Americas favorite pastime has seemingly seen an expediential growth in Europe over the past decade, with the Great British national team seeing record breaking success and the MLB’s new expansion of ‘The London Series’ the sport seems to only be getting more popular in the United Kingdom.
Team GB and former Cincinnati Reds draft pick Alex Webb has been in the Team GB set up for a decade now and has been a part of the team’s historic climb from perennial ninth place finishes in the European Championships to qualifying and winning their first ever game in the World Baseball Classic (essentially the Baseball World Cup.)
Tea time! 🫖
— World Baseball Classic (@WBCBaseball) March 13, 2023
Team Great Britain secures its first #WorldBaseballClassic win ever. pic.twitter.com/cZK031Kbme
Webb spoke about how excited he was for the future of Baseball in the UK;
“it’s definitely on the up and up, you know, baseball in England obviously has a lot of competition with football and cricket and rugby and all the sports that are already established.
Now, are we ever going to compete with football and cricket and rugby and all that realistically? No, but I think, there’s still a huge chance to develop professional players.”
Webb joined the national team set up almost a decade ago when during player introductions in college an assistant coach ‘keyed on’ to the fact that he was born in England and showed him the possibilities of playing Baseball on the international level, He spoke about the importance of exposure.
“I think really the goal should just be to stay in that tournament (WBC), right? Keep making sure that GB is on TV and on the world stage and that people realize like, Oh, Hey, there’s baseball over there.
because I think like exposure goes a long way. And so just knowing that, it exists, I didn’t know it exists until some guy told me.
I didn’t know that I could play for Britain until I was 20. So, I think just like making sure that we stay in that tournament and, have a spot on TV and have a spot against, the big teams such as the U S and Japan and all these big countries, I think that’s huge.”
Webb is convinced that the sky is the limit for GB as a base balling nation,
“We’re going to see kids through British grass roots development, go get a chance to play college baseball.
There’s already a few that have done that. So, I think you’re going to see more kids come up to the program, get a chance to go to the U.S. and play college ball.
Eventually we’re going to see a homegrown British kid get drafted or signed. And I think, like other European countries, all it takes is a couple of guys to really start to fuel the fire and start getting guys into the pro ranks. And so, in the near future, that’s what I really hope to see is like, you know, some homegrown GB kids make their way into a professional organization.”
