[Izz]

What came before the AUNZBL?

War. Nearly 4 years of brutal, bloody war the likes of which humankind hadn’t seen before. When all was said and done, much of the world was laid to waste. Cities once glorious lay in shells, many uninhabitable due to nuclear, chemical and biological assaults. But that is history we all know well.

That Australia and New Zealand were left relatively unscathed by The War is also something we know well. And appreciate even more. Not completely untouched, of course. Hundreds of thousands, men and women, many barely older than children, died fighting on foreign soil, repelling or being repelled. Technology had made the instruments of war that much more impersonal, but war was still fought by people, their purpose to kill other people.

Fortunate, though, was the fact that Australia and New Zealand suffered very few civilian casualties and lost no cities within their borders. Fortunate for the people within these two countries, and certainly fortunate for the sport of baseball.

In baseball terms, before the war a small competition of 6 teams existed in Australia, backed by the Australian Baseball Federation (reformed after the War), Major League Baseball (an American baseball organization well known to sports historians but, sadly, now confined to the history banks), and the Australian Federal Government.

To cut through the bleak war years, suffice it to say that historical records are in conflict as to whether any organized baseball was played in Australia in 2015, but are unanimous that none was played during the rest of The War.

And, while records again conflict as to how exactly the AUNZBL came into existence, it is safe to say that the ABL, Baseball New Zealand (BNZ), the Australian Federal Government, plus a few influential businessman looking to lift the nations’ spirits as well as fill their own pockets, got together and formed the organization, promoting it as both an intense sporting competition and a memorial to what the world had lost in The War.

Australia, by default now one of the world’s financial superpowers, provided 7 of the 10 teams, and New Zealand (also suddenly a financial powerhouse) 3. 6 of the Australian teams were, in principle, the teams from the pre-War competition, 5 of them retaining the same names (Adelaide changing from Bite to Venom).

The competition was split into two divisions, the Australian Division and the NSWNZ (New South Wales-New Zealand) Division.

The Australian Division contained the following teams:

Adelaide Venom
Brisbane Bandits
Canberra Cavalry
Melbourne Aces
Perth Heat

The NSWNZ Division contained:

Auckland Metros
Christchurch Cowboys
Newcastle Roos
Sydney Blue Sox
Wellington Fury

2 other cities put forward team bids (Hobart and Central Coast) but, after consideration, were asked to wait two seasons, at which time the financial viability of the competition would be revisited.

While the architects of the league knew they would face tough competition from the well-established sporting codes (rugby league, Australian rules football, and soccer) they were confident they would hold market share. Baseball was, after all, a summer sport, and its main rival in those stakes, cricket, was in a state of freefall following the apparent death of the international game.

So, after a whirlwind of high-level meetings, rushed resource consents, late-night planning sessions, and the like, the inaugural season of the AUNZBL kicked off (to mix sporting metaphors) on the 1st of October 2019.