Baseball and the Irish
It’s opening day in baseball. Forty-seven Irish-born players have made to the major leagues.
The best hitter was Patsy Donovan from Cobh, County Cork who played in 1,824 games and hit .301 for his career while amassing 2.256 hits. In the Irish Baseball League, the annual award for best batter is named "The Patsy Donovan Batting Champion Award." The best pitcher was Tommy Bond from Gránard, County Longford who won 234 games with an ERA of 2.14 and 42 shutouts.
The most recent was former Mets pitcher P.J. Conlon was born on Falls Road in the West Belfast Gaeltacht. When his family moved to the USA his parents made sure he knew a bit of his native language. In 2018 Conlon angrily said to the umpire, "Póg mo thóin" during an argument. He was immediately ejected from the game because umpire Brian Gorman understood some Gaeilge as well.
It's believed that this is was the first time Gaeilge was spoken in a major league game since Jimmy Walsh (Séamus Ó Bhreathnach) of Tipperary regularly used it to cuss out umpires 90 years before. In the 1890s the champion Baltimore Orioles team used Gaeilge to secretly signal each other because other teams didn't understand. The Orioles had John McGraw, Scoops Carey, Kid Gleason, Joe Kelley, Steve Brodie, and a few others who spoke the language fluently.
The first baseball game in Ireland was played in 1874, when the Boston Red Stockings played the Philadelphia Athletics in Dublin. In 1942 and 1943, several games were played in Belfast among teams of US servicemen.
The first organized baseball team in Ireland was the Tramore Sea Lions. The Sea Lions were a youth team in Tramore, County Waterford. The team was organized and coached by local businessman Clive Butterworth. The success of the Tramore Sea Lions in the local community soon led to the creation of the Waterford Walruses, a team based in nearby Waterford City.
In 1962, Clive Butterworth brought two United States Air Force baseball teams to Waterford for an exhibition game. The game was played on Waterford GAA grounds. Butterworth also brought baseball to Dublin in the early 1960s, bringing the total number of Irish baseball teams to three. Within a few years, Butterworth’s declining health led to the end of organized baseball in Ireland for nearly three decades.
In 2019, the Irish American Baseball Society and Irish American Baseball Hall of Fame announced the creation of the Clive Butterworth Award. The award recognizes outstanding volunteer service among youth baseball coaches in Ireland.
The Irish National Baseball Team has been in existence since 1996 and has taken part in several major baseball tournaments and tours. Ireland played its first game in international competition in 1996 against the Czech Republic, losing by a score of 23-2. Ireland's national team has won at least one game in every tournament it has entered including 1996, in Kingston upon Hull.
The Irish National Baseball Team won its first bronze medal at the 2004 European Championships in Germany. In August 2006, the Irish National Baseball Team won the silver medal at the European Championships held in Antwerp, Belgium. They also competed in the European championships held in Vienna in Austria, Stockholm, Karlovac, Abranches, Antwerp, Barcelona and Ljubljana.
In 2018, the team won the gold medal at the European Baseball Championship tournament held at the International Baseball Centre in Ashbourne, County Meath. By winning, the team advanced to the next round of Olympic qualifying in 2019.
The Irish Baseball League was founded in 1997. Participating teams come from Dublin, Ashbourne, Belfast, Clones and Greystones. Baseball Ireland is the governing body of baseball on the island of Ireland, covering both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.