not have a separate softball field. Besides that, the city of Mortsel opted for a cheap kind of turf, which didn’t grow as expected. As a result, no games and training sessions were held at the new facility. The players of the flagship baseball team had to play their home games at the facility of the Borgerhout Squirrels, at the Northern side of the Antwerp airport.

If any adult baseball team will remain, the question is in which Division it will play. It is sad to see that the five-time Belgian champion (1960, 1980, 1981, 1982, 2000) isn’t represented in the highest Belgian baseball league anymore.

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