ON THE CURRENT STATE OF RUSSIAN BASEBALL

1. Is baseball really popular in Russia?

2. Excerpt from a letter to an MLB insider

Sergei Borisov, independent Russian League statistician
E-mail: s_borisov@yahoo.com

Here's an e-mail I received this winter from
someone named Grant Robertson:

>> Hello,
>> 
>> I am from Canada. I did not know baseball was
>> popular in Russia. How long has baseball been played
>> in Russia?

Grant,

In the USSR, baseball was cultivated briefly in the
early 1930s, but was nonexistent until 1986, when it
was included as an official Olympic sport.

Despite the fact that Russia has had some success in
European competition and even participated in World
Cup, the game is hardly popular if known and
understood here at all.

We still have about 100 (yes, only hundred) semi-pro
players of both junior and adult age, mostly in Moscow
and nearby Balashikha.

And we only have one regularly sized ballpark - MGU
Stadium in Moscow, donated by a Japanese university.
The one in Balashikha, you can call it a mirrored
version of Fenway Park, is a converted soccer field at
an army base with shallow right field, so shallow that
it's a ground rule double almost all the way until the
second base.

Both grounds were build in the 80s.

Currently, most of our players do begin playing the
game at an early age (less than 10), but the growing
number of tee-ballers and little-leaguers hardly
translate into anything, mostly because that the
Soviet sports system of olympic reserve schools that
still remains.

Filtering out 12-old kids with no perspective might be
good for gymnastics, and even for hockey, but surely
it doesn't work in baseball. 
What's left is guys who have learned to hit opposite
way in early teens, but have little to no baseball
tools.

Hope this helps,

Sergei

P.S. BTW, I'm an avid Toronto Blue Jays follower.

And in case you want to know what I'm doing, I'd
recommend checking out the following thread at the
BattersBox site (look for poster Sergei):

http://www.battersbox.ca/archives/00001651.shtml

The piece below is an excerpt from another
message that I sent to one of MLB insiders.

===========================================

[...]

I perfectly understand the nonaltruistic nature of pro
baseball business, and not going to ask for any
material funds for myself and/or Russian baseball.

While the concept of Russia joining the multicultural
baseball world is indeed fascinating, the harsh
reality is not.

Anyway, the MLB interests in Russia, if only as a
secondary market for baseball apparel, require, IMO,
their direct participation in the development of our
game.

Maybe it's the wrong time to do it at all - current
world affairs, the agony of post-Soviet but still
essentially an oldtime regime, the Bush's escapades
that only cloud the picture.

But the truth is, and I'm saying this as probably the
one who watches the most games, and the only one who
tapes them on video and bothers to analyse Russian game, we
are not going ANYWHERE.

I already mentioned the number of players and
ballparks. Add to that the ugly way of organizing
sports, unresponcible, voluntary, corruption-provoking
system, that will eat up and not choke any money you
give them and still do nothing.

Absolute most of our coaching ranks are baseball
organizers at the same time. The ones who find the
dough. Players come and go, these people remain, no
matter how incopetent baseball-wise they are. 

In fact, they've found a way to make business on our
game (mostly illegal schemes with
government/sponsorship money), so they have ZERO
interest in promoting/popularizing/advancing baseball
in Russia, because they don't want to open up their
monopoly and be eaten up by bigger sharks or being
forced to behave properly by public influence.
But there's little chance for [the latter] as Russia
(Moscow) is not Ukraine. The Ukranians are probably
helped by the lack of oil and natural gas.

Given the level our players have achieved despite the
infrastructure that actually hinders their
improvement, there is hope, though.

What I'd like you to do, of course if you're willing
to participate, is to spread the word, so to say.
Of course, I only touched a few points and will
elaborate on them if needed.

It'll be great if you can find a 1-hour radio
interview I gave in English to an American radio
journalist at MGU Stadium in August of 2003.
Unfortunatelly, I didn't ask what exact radio station
it was (World Radio??, World Radio Network??, I just
don't know).

It was a spontaneous speach on Russian baseball
mirroring our life.


>>Is it true you are a statistician?

I was, I am and I'm not. The latter means I have to do
it because I see what the officials are doing.
Look, what if Seligula (I hate what he did to the
Expos) suddenlty decides to hire all
scorers/statisticians from whereever he came from and
who will have all major league hitters hit, say, 5000
home runs in a season while having all ML pitchers
give up 4500, combined? 
Of course, that's hardly a possibility in the US as
STATS, RetroSheet and  others will step up.

But the problem isn't even the historical stats per
se, because the faulty way denies our players an
analytical approach to the game. 

As for the 1992-2000 period I was an official scorer
(paid) and volunteered as a league statistician.

[...]
 
===========================================