By Carter Cromwell

December 31, 2024

One could say quite a lot about the Lithuanian national baseball team’s victory in the European Championship Qualifier in July that earned the club its first-ever berth in the Baseball European Championship tournament.  

Or one could use just a single word – “breakthrough”. 

Because the win ended a string of disappointments in which the Lithuanian team had been butting its head on the door of the championship tournament but couldn’t get past it.  Lithuania won Pool B of the qualifiers in 2018 and 2019, but rules then in force meant it had to defeat the Pool A winner to reach the championship round, and it lost each time. That rule was later rescinded, but, with a trip to the championship rounds at stake, Lithuania lost in the Pool B finals in 2021 to Greece and in 2022 to Switzerland.

This time, it did not.  Instead, the Lithuanians withstood a last-inning rally by Poland to win 10-9 and advance to the championships scheduled for the last full week of September.  The victory represented a clear step forward, not only for the club but for baseball in Lithuania. 

Perhaps surprisingly to many, the sport was introduced to Lithuania more than 100 years ago.  

Steponas Darius, an American immigrant who had been a U.S. Army pilot in World War I, returned to his home country in 1920 and brought baseball with him.  He was able to form a league, and the U.S. ambassador even threw out the first pitch at the first national tournament in 1922.  But that was the last national tournament for nearly seven decades, as Darius wasn’t able to build much interest or find many suitable places to play. He returned to the United States in 1927 and perished in an airplane crash six years later.  What little interest there had been in baseball went dormant.

So, though baseball’s seeds were first planted in Lithuania long ago, they only recently have begun to sprout.  The sport went into hibernation until the late 1980s and did not get any real momentum until fairly recently.

Lithuania became part of the Soviet Union following World War II, and baseball was discouraged because it was an “American” sport, but this began to change in the late 1980s.  Knowing that baseball would become an Olympic sport at the 1992 Games, Soviet authorities began trying to put a team together.  

In February 1986, a Lithuanian named Virmidas Neverauskas saw a flyer seeking interested parties and became an evangelist for the game, particularly following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Since then, he has coached Lithuania’s national team, served as head of the Lithuanian Baseball Association, and fathered a son, Dovydas, who pitched in parts of four seasons for the Pittsburgh Pirates of Major League Baseball.

Photo: Lithuanian pitcher, Dovydas Neverauskas, played four seasons in the MLB for the Pittsburgh Pirates from 2017 to 2020. 

Those early days were difficult, though. “I saw the flyer and wondered ‘What is this baseball?’”. Virmidas said.  “I knew nothing about it.”  He then went to a library to learn more about the game but found a volume that made little sense to him – “The person who translated the rules knew English but didn’t know baseball,” he said

“At our first practices, we had people who had played other sports, so there were some good athletes, but no one knew much about the game,” Virmidas added.  “Our coaches were guys who had completed their physical education degrees from university.”

Simply finding equipment – of any sort – was a challenge then.  The players poked holes in tennis balls and filled them with water to mimic the weight of baseballs. At first, they only had two mitts, both borrowed from a local ice hockey goalie, though they later found some in a dormitory in which they were staying.

Eventually, Virmidas joined a team in Vilnius that traveled to the United States to play high school and American Legion teams, and he remembers hitting a 400-foot home run – “Just three years in baseball [at the time], so 400 feet is not so bad for me,” he once said

“By 2006, a youth team from Orange County in California came over here, and we practiced with them,” Virmidas added. “And we would take our youth team to California every two years.”

Still, it has been a grind to get to this point – “step by step,” as Virmidas described it.  Basketball is still the most popular sport in the country of fewer than three million people that has sent a number of players to the National Basketball Association.  Baseball, on the other hand, has struggled to get visibility and funding. 

Even now, only three cities – Vilnius, Kaunas, and Utena – have baseball leagues, and only relatively recently have facilities/stadiums come online that are up to international standards. A field was just built in Kaunas.

Dovydas, now 32 and still pitching – he most recently had a stint in the Mexican League – said that when he was a youngster, his program’s outdoor “field” was more like a meadow with a few lines of chalk designating the field of play, one on which bumps and bad hops were the norm.

