The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

BASEBALL in The Bahamas is not a step-child, but rather a neglected and abused orphan.

From its birth in the early fifties, the few teams were senior league, and played out their schedule on Fort Charlotte, which was terribly inadequate, however they got along.

Then between 1965 and 1966 the UBP government adopted baseball, and opened a baseball Stadium at the Sports Centre, with light towers made of Stainless Steel built to last a hundred years with advanced lighting fixtures.

This allowed baseball to expand and grow stronger by playing five nights per week instead of just Saturdays and Sundays at Clifford park.

• Baseball grew and replaced cricket as the national sport, and there was a steady development of the players. This was duly noted by the Major League Scouts who came in numbers and signed an untold number of players to baseball contracts. As a matter of fact we even had a “bonus baby” in Colin Thompson (brother of Mychal Thompson).

The popularity of the sport grew to the extent that at one time we had twenty-six professional players at one time, and sent Andre Rodgers, Wenty Ford, Ed Armbrister, Tony Curry and Wilfred Culmer to the Major league ranks, and we had one Vince Ferguson who was voted the best player in triple A two years in a row.

• While enjoying this surge, baseball had a full complement of Little, Pony, Junior and, Senior league Teams. Still only one venue (Andre Rodgers Stadium) with no particular practice venue.

• Some folks at Deltec Bank saw the need for Little and Pony league venues and donated five hundred thousand dollars to erect three playing facilities at the QESC. These were turned over to the Ministry of Sports to be used for the junior programmes (which never materialised).\

• I will not mention the debacle of greed that stopped the entire development of baseball for a generation. What I would say is that the first Minister of Sports to take an interest in baseball was Algernon Allen who gave me instructions to revive the sport sometime in 1993. (Peter Bethel I played and that was all).

• To revive a body, one had to study  the demise, which was fairly easy, for because I was involved for over two decades. Our basic problem was management and managers, for if we had capable managers how would a person not elected become president for life.

Therefore the task was to start afresh with the goal of developing  players and executives. So we started a league, then a federation (without the BBA and BOA) involvement. Then we spread our wings and played in Inagua, Bimini, and Grand Bahama.

The first time in history that I knew of, we were given a grant of $5,000, with a promise of reimbursement for expenses incurred in staging an all-Bahamas Championship tournament.

We had a successful Tournament featuring all four islands. (Only thing missing was the money I spent on the tournament).

After finding capable persons to carry on the fight to bring baseball back, I stepped back to allow the new blood to take over. Which they did, and are doing.

THE ABUSE

The only venue, Andre Rodgers Stadium was torn down.

The diamonds erected out front were turned into parking lots (I was totally embarrassed recently when one of the donors visited to view the fields).

And there is definitely no way that I will ever see (my) thousands that flew away with that tour of the islands.

I know for sure that we have many aspiring players, because the Championships in Freeport every year gets bigger and bigger (over 500), so I long for the day when baseball  returns to prominence with teams capable of taking on all of the countries in our region like we used to do in Wichita, Kansas, with the likes of the Cowboy, the Greyhound, Chicken, Butts, Closeline, Pegs, Stomper, Captain Blood, well, you get the picture.

Perhaps, I may live long enough to see another  fan-friendly stadium, and practice facilities on all four islands.

Beautiful Dreamer.

JEFFREY WILLIAMS

Nassau,

October 1, 2016.