From Sweden, with Love (But mostly Baseball)

The other day, as I was looking over my stats for the blag, I noticed I had logged a few visitors from Sweden. "Baseball fans from Sweden?" I thought to myself. Then I also corrected myself. Of course baseball from Sweden. Baseball from everywhere, this is what your blag is about. So there you are.

In fact, the Swedish national team has ranked as high as 3rd in European competition, both in 1981 and in 1993, coming behind European baseball giants Netherlands and Italy. They've also ranked as high as 15th in the World Cup Baseball competition (in 1994), which in current IBAF rankings is where Australia sits, which is a much more familiar country to international baseball observers.

For Sweden, baseball is a club sport, and in general is more decentralized than we typically think of how a league operates. The club operate not only professional adult teams, but also more minor and little league level teams. It does not seem to be much of a spectator sport, as football (SOCCA) and ice hockey are much more prominent, followed by handball and floorball, which are things I am less familiar with outside of when I look up stuff about European sports.

The clubs play throughout the country, and the players sign up with the clubs they wish to play for. The highest level of professional play is in the Elitserien, composed of anywhere between 6-9 teams, of which the top teams participate in the Elitserien Cup Championship, held in the fall. The most recent champions were the Stockholm Monarchs, winning their 2nd straight championship, and their 6th title in the past 10 years.

I'm intrigued by the pictures I'm finding of the ballfields. They show a field surrounded by trees, which reminds me of the little leagues I'd play on when I was a kid. I couldn't say if this is just part of the Swedish aesthetic or mere consequence of the photos I found, but I like it iether way. HOpefully we can get another look at Sweden soon in either the world stage, or more within the the world of baseball in the Elitserien.

If any readers more familiar have any more inclusions or corrections, let me know, comment, contribute. My goal is to provide accurate information about baseball as it is being played ito the unaware English speaking audience thoughout the world, which in turn helps grow the games where it is smaller or lesser known.

I almost forgot, aside from just perusing wikipedia in English and Swedish, I also got some of my information from these two pages:

http://iof1.idrottonline.se/SvenskaBasebollochSoftbollForbundet/InEnglish/BaseballinSweden/
This is actually the main page for the Swedish Baseball & Softball Federation. They have some informative pages in English, like the one I listed, as well as club locations in the country!

http://sweden.mlblogs.com/
Baseball in Sweden blog. It hasn't been updated in a couple of months, but hopefully he'll be back as he seemed to be a primary source for the material.