“They were just fields, not fields set up for soccer or other sports,” his father, Virmidas, confirmed.

Domas Kamandulis, the national team’s current second baseman, said, “We had only one baseball field when I was growing up, so there weren’t many places to play.  It’s kind of funny when you bring kids to a football [soccer] field and tell them they’ll be playing baseball.  Playing baseball on a football field is like a poor movie.  When you have a quality field, you can get sponsorships, get more kids playing, and grow the level of competition.”

Photo: Domas Kamandulis gives assistant coach and Baseball Jobs Overseas member, Will Swindling, a high five as he rounds third base

As recently as 2019, when Lithuania was set to host Israel for the right to advance to the European Championships, the club had to scramble to find a suitable venue. The field in Utena had once met international standards but had fallen into disuse after a rent increase forced the local club to stop playing there.  “From that point, we lost the sport’s massive scale in the city. We had teams on all tiers, but now there are only a few clubs left,” one of the veterans of the national squad, Dalius Neliupšis, said. Fortunately, officials were able to renovate the field on a temporary basis so that Lithuania could host the game. 

Will Gordon, an American and the national team coach since 2021, has observed the growing pains for nearly 20 years.  At the behest of a friend, he went to Lithuania briefly to play after graduating from college in 2005.  He returned to the U.S. but got an opportunity the next year to again play in Lithuania.  He eventually played three seasons, learned the language, went to graduate school, met his wife, and lived there until 2011.  

“I was an associate scout for the [Pittsburgh] Pirates at the time,” said Gordon, who lives most of the year in North Carolina and is head of sales for an online education company. “I’d bring  equipment over whenever possible and would work with the embassy to get players to colleges in the U.S.  I was the pitching coach for the national team in 2006 and would help out as an assistant any summer I was there.”

Dovydas Neverauskas believes that things began changing in 2007 or 2008.  “That was kind of the start of us getting on the map. We had some guys aged 14 to 16, and Dad was always taking us to tournaments in Europe where we won a couple of times.”  

Another milestone arrived in July 2009 when Dovydas was 16 and signed with the Pirates, becoming the first native of Lithuania to sign with a Major League Baseball club.

Still, as Gordon notes, “the period 2010 to 2015 was a tough one for baseball in Lithuania.  There was less funding and were fewer kids playing the game. For quite a while, it was hard to even find baseball highlights on television then, so I was amazed by the people who nonetheless were so obsessed by the game.”

But then Neverauskas made his Major League debut on April 24, 2017 against the Chicago Cubs, and that help spur momentum.  Television stations showed highlights. Virmidas’ phone was overloaded with calls. It was, Dovydas said, “a special moment.”

A year later, in the 2018 European Qualifiers, the Lithuanian team made another advance by winning Pool B before losing to Pool A winner Austria in the game that decided which would advance to the European Championships.  Then came the failed attempts to reach the Championship Round in 2019, 2021 and 2023.

Then came 2024 and the breakthrough.  Really, though, it was one of those things that happened slowly, then suddenly.  

“This has definitely been a process, and it’s still ongoing,” Gordon agreed.  “We had an amazing run this year, but it’s been a decade in coming.”

Neverauskas said, “We’re still behind some in fundamentals.  But both Wills [Gordon and Swindling] were working on that this year – implementing more work on fundamentals . . . putting the team in the right direction.”

Kamandulis concurred, saying, “People are playing more, so the overall skill level is getting better.  For example, Will Swindling—the U23 National Team Head Coach—helped when he came to us.  We started working to improve the training programs and drills, and that’s made a big difference. We should continue to learn from the best, not just in Europe, but the rest of the world.” 

Gradually, more players have been participating and getting experience at the youth levels. And some players – such as pitchers Marius Balandis at St. Louis University and Edvardas Matusevicius at Grambling – have gotten opportunities to play in the U.S. collegiate ranks, while a few American-born players with Lithuanian heritage have been able to obtain citizenship and compete for the national team.  The latter includes brothers Vytas Valincius at the University of Illinois and pitcher Tomas Valincius. Tomas could have gone in the MLB draft in 2024 but chose to attend the University of Virginia.

