If you ask my mom, our first experience as a family with youth baseball was when, as a 7-year-old, I came home from my elementary school in Youngstown, Ohio with a leaflet and a picture of a baseball player on it. She said I just pointed at the picture and said I was adamant that I wanted to do it. Before we knew it, my dad was coaching, and eventually my siblings and I were all immersed in a world of baseball.

What was it that I loved about it?

The camaraderie is one thing that stands out in my head more than anything else. The vibe on the bench when our team was batting, wearing our rally caps and chanting for our teammate who was stepping up to bat. “Rally, rally, everybody gets a hit…Rally, rally, everybody gets a hit.” I feel like I’m there now just writing those words.

Baseball here in Ireland is very different than playing league baseball in the US back when I was growing up, but in many ways it is the same.

Unlike many other sports, particularly soccer, GAA, hurling, and rugby, the game is divided up into innings, during which a team plays defense on the field, but then sits together on the bench, or in the dugout when batting on offense.

This is key. Whereas in most other Irish sports, the majority of the team is spread out on the field throughout the course of the game, a baseball team spends half of it in a tightly-packed group on the bench, together rooting on their teammate who is standing tall at the plate and trying to play the hero.

As a kid growing up, and now observing this as a coach with the Celbridge Bobcats, I can say this is probably one of the things that kids love the most about it.

For the majority of parents in Ireland, baseball is completely foreign and most commonly associated with Rounders. There are indeed many similarities between the two sports, particularly in the Under 9-year-old age group, with coaches pitching underhand to players instead of other players trying to strike each other out like they do in Little League once they are 9 years old.

If you are a parent of a 6-12 year old who you think might be interested in playing baseball with the Bobcats, April or May is a perfect time to join, with the season not even underway and other players joining with limited or no experience, and the season stretching until mid-September. We train every Friday evening from 6:00-7:30, with games typically played on Sundays at 2pm starting from May 12th 2024.

‘Rally caps’ are not mandatory, but they are likely…

Contact us at celbridgebaseball@gmail.com for further information.