Lithuanian Club Team Completes U.S. Tour Today

Written by: Jerry Milani on 23rd June 2009

Lithuanian Club Team Completes U.S. Tour Today | read this item

lithpitcher As in other Eastern European countries, baseball is relatively new on the sports scene in Lithuania, the Baltic state and former Soviet Republic known more for its international success in basketball. But the Lithuanian Baseball Association (LBA) and one of its top club teams, Kaunas Lituanica, is looking to change that as it returns tomorrow from a 16-day, eight-game, six-city tour in which some of its top young players gained experience against top U.S. amateur summer teams and helped spread the word that Lithuania does indeed have competitive baseball.

“This has been an unbelievable experience for the guys, many of whom had never been to the U.S. before,” said Will Gordon, Director of Foreign Affairs and Game Development for the LBA.

After arriving in Chicago on June 9, the team took in Major League games between the White Sox and Detroit Tigers at U.S. Cellular Field on the next two days. They then began their competition with games in suburban Chicago and the Quad Cities against the Chicago Wildcats, Quad Cities 76ers, Clinton Mudcats and others along the Mississippi. With a 2-3-1 record entering the final game on tap for tonight, the tour was an important step in keeping the momentum going back home for a sport that has made recent strides after having to start nearly from scratch following the collapse of the USSR nearly two decades ago.

Perhaps a bit of history is in order as Lithuania is something of a mystery to most Americans, and its sporting background is no different. Many basketball fans will recognize the name of Arvydas Sabonis, star of the USSR Olympic teams in the 1980s, later a popular NBA standout and – fittingly or ironically, depending on your perspective – a native of Kaunas, the same hometown as the club visiting the U.S. Šarūnas Marčiulionis was one of the first Europeans to see significant playing time in the NBA, which helped open up the game to players from the continent. Hockey fans are familiar with the NHL’s Darius Kasparaitis and Dainius Zubrus. But baseball? It’s a relative newcomer to the scene.

Baseball had been, for all purposes, completely absent from the Soviet sports landscape until it became an Olympic sport via the IOC’s decision in 1986. The USSR then began its search in earnest across the entire country, trying to put together a squad that could compete for medals by the 1996 Atlanta Games.

This 10-year plan started with younger player development in all of the USSR, but with the priority to find the best pure adult athletes with new found baseball skills from all around the largest country in the world. By 1989, a top nationwide league of some 30 teams had been formed, and a year later, the Soviets shocked Europe with a first place finish in the European Championships (Group B). This first-place finish by a team comprised of players from across the USSR qualified the National Team for the top level in Europe (Group A) in 1991.

All that changed with the dissolution of the Soviet Union that year, and baseball and other sports fell under the respective jurisdictions of each Republic. Lithuanian baseball was back at square one.

Edmuntas Matusevicius, now the General Secretary of the LBA, was one of the pioneers of the sport in 1986 and has been the driving force in building it back up since the Soviet collapse. Once a top javelin thrower, Matusevicius is revered in his homeland for the stand he personally took against the Soviet crackdown in the late 1980s. Also as a proud Lithuanian, Matusevicius relished this new-found independence for his homeland, so much so that in the final days of the Soviet Union he is famous for having not worn the team’s CCCP cap, but rather opting to wear the only other one that he owned – one emblazoned with the Oakland Athletics logo.

lithbatter Today, Matusevicius is the father of 17-year-old pitcher and outfielder Edvardus, one of the most talented players in Lithuania, and currently on loan to the Kaunas squad for the U.S. trip. He and 16-year-old pitcher Dovydas Neverauskas, also competing with Kaunas this month, have been invited to Major League Baseball’s European Academy set for August in Italy. Their goals are a pro contract or an opportunity to play at a U.S. college or high school.

While Gordon noted that the competition level of several of the teams was comparable to that of the top European clubs that Kaunas competes with — and superior to most of the Lithuanian squads, he said that the team was able to gain a lot from seeing the “crispness” of play that they exhibited. “There was a level of intensity, doing everything right from turns, getting rid of the ball quickly, relays, things like that, especially in the Legion teams we faced, made up of 18- and 19-year olds.”

The White Sox-Tigers games also provided quite a thrill. “We were able to meet some of the players and Jim Leyland, the guys really enjoyed that,” said Gordon. “And we sat right behind the White Sox bullpen, so they saw how the pitchers threw and worked, how hard they threw on the scoreboard.”

And Gordon was pleased with how well the Kaunas players were received by their opponents. “We did exchanges with every team — t-shirts, hats. And several of them made equipment donations as well.

Those will come in particularly handy as the sport continues its growth in Lithuania. According to Gordon, there is only one true baseball stadium in the entire country. Kaunas, though one of the league’s top teams, plays in a converted former Soviet football stadium.

As is the case with many countries in which baseball is still emerging, the reinstatement of the sport into the Olympics is vital to its survival in Lithuania, which ranked at No. 40 in the latest International Baseball Federation rankings. Funding is already light and would likely dry up entirely if the Olympic goal were not in place.

The LBA hopes that this U.S. trip can help show Lithuania’s commitment to the sport as it continues its growth.

Topics: IBAF, International, lithuania

Sixteen-year-old First Lithuanian To Sign With MLB Organization : Baseball Digest says:

July 30, 2009 at 2:48 pm

[...] a deal with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Neverauskas, who was part of the Lithuanian contingent that played a series of exhibitions last month in a 16-day, six-city tour in the Chicago and Quad Cities …, will report to the Florida Instructional league this [...]

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