Photo: Left-handed high school pitcher, Tomas Valincius, has MLB scouts turning out in droves. Tomas’ parents are both Lithuanian.

For a time, though, Gordon didn’t know he would have any of those players at the qualifying tournament.  Vytas Valincius was hit in the face by a pitch while playing in the Northwoods League – a top college summer league in the U.S. – and his availability was uncertain.  Tomas was expected to be drafted and wasn’t sure if he could play.  Balandis wasn’t able to play because of health issues, and Neverauskas was playing professionally in North America.  

“We went to Prague Baseball Week for the first time this year, so we really had to challenge and develop our guys,” Gordon said. “Before, we’d had certain players that carried us, but we weren’t expecting to have a lot of them this time, so each player had to look at himself in the mirror and ask himself what he was going to do.  

“Prague Baseball Week was our first high-level tournament, and we finished third in the B Group without the top guys,” he continued. “That forced us to work on our game a lot, and we did pretty well even though we had only one extra-base hit the whole tournament.  For me, that was kind of inspiring and told me we had a shot.”

Then came good news followed by more good news.  About 10 days before the qualifying tournament, Gordon learned that the two Valincius brothers would be able to participate.  Then, just three days before the start, Neverauskas announced that he would be available.  His team in Mexico had not made the playoffs and allowed him to leave early so he could play for Lithuania.

Photo: Dovydas Neverauskas pitched for Lithuania in the 2024 European A Pool Qualifier

Lithuania, Finland, Romania, and Poland were in the group playing in Kutno, Poland.  Ukraine was to be there, as well, but it dropped out because of the war with Russia.  Poland seemed like the biggest potential stumbling block, as it had hired former major league pitcher Dennis Cook as manager earlier in the year and had some good talent, including some imports.  

“Poland had invested a lot in its team and was backed by a private equity guy,” Gordon said.  “They were already on equal footing with us, and then they added a bunch of guys.”

Will Swindling, an American who has been an assistant coach for the team since October 2023, added, “Going into it, our expectations were to win.  Had all the confidence in the world and thought, though Poland and others were tough, that we could win.”

Kamandulis, the second baseman who won tournament MVP honors after averaging .364 with three home runs, said, “Going into the qualifiers, we knew it was going to be one of the toughest competitions we could be in. Poland had a lot of imports, and the Ukraine team was always good. But then Ukraine didn’t participate, and we got some guys back like Dovydas and the brothers. Will Gordon was the man in this situation. He was the glue, and we also got Corey Lee from the U.S. to be pitching coach.  He made a big impact.”

Neverauskas, who closed the first win over Poland and then pitched the first five innings in the final, striking out 10, added, “The previous years, we pretty much knew we would be in the qualifying finals.  We always had pitching for it, but not the hitting.  Other teams would have import pitchers with stuff that was too much for us to handle. This year, we were able to handle it.”

The question now, of course, is how to keep moving forward.

Swindling says that he “was surprised at the level of play” when he arrived in Lithuania.  “Pitching is a strength, and we have guys who can put the bat on the ball pretty well, but we have a lot more growing to do.  We need more leagues so guys will have opportunities to play and get better. I hope a lot more cities can establish baseball.”

Nick Miceli, an American currently living and playing in Germany and a sometimes-coach with the Lithuanian club, said, “This team has always been on the bubble between Pool A and Pool B. They have some talented pitchers and a lot of tall, strong kids. They play with absolutely no fear.  Everything is hard-nosed. At the end of the day, the talent is there, but it hasn’t been sharpened enough until recently.”  

Neverauskas added, “We’re still behind some in fundamentals, but both Wills [Gordon and Swindling] were focusing on that this year – implementing them more . . . putting the guys in the right direction.”

And, finally, right through that door leading to the championship tournament.

“It was exciting to see for them,” Swindling said. “They had always been on the cusp and finally got it done.”  

As Gordon said, “We were ready.  It was our moment.”

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