Sydney - Australia has a strong baseball program which received an extra boost after the 2000 Sydney Olympics when MLB established an academy in the Gold Coast area near Brisbane. Four years later, athletes that trained in those MLB programs became a big part in Australia's success in winning the silver medal in the 2004 Athens Olympics.  This ballpark is in a suburb outside of Sydney called Blacktown. The Blacktown sport park was an Olympic venue in 2000 hosting both baseball and softball games.

Tom Nicholson, director of MLB Australia and I are reviewing stadiums throughout the country this week in the hopes of locating potential sites for a new league.  Some of the potential sites include Perth, Melbourne, Altoona, Blacktown, Sydney, Brisbane, Canberra, Gold Coast and Adelaide.  In a world-win tour, we made 8 site visits in 5 days.  In the states , this would never have been possible due to security in the airports. I had forgotten what it was like to be able to go through airports without the level of security we have in the US.  Domestic travel here requires no Id's to be flashed just show your ticket and get on the plane and if your family or friends would like to see you off at the gate that's no problem either!

I was here a few years ago and took a look at the fields we worked on for the 2000 Olympics.  Blacktown Olympic park was a great facility for the Olympics but unfortunately it had gone down hill a bit after the games due to politics ...but the local community finally took over the operation and they placed Matt Cairns (picture) in charge of the field maintenance. On this site visit, the place looked totally different and had improved 10-fold.  The "cooch" grass (as they call Bermuda) never looked better and the Bricky sand (infield clay) was level and smooth. The plaque we are standing beside names the 2000 Gold Medal USA Team.

This past year most of the country was under severe drought conditions to the point many athletic field irrigation's systems were cut off for months. Huge water storage tanks are now being installed throughout sports complexes across the country in an effort to save rain water for future droughts. Hopefully this year the rain will come more often.  We actually had a few rain drops when I arrived and this past week and last week they had a monsoon in northern Australia that dropped 2 feet of water in less than 24 hours. Altoona park in Melbourne has a synthetic turf infield and huge cutouts that allow the field to transition into a softball field in 10 minutes. The pitching mound is on hydraulics and lowers into the ground while the softball second base area raises into place at the same time. Pretty cool

Seeing old friends from previous Olympics is always nice, Dave Nielsen ( former catcher for the Yankees) dropped by the gold coast to say hello.  Nathan's building a new field in Adelaide and Matt C. both of the guys we worked with on the fields during the Olympics.    The field below was in Perth.  Seating about 2500 the turf is all natural. They see about 400 events per year.  Its a quaint ballpark and Mark N. and crew do a nice job on the field considering the use it gets.  G'Day Mates!

Preparing for spring training is always exciting as you know baseball is just around the corner.  My hats off to the spring training operators and groundskeepers.  Its a tremendous amount of work in a very short time period.  The month of March will host a series of International  spring training games.  Beijing has a couple games, Taiwan has an Olympic qualifying tournament, Japan has an opener and Hermosillo (photo above) has a game.  Grant Trenbreath, Head Groundskeeper for the Diamondbacks along with his crew will be setting up the field in Hermosillo.  They have a bit of work to do in that old park as the last big league game played in the stadium was in 2003. Its still one of the best in Mexico's W.L.

Arranging supplies and materials to be shipped over to Asia takes quite a bit of planning as you need to review all the tariffs and trade laws in both languages.  Taiwan and Japan are a little easier than china.  Thanks to some help from Tom Burns at Diamond Pro we will have some products in Beijing.  Hopefully Pennington comes through with the T-3 rye seed.  And Dave over at World class paints has put together our logos for all the events. 

Since China just finished having the worst winter in 100 years we need to be prepared to paint the dormant Bermuda.  Not to many choices considering average temps in march in 50 degrees during he day and 35 at night.  Not quite typical "spring training" weather but it will work out.    FYI --the buildings to the left is where the 3rd field for the Olympics still needs to be built... 180 days until Olympic games.  

Trivia time.. Name this spring training site.