LONDON (KeynoteUSA) — This could be the year, friend. The London Mets are the defending champions, but they look beatable.
The London Capitals have been close and have ace pitcher Masa Hashiguchi.
Talk about a subway series.
These two National League Baseball teams will meet for the first time this season later this month.
And maybe they would meet at the pub later.
Baseball at the highest club level in Britain is competitive, but it is a league in which babysitters are as important as balls and strikes. The teams are a mix of locals and expats, some with college and minor league experience. Only one man throws 90 mph. Almost everyone works or goes to school.
Sometimes just getting to practice during the week is a chore.
“A Zoom call: I could have my baseball pants on and still have a dress shirt on, getting ready to run out the door as soon as I can,” Capitals manager Cole Ryan said.
The destination is Finsbury Park, home of the Mets and Capitals. They are part of the same club, led by the Mets. The London Mets baseball and softball club is the largest in the United Kingdom and the Mets have won the NBL title for seven consecutive years.
The Capitals dominated a lower division, so they moved up and have been giving the Mets a good run. Still, good enough to make it to the Finals, where they’ve lost to the Mets the last five years.
“In a sense, it’s more of a big brother, little brother situation,” Mets coach Derrick Cook explained at a recent game in Enfield, just north of London. “It’s like, ‘Hey, big brother is good at everything and little brother is always trying to beat big brother.'”
It’s like the Mets are the New York Yankees and the Capitals are, well, the Mets.
The New York version of the Mets will be in town this weekend for a two-game series against the Philadelphia Phillies.
Football is the dominant sport here, and attention is currently focused on England’s chances at the upcoming European Championship. There are also eyes on the T20 Cricket World Cup.
In fact, the Finsbury Park baseball field had been used for cricket until it was abandoned because it flooded too easily. Players unroll and install outfield fencing (a piece of flimsy plastic held together by stakes) before each game, and the leftover cricket pavilion has been made useful as a baseball clubhouse with moss on the roof and Mets trophies inside.
The club rents the facilities from the city. It’s a short walk from Manor House tube station to the gap in the wooden fence separating the field from a busy road. They still use the equipment the Yankees donated in 2019 during MLB’s debut in Europe; Baseball teams are scarce in the UK, so the Mets keep their game day reserves under lock and key.
Cook, a Chicago native and IT network engineer, played college baseball and (this comes up often) did a Google search when he moved to London in 2009 and found the Mets.
The Mets attract some of the best players. Many are between 20 and 30 years old. A handful of young men have come through the system and played some college baseball in the United States. London native Freddy Mosier has pitched for the Mets, the British national team and Middlebury College in Vermont. Rose Bhanji is also on the Mets roster and several other women play on the club’s lower-level men’s teams as well as a women’s team, and several also play for the Great Britain women’s national team.
The league is amateur, but the Mets have in the past used “imported” players, not exactly paid to play, but rather to work as a coach, help with field maintenance and promote the game in schools.
This year there is no import because visa prices have increased, but any new player is still free to join a team.
Geremías Valencia, who had been in the Los Angeles Dodgers system, was so new to the Mets last month that after hitting a home run in his first game, a teammate was overheard asking “what’s his name?” while the Panamanian outfielder rounded the bases.
Hashiguchi, the Capitals ace, said he sees different Mets lineups all the time for their 7-inning affairs.
“They say things like ‘oh, he’s from Germany but only temporarily,’ or ‘he’s from an American university but only temporarily.’ There are a lot of good players there, but always changing,” said the 33-year-old Japanese right-hander.
Hashiguchi moved to London a few years ago with his wife, who is British.
“I want to beat the champion to be a champion,” said Hashiguchi, a physical therapist who now trains alone because he has two young children. “So I joined the Capitals because it’s more challenging for my baseball career.”
Hashiguchi took the loss against the Mets in the 2021 single-game finale when Rich Minford hit a home run into the New River, an artificial canal built in 1613 to bring fresh water to Londoners, beyond center field.
A year later, Hashiguchi threw 148 pitches in a semifinal victory. The bad news for the Capitals? The final was the next day. Then, last season, the final became a three-game series. Hashiguchi won Game 1, but the Mets made the doubleheader a day later.
Hashiguchi, who also played in Australia, throws breaking balls for strikes and has an 86 mph fastball. On Sunday at Finsbury Park, he made quick work of Bristol-based Vetra BC’s lineup, a mix of Lithuanian and Latin American expats. Wives, girlfriends, babies and dogs attended, and a foul ball landed in the nearby football game.
The Capitals are not the only threat to the crown. The Essex Arrows currently sit in first place in the six-team NBL, and the Sheffield Bruins swept the Mets in a recent doubleheader.
“As the level of the NBL increases, our players are more prepared to take on the best teams in Europe,” said Joe O’Connell, commissioner of adult teams for the Mets.
The Mets will compete this week in the third-tier European Federation Cup in Zurich, Switzerland.
Cook, the Mets coach, says rivalries aside, it’s a close-knit league where players travel long distances and line fields for the joy of the game.
“The dedication throughout the league is there. The boys play because they really like to play, they love this game.”
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Keynote USA
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