Belfast Northstars
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The Belfast Northstars are the only Northern Ireland representatives in the Baseball Ireland adult league.
An amateur club, the Northstars play their home games at Henry Jones Field in Castlereagh, east Belfast.
The Emerald Diamond, a documentary film released in 2006, which chronicled the history of baseball in Ireland and the Irish National team features footage of a 2005 Northstars game against the Blue Devils from Dublin.
Franchise history
The early years
The Belfast Northstars were formed in September 1996 when 10 players split away from the former Belfast Blue Sox.
The Blue Sox had been affiliated with baseball in Britain, but traveling to games and hosting visiting teams became problematic.
Gerry Long, from Los Angeles, was installed as the club's first coach and along with a core of players set about establishing the Northstars as a team and baseball as a sport in Northern Ireland.
The new team quickly became affiliated to Baseball Ireland.
2004: A winning season and playoff contenders
The first few years in existence for the Northstars had been frustrating and the team was often viewed as being among the league's whipping boys. Wins had been few and far between but there was renewed optimism heading into the 2004 season, the largest ever in Baseball Ireland with ten teams.
After comfortably beating one of the league's new teams, the Dublin Trojans, the Northstars went on to defeat the Dublin Black Sox for the first time in their history. This victory and two narrow defeats against the reigning champion Dublin Hurricanes proved that the Northstars were now playoff contenders.
It would come down to the last game of the regular season in Dublin against the Black Sox, with both teams entering the game with 11-6 records, and with three of the four playoff places already decided.
In a closely fought game, the Dublin team was triumphant.
The 2005 League Trophy final
A shake-up in Baseball Ireland's league structure for the 2005 season saw the creation of two separate competitions.
Teams in the nine-team league played each other just once before the league split into two.
The top five teams competed for the League Championship while the remaining four battled for the newly created League Trophy. Teams played each other twice in the second half.
By winning three of their first four games in the second half, the Northstars faced the now defunct Dublin Panthers, who had won their first four games, in two games that would decide the trophy winners.
The Panthers, however, swept the short series at the O'Malley Fields at Corkagh Park in Clondalkin, West Dublin, the home of Irish Baseball.
Uniform colour and design
The Northstars colours are maroon and gold. In home games the team wears maroon shirts with the team name written in gold lettering. Player numbers - also in gold - appear only on the back of the shirt.
Belfast has the only team in the Baseball Ireland league with such a colour scheme.
When the team plays on the road it changes to grey shirts with `Belfast' written on the front in maroon lettering. These grey shirts were worn for the first time in the opening game of the 2007 season against Twins United in Dublin.
In their first few years of league play, the team wore red shirts with grey lettering but changed to the new colours of maroon and gold ahead of the 2003 season, when Stephen Van Houten was appointed player-coach.
Playing in a city in which colours such as blue and green have become affiliated with one religion or another, the club wanted neutral colours for its own uniform.
On one occasion during the 2006 season the Northstars changed from its traditional maroon and gold and instead played in black shirts.
Retired numbers
At the end of the 2004 season, the Northstars retired the number 12, which had been worn for eight seasons by their first full international player, Terry Rosbotham.
Rosbotham, the Northstars starting shortstop and one-time outfielder with the Ireland National team, had his career cut short due to a serious knee injury.
Prior to taking up baseball, Rosbotham played American football in Belfast.
An accomplished fielder and clutch hitter, his meteoric rise in baseball saw him selected in 2001 to represent Ireland at Fenway Park in Boston against the Slocum baseball club from Rhode Island.
His number was retired during an emotional post-season awards ceremony in Belfast in 2004.
Rosbotham continues to train with the Northstars and in 2007 became a player coach of the newly formed Belfast Brawlers softball team.
Players
2007 roster
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Pitchers (3)
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Catchers (1)
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Infielders (7)
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Outfielders (6)
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Notable past players
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International players
To date, Terry Rosbotham remains the only Northstar to have played in a full international for Ireland, playing outfield in 2001.
Two years later, both he and teammate John Want were named as members of the Irish Development Baseball Team.
