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Recap: Australian Baseball in New Zealand

I've just come back from the first ever pro baseball game to be played in New Zealand, the home opener of the Auckland Tuatara, in their first season as an ABL expansion team.

After being here for 5 years, I like almost everything about living in NZ, with one of the main exceptions being the distance to proper baseball. I can follow the Mariners on Gameday whenever I'm not working, and I even manage to drag myself to the couch for the occasional East Coast day game (5AM start time for me). It's mostly live baseball that I miss, since I'm only back in North America once a year or two, and can't always time it so I can get to a game. Baseball here is small potatoes in a place where rugby is king and cricket is still a thing. While there is a national team (delightfully nicknamed the "Diamondblacks"), they've been bounced out of the WBC qualifiers the last two rounds (at least they could beat the Philippines), and haven't really had any players break through internationally. It made the national news last year when the first Kiwi-born baseballer suited up for a Major League game: Andy Skeels who stepped in as the temporary assistant hitting coach for the Giants.

All of this explains why I've been practically giddy with excitement ever since it was announced that the Australian Baseball League was expanding, and that New Zealand was going to get a team (based in Auckland, which is still a 2-hour flight away but better than nothing). Even better, they were named the Tuatara after the national icon and only surviving Rhyncocephalian, and for some reason their colour scheme feels comforting to a Mariners fan.

Tuatara

It has a third eye on top of its head, so don't try to steal on it

As the team shaped up it was predictably short on big names - the most recognisable were former D'back (not D'black) starter Josh Collmenter and recognisable name-adjacent Shawon Dunstan Jr. The roster was a mix of low minor leaguers, a few players from NPB and Taiwan, and NZ National Team players (they also held tryouts around the country, but I don't know if they turned up any rosterable players). The team debuted last weekend in Perth, and got swept in four games by the Heat (a couple of games were streamed on YouTube but I didn't manage to stay up until 2am to watch them). They weren't looking to be much good, but it's only so often the first professional game of your favourite sport happens in your adoptive country, so I shelled out for a flight and an overnight in Auckland so my wife and I could make it to the home opener. Things looked a little touch and go given that (1) they aren't able to move into their planned stadium until next year, so for now they're playing in a little park on the edge of town, and (2) said park wasn't actually ready yet, so the team's twitter account had been putting out desperate pleas for volunteers to come early to help out the grounds crew. The whole country has also been soaked with some spring downpours and surface flooding, so we weren't sure the game would even be played, but as it turned out we got a perfect early summer day, and the turnout was decent considering how fringe a sport baseball is here.

The Tuatara's chances didn't look great, given their performance the weekend before and the fact that they were up against the defending champ Brisbane Bandits. The Bandits are managed by former Brewer Dave Nilsson and seem to have a disproportionate number of his sons and nephews on the roster. They also have Dutch giant Loek van Mil and former future Mariners star Travis Blackley. I was a bit peeved that I could only stay for one game, and was missing out on the prestige pitching matchup in Game 2: Blackley against Kiwi pitcher Kyle Glogoski, who is actually a bit of a prospect in the Philles system. Instead we got young Diamondblack Jimmy Boyce for the Tuatara against a dumpus named Ryan Searle who got as high as the Cubs' AAA affiliate for the Bandits. I did get my former Mariner fix from the fact that we were sitting near third base, and the Tuatara third base coach is Darren Bragg (I wasn't sure if it would be appropriate to thank him for Jamie Moyer).

Boyce acquitted himself fairly well after getting knocked around in his previous start, starting things things off with a 1-2-3 inning and eventually getting through 5 1/3 with just an unearned run allowed on four hits. The Tuatara bats started strong: Eric Jenkins, probably their best player and an A-ball outfield prospect in the Rangers' system, led off with a sharp single up the middle and easily stole second. He was driven in on a single from perfectly named Kiwi-born third baseman Daniel Lamb-Hunt. They added one run in each of the second (capitalising on some sloppy defence), the third (catalysed by a loping triple by a lanky goofball named Max Brown) and the fourth (one run that should have been more but for some sort of runner's interference call that nobody understood).

Things settled down until the seventh when the Bandits scored twice off a Tuatara reliever, bringing the score to 4-3. That score held until the Tuatara brought in Yuki Harada to close things out in the top of the ninth. He started out wild but effective enough, getting a bunch of swinging strikes and two groundouts to bring the Bandits down to their last out. Unfortunately, he hung one to Bandits catcher Daniel de la Calle, who almost left the yard and ended up with a long double, then brought the pinch runner in on a couple of wild pitches. To the bottom of the ninth, where catcher Te Wera Bishop capped off a good night with a single. Bishop was pinch run for with a tiny dude who I think was called Ayrton Laird, who was bunted to second to bring up Eric Jenkins at the top of the lineup. Jenkins hadn't done much with the bat since the first (he made a couple of nice running catches, but nothing quite like this), and he wouldn't get a chance to here either as the Bandits opted for an automatic IBB. This brought up Lamb-Hunt, but he wasn't going to be the hero either. Instead, Laird took off for third, and the Bandits' replacement catcher threw the ball to the left fielder, allowing Laird to scamper home with the game winner.

It may not be the most iconic way to win a walk-off, but it still beats a walk-off balk, and it was such a fun and silly way to end things. I'm sure it feels good for them to have that first win under their belts, and they looked enough like a baseball team that it feels like they could build on it. This will be my first year paying any real attention to the ABL (or any non-MLB league), and I'm excited to have a team to root for during the M's offseason. To anyone who read this whole thing, thanks for indulging me - if nothing else, tracking things with a makeshift scorecard was a good way to start figuring out who's who among this assortment of players spending their winter/summer playing baseball somewhere that baseball is barely a thing.

Go Tuatara!