Back in Australia for almost six weeks now, it’s been a fun and busy return to oz. So far my recreational activities have included: lawn bowling, Sunday sesh at Little Creature Brewery, a wine tour up the swan river and a .500 batting average after two games of the club baseball season.
In the office, we’ve made a lot of strides in developing membership (season ticket) and group prices and come up with a lot of interesting marketing ideas (not the least of which was entering and winning the “Grand Mascot Race” put on by a local radio station at the halftime of a sold out charity footie game http://www.mix.com.au/shows/thebigcouch/highlights/grand-mascot-race-2009 ).
This past week was our first exhibition series where we played a Thursday regional game in the small mining town of Kalgoorlie (per usual ‘stralian vernacular you don’t pronounce the “r”), home of the world’s largest open gold mine…and famous for having the most pubs per capita in the world. Our task was to arrive after the hour flight into the outback and build a field from scratch on a footie oval (which also had two cement cricket pitches where the outfield would be). I had never built a mound before, but after building three in one day (2 bullpens), I think I’ve reached intermediate grounds crew status. Marking the lines proved a little more difficult, I tried to bust out the Pythagorean Theorem to figure out exactly where to place the bases…they were close enough but the distance between first and third was about a foot and a half too short, but that was the least of our troubles on the poorly lit and terribly sodded field…all in all it was a good trip to Kalgoorlie.
We’re now getting ready for our second exhibition series which is against a USA “all-star” team comprised of all of the US imports that are usually former college and pro players who are paid nominal sums to come over and play for the local clubs. It should draw well and will be our best opportunity to get the word out about the new Australian Baseball League to the club members who will come out to watch their imports play against the two-time defending champ HEAT team (I was scolded for not writing Perth Heat in all CAPS).I absolutely love where I am living in the suburb of Claremont (officially the most expensive median real estate prices in Australia). I’m a block and a half from the train station which takes me 15 minutes to the city and 15 minutes the other way to the posh port town of Fremantle. I’m also a short run (maybe 2 miles) to the beach at which point if I turn south I’m in the popular beach town of Cottlesloe, and north takes me to the nudist beach of Swanbourne (I’ve only made that mistake once!).
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