Newsletter Editor appointed

Megan Breid has been appointed to produce and distribute a regular newsletter for the Region

This is part of the strategy to keep all members and the media informed of events that occur on the Sunshine Coast.

Megan has asked that any person with a news item, event or interesting story concerning baseball should email it to her at newsletter@sunshinecoastbaseball.org.

Photos can be included but please remember to obtain the permission of the parents on the Release for Minors form from our web site if the photo includes an Under 18 player.

BQI CEO and DO to visit

Our Secretary, Wayne Michel, has been able to organise a meeting with officials of Baseball Queensland to come and speak with us on Thursday, August 10th

As I am sure a lot of you are aware, our membership numbers have been dwindling. We are all concerned about the future of our sport on the Sunshine Coast. If we are not successful at increasing participation at all levels and age groups, baseball could disappear from the coast. This will mean a lot of travel for children that want to play.

The meeting will discuss strategies to increase participation and membership in our sport.

We will keep you posted with details from the meeting

Region AGM

The Sunshine Coast Region Baseball Association AGM was held on Sunday, August 6th.

I am happy to announce that Jason Leigh was elected unopposed to the post of President, John Morris is our new Vice-President and Wayne Michel cocntinues in the role of Administrator.

All officers can be contacted via the website.

Our region has a lot or work to do to restore it to our past size and scope.

We look forward to working with the new  board members and families to grow our sport on the Sunshine Coast

What if baseball was Played on Mars?

Mars has been in the news a lot lately Here are a few things to consider when baseball is someday played on Mars…

• Dust storms are an occasional problem, but rain-outs are not.
• Good news: A year on Mars lasts 687 Earth days, so the baseball season will be longer.
• Bad news: The average temperature is minus 27 degrees Celcius. (A pitcher’s ballpark…could result in the batter’s hands being stung if they don’t wear a batting glove.)
• Gravity is only 0.375 that of Earth, so home runs will travel a lot farther.
• At its closest, Mars is about 35 million miles from Earth. At its farthest, it is 399 million miles from Earth. For any team on Mars that has to travel to Earth for the Interplanetary Series, it will take months and sometimes years to make the trip. Until a faster method of travel is developed, the 11-year-old tournament team may have to be chosen when they are 8 or 9 years old.
• Even though Mars is 4,220 miles in diameter (Earth is 7,926 miles in diameter), there’s plenty of land for baseball and softball fields. Since there is no liquid water on Mars, the total land area is about the same as Earth.
• Gravity on Mars is only one-third that of Earth. That means if you can reach a point seven feet high to snag a fly ball on Earth, you could jump 21 feet high on Mars.

Spalding Base Ball Guides, 1889-1939

Whether your favorite baseball team is at the top or the bottom of its division by this point in the season, sports fans (and cultural historians) alike will want to take a close look at this recent digital collection released from the American Memory project at the Library of Congress.

The 35 Spalding Base Ball Guides available here were the brainchild of A.G. Spalding, the iconic baseball player, manager, and promoter who founded the well-known sporting-goods manufacturing business and the American Sports Publishing Company.

While the Library of Congress holds over 1000 of these different sporting guides, those made available here deal with the sport of baseball and the little-known (at least today) game of indoor baseball.

The interesting sport of indoor baseball was invented in 1887 by a group of young men waiting around for the telegraphed results of the Harvard-Yale football game on Thanksgiving Day.

What is most interesting is that this game became what is known as softball, a sport that is probably played by more Americans than traditional baseball.

The guides here can be searched by keywords, or by browsing the table of contents, and include such sections as How to Become a Base Runner and Indoor Baseball in Canada

Other Links
	Link to Library of Congress page