by David Burns | Aug 28, 2023 | Written Stories
Mathias LaCombe is the embodiment of the old phrase “how quickly things can change”. At the beginning of this spring, he was a virtually unknown relief pitcher at a community college in a rural region of eastern Arizona who had trouble consistently throwing...
by David Burns | Aug 23, 2023 | Blog, Written Stories
If the particulars of Lennard Pietersz’ journey thus far were set to a medley of songs, an appropriate title track would be “The Long and Winding Road”. The native of Curacao, a former Dutch colony in the Caribbean now a “constituent country” of the Kingdom of the...
by David Burns | Jul 3, 2023 | Blog, Written Stories
Baseball. Uganda. For the vast majority of people, those words would not seem to belong in the same sentence. Yet, they do. There is baseball in Uganda – more than one might think – and that’s thanks to people such as Jaz Shergill and others. Shergill is a native...
by David Burns | May 22, 2023 | Softball, Written Stories
Gabriella Gonzalez represents a classic case of how quickly things can change. In a mere 11-day period back in 2016, her life’s path veered from typical to atypical. Gonzalez grew up in northern California and was a softball player and sometimes coach while...
by David Burns | Apr 24, 2023 | Blog, Written Stories
By participating for the first time in the recently completed World Baseball Classic, the Czech Republic’s national team checked off multiple items on its to-do list. “Before the tournament, we had three goals – increase the number of baseball fans in the Czech...
by David Burns | Mar 10, 2023 | Blog, Featured members, Written Stories
There was a time not long ago that Sarah Edwards thought she might live in Italy the rest of her life. But it turned out that this was not the time. Instead, the rest of her life began March 1 in Clearwater, Florida, spring training home of Major League Baseball’s...
by David Burns | Dec 1, 2022 | Blog, Featured members, Written Stories
By David Burns December 1, 2022 After polling our newsletter and social media audience about the top coaches in Europe in 2022, a number of European and import coaches were nominated. Will Swindling’s story stood out to us as our first coach feature, not only because...
by David Burns | Nov 24, 2022 | Blog, Featured members, Written Stories
Written by: Carter Cromwell November 23, 2022 “The manager would like to see you in his office” is a line usually guaranteed to make a ballplayer think “uh, oh” and envision a trek to the guillotine. But in Kaleb Bowman’s case, it meant he would be moving onward and...
by David Burns | Oct 14, 2022 | Blog, Written Stories
By Carter Cromwell October 15, 2022 When the World Baseball Classic begins next March, the Czechs will most likely be an underdog, but that won’t faze them. After all, the Czech team wasn’t a favorite before the recent qualifying round, but it proved adept at...
by David Burns | Aug 23, 2022 | Softball, Written Stories
When Gretchen Aucoin was hired as minor-league player development coach by the New York Mets in January – thereby becoming the Mets’ first female on-field coach – it might have seemed the culmination of a long-held goal steadily worked toward over time. But it...
by David Burns | Jun 16, 2022 | Softball, Written Stories
By Carter Cromwell April 5th, 2022 When Logan Moreland went to New Zealand in late 2019 to play softball, it was to be for just one season – get in, get out, go home. Pretty simple. Then Covid-19 happened, and things weren’t so clear-cut. Suddenly, the short-term...
by David Burns | Apr 25, 2022 | Blog, Written Stories
By Carter Cromwell April 25th, 2022 From very early on, Gary Owens had a vision – he knew he wanted to be a baseball player. But he couldn’t envision then how far the game could and would take him. At the time, his vision extended only to the boundaries of his...
by David Burns | Jan 31, 2022 | Blog, Softball, Written Stories
Seattle University alumna, Lisa Maulden, first took her career overseas in 2015 and never looked back. Her first few seasons overseas were in lower leagues including the Belgian second division and Hungarian Softball League before moving up the ranks to higher-level...
by David Burns | Jan 20, 2022 | Softball, Written Stories
January 20, 2022 By Carter Cromwell Given that her father played baseball and her mother was a member of the 2000 Italian Olympic softball team, one could easily assume that Erika Piancastelli’s path to softball stardom was pre-ordained – mapped out early on and...
by David Burns | Nov 17, 2021 | Blog, Featured members, Written Stories
November 16th, 2021 By Carter Cromwell When Billy Germaine was released from his independent league team in the summer of 2017, it seemed to represent a dead end for his baseball career. Instead, it was just a detour. And no small one, as it turned out. The new path...
by David Burns | Aug 20, 2021 | Softball, Written Stories
August 20, 2021 By Carter Cromwell Right off the bat, Chelsea Goodacre realized that playing softball in Japan was going to be different. “The first practices were real eye-openers,” said the former all-American from the University of Arizona, who is a catcher...
by David Burns | Jun 15, 2021 | Blog, Softball, Written Stories
June 15th, 2021 By Carter Cromwell [NOTE: Alyson Spinas-Valainis is non-binary, meaning they do not specifically identify with either gender. Therefore, the following article employs the pronouns “they” and “them” in reference to Spinas-Valainis.] That Alyson...
by David Burns | Mar 20, 2021 | Featured members, Softball, Written Stories
March 21st, 2021 By Carter Cromwell That Lisa Maulden is an American playing softball overseas isn’t particularly unusual, but her path to this point has been. “My softball journey has been very non-linear,” she acknowledges. Indeed, her road from growing up near...
by David Burns | Feb 13, 2021 | Blog, Featured members, Written Stories
February 14th, 2021 By Carter Cromwell Will Swindling’s baseball career hasn’t gone as he originally envisioned, but he never envisioned how it has gone. A star on his youth teams and an all-state performer in high school in Eugene, Ore., he attracted attention from...
by David Burns | Jan 12, 2021 | Blog, Featured members, Written Stories
January 12, 2021 By Carter Cromwell On the surface, baseball is pretty much the same game wherever it’s played. But where it’s played is often a whole new ballgame. And therein lies the challenge for the players, coaches and others who go outside their home...
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