In 2006, two young Northstar outfielders - David McCullagh and Conor Keenan - were both selected to represent Ireland ahead of the European B Pool Championships in Belguim, but neither made an appearance.
There has been Northstar representation on the President's 9, a select international team made up of non-Irish nationals playing in the Baseball Ireland adult league.
Pitchers Gordon Cuthbert and Conor Dawson are among those to have appeared for the President's 9.
Team MVPs
At the culmination of each season, Northstars players cast votes for their season MVP. Awards are also handed out for Team Player and Most Improved Player of the year.
2006
The star in the pitching rotation Gordon Cuthbert was named MVP by his team after a successful season on the mound and at the plate.
Cuthbert, a right handed pitcher, was one of the original Northstars that broke away from the Blue Sox in 1996.
2005
One year after being named Most Improved player, Northstars first baseman and pitcher Sean Shackley was presented with the MVP award.
2004
Player coach Stephen Van Houten was the overwhelming choice for team MVP in 2004. He led the Baseball Ireland adult league in stolen bases with 18 swipes in 18 games, had a batting average of .400, an OBP of .531, scored 25 runs and drove in 18.
2003
Joe Mladnich from Florida was named 2003 MVP after a successful all-round year. In a losing season, Mladnich was the only Northstars pitcher to finish the year with a winning record, ending with two wins and one loss and with an ERA of 5.48.
At the plate, Mladnich batted .286, had an OBP of .353, scored nine runs, drove in five and stole five bases.
2002
Catcher John Want was the choice for MVP after a terrific year with the bat. He ended the season with a .394 average, .512 OBP and had a slugging percentage of .576. He scored 11 runs and drove in 10 and hit four doubles and one triple. Behind the plate, Want had a fielding percentage of .897.
Honouring Irish McIlveen
On July 1, 2006, the Northstars team wore black shirts and Pittsburgh Pirates caps to mark the 100th anniversary of Irish McIlveen's major legue debut.
Highly acclaimed and praised as a phenomenon during baseball’s ‘deadball era’, McIlveen remains Belfast’s only link to the major leagues.
He made his debut, pitching for the Pirates on July, 4 1906.
The 2006 game against the Dublin Spartans was won fittingly by Spartans left-handed pitcher Chaime Cuevas.
In an interview with the Irish News after the game, John Dillon, Ireland international and Spartans club captain, said it was a privilege to be involved in the celebrations.
"While the baseball league in Ireland is still in its infancy, it is satisfying to know that so many Irish emigrants have gone before us and played in the major leagues in the US.
"Perhaps one day, we’ll be seeing another Irish player emigrating to the US to play in the majors."
In addition, Northstars infielder Simon Doyle wears uniform number 53, the number of major league games played by McIlveen in his short career.
The Belfast Wolves
A second Belfast team was added to Baseball Ireland ahead of the 2004 season. The Wolves took their name from the city's Harland and Wolff shipyard.
The team was the brainchild of then Northstars player-coach Stephen Van Houten and was an attempt to lay the groundwork towards the creation of a northern division of Baseball Ireland.
The Wolves team struggled for two years in the adult league, winning just a handful of games, before being relegated to the staus of Northstars' `farm' team for the 2006 season.
At the end of their third season, the Wolves were dissolved with the players joining the Northstars roster for the 2007 season.
The Northstars and Wolves had faced each other on five occasions in the 2004 and 2005 seasons, with the Northstars winning every time.
Northstars on television
On March 15, 2007, Ulster Television broadcast a short documentary entitled Fastball, which told the story of how baseball helped US-born players cope with homesickness.
The film featured footage of Northstars games, interviews with players and also delved into the city's baseballing past.
It showed how the mixture of ex-pat Americans and home-grown players met to practice and play each week for little more than the love of the game.
Fastball was made as part of the Home scheme, a factual television production training and development scheme run by the Northern Ireland Film and Television Commission and UTV.
The team has also been featured on BBC Northern Ireland's Irish language programme SRL.
References
- Northstars honour McIlveen
- The Irish News, July 4, 2006
- Belfast baseball looking for its `field of dreams'