Australian Baseball League Taking Off Down Under
Over the last two years, Beckman and Latimore have traded in their American winters for Australian summers, donning the blue, red, and yellow of the Australian Baseball League's Adelaide Bite. The reborn ABL, now in its second season after a league of the same name went belly-up in the early part of the 2000s, is resurgent with nearly 125,000 fans attending games in six Australian cities from November of 2011 through February of this year. ABL teams play a 45-game schedule mostly on weekends through Australia's summer months, and the sport, though an outlier on Australia's crowded sporting landscape, is growing in scope and national appeal. Backed by Major League Baseball, the first time a league abroad has ever boasted such a status, the new ABL is building rapidly strengthening ties to big league clubs. One of the organizations at the forefront of MLB's support for baseball Down Under is the Pirates.
Since the league's inception and inaugural season in 2010-11, the Bucs have sent a handful of prospects to Australia for their offseason ball. Adelaide has been the destination for most, due in part to the fact that Bite manager Tony Harris is Pittsburgh's International Full-Time Supervisor for Australia. The 50-year-old Adelaide native has piloted the Bite to a pair of ABL playoff appearances including a league runners-up finish in the inaugural year, and Pirates prospects have contributed to South Australia's strong run in the national competition.
Latimore held down the heart of the order for the Bite in their first campaign, batting .313 with five home runs and 25 RBI in 31 games. His average checked in at eighth-best in the league while his RBI total placed sixth. Beckman came out of the Adelaide bullpen in 2011-12 for 14 appearances during which he went 1-2 with a 3.20 ERA and six saves, third-most in the loop.
In addition to Beckman and Latimore, the Pirates have made their ABL impact with potential Curve players of the future like South Australia natives Jackson Lodge (a reliever who spent last year in the GCL) and corner infielder Stefan Welch (currently in Bradenton) as well as Northern Territory, Australia's Wilson Lee (also spent 2011 in the GCL) and Lucknow, India native Rinku Singh, (currently in West Virginia). Former Bucs farmhands Calvin Anderson, Adrian Burnside (who pitched in Altoona in 2001 and 2002), Paul Mildren, and Jarryd Sullivan have played in the league, as well. (Sullivan, a Sydney native, pitches for his hometown Blue Sox.) The Pirates were also slated to send South African shortstop Gift Ngoepe to play with Sullivan in Sydney this past season, though visa issues precluded him from playing in the league. He is now a teammate of Welch's with the Marauders.
The very existence of the ABL and its financial backing by Major League Baseball is a living testimony to the sport's commitment to further international growth. For the Pirates, being on the cutting edge of that movement has become an integral part of the organization's future. With minor leaguers in the Pittsburgh ranks from Australia, Belarus, India, South Africa, and more, the Bucs have shown their own dedication to a quest to find the best and brightest for the future of the club; a quest that has carried and will continue to carry the franchise, literally, to the ends of the earth.