USA Baseball
USA Baseball is the national governing body for baseball in the United States, and is a member of the United States Olympic Committee and the World Baseball Softball Confederation. The organization is responsible for the selection of the United States national team for various international competition, including the senior professional team (World Baseball Classic, Olympic, Premier12, and Pan American Games), the collegiate national team, the various youth national teams (18U, 15U, and 12U), and the women's national team.
Formation
Tracing its origins to the formation of the U.S. Amateur Baseball Federation by Leslie Mann in 1932, the modern USA Baseball organization was formed in 1978. Although USA Baseball does not have jurisdiction over Major League Baseball or its affiliates, it is the chief organizer of non-collegiate[a] amateur baseball initiatives through its Sport Development department, including Play Ball and Pitch Smart. USA Baseball also presents the Golden Spikes Award annually to the top amateur baseball player in the country and is responsible for creating the USABat standard.
No player uses uniform number 42 out of respect for the Brooklyn Dodgers Jackie Robinson since 1997.
History[edit]
Predecessors[edit]
BasebaThe first US national baseball team took the field in the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden. Only one player on the roster, Jim Thorpe, had extensive experience in the two demonstration games that were held, as the majority of players were track and field athletes.
The national governing body is a de facto successor to the USA Baseball Congress, founded in 1934 by ex-MLB outfielder Leslie Mann, who is also regarded in high esteem as founder of the International Baseball Federation (IBAF). That organization helped formalize the establishment of a full time national team program and establish amateur baseball nationally. Under Leslie's guidance, the nascent Team USA, following a 20-game friendship tour of Japan in 1935 took part in the demonstration match at the Summer Olympics in Berlin the next year and participated in the very first Baseball World Cup two years later, only to lose out to England. They took part in a further two more BWCs before the Second World War.
Representation to the BWC would return in 1969, but this time, an all-NCAA team of college athletes took part, having taken part previously in the Pan American Games since the first edition held in 1951. This would be the basis of the current USA Baseball Collegiate National Team, and an early iteration of the team had a test game in the 1964 Summer Olympics in Japan.
Move to North Carolina[edit]
1978 would see the formation of a new national baseball organization. As the USA received hosting rights for the 1984 Summer Olympics with Los Angeles as the host, the time would come for the birth of a new group to spearhead baseball efforts in the country.
Originally based in Trenton, New Jersey upon its establishment, USA Baseball - then the US Baseball Federation - moved to Tucson, Arizona in November 1997, where it spent five years before moving one more time to its current home in Cary, North Carolina, in March 2003. With its family-friendly environment, already-rapid growth, and proximity to sports cities Chapel Hill, Durham, Raleigh, and Charlotte, Cary was the perfect destination for the national governing body of baseball.
An agreement was reached with the town to create a complex and headquarters there, and the USA Baseball National Training Complex opened in June 2007. The first event held at the facility was the 2007 USA Baseball Tournament of Stars, which served as the primary identification event for the organization's 18U national team from 2007 to 2018.
USA Baseball events[edit]
National High School Invitational[edit]
Every March, the USA Baseball National High School Invitational (NHSI) presented by the Greater Raleigh Sports Alliance and the Town of Cary brings together 16 of the top prep teams in the country to compete in what has become the premiere event on the high-school baseball calendar. As no event currently brings in a level of talent from top to bottom that the NHSI promises, the eventual tournament champion will kick off its respective season with recognition as the top high-school baseball team in the country.
The NHSI, which not only features the top teams in the country, but also some of the best amateur baseball players, is a 16-team, single-elimination championship tournament. Each participating team is guaranteed to play four games. The NHSI presents participating athletes with national exposure in addition to providing the opportunity for the best teams in the country to compete against each other.
In 2012, Mater Dei High School (Santa Ana, Calif.) claimed the inaugural NHSI title in dramatic fashion with a 3–2 walk-off win over Harvard-Westlake (Studio City, Calif.). The 2013 edition of the tournament was once again won by Mater Dei with another defeat of Harvard-Westlake before The First Academy (Orlando, Fla.) took home the trophy in 2014.
In the 2018 NHSI, Orange Lutheran High School (Orange, Calif.) became the second school in NHSI history to defend its title when it secured the 2018 championship with a dominant 9–3 victory over Green Hope High School (Cary, N.C.) in the final. Green Hope went on an historic run en route to its runner-up finish, not only becoming the first North Carolina school to reach the NHSI championship game, but also the first to advance past its opening round game in the event.[34]
USABat[edit]
USA Baseball, the national governing body for the sport of baseball in the U.S., in conjunction with participating national member organizations has adopted a new method for measuring bat performance in the testing of youth bats. Informed by the research of leading scientists on the USA Baseball Bat Study Committee, and supported by its National Member Organizations, — including the American Amateur Baseball Congress (AABC), Babe Ruth Baseball/Cal Ripken Baseball, Dixie Youth Baseball & Dixie Boys Baseball, Little League Baseball and PONY Baseball — USA Baseball has concluded that recent advancements in science, engineering, technology, and the materials available to fabricate non-wood bats, now allow the manufacturers to construct youth bats that can perform at a wood-like level through the entire range of lengths and weights of youth bats.
The new USA Baseball bat standard (USABat), which applies to bats that are classified below the NCAA and NFHS level of play, will be implemented on January 1, 2018, allowing the bat manufacturers sufficient time to bring these bats to the marketplace.
Similar to the NCAA and NFHS BBCOR standard, which helped to eliminate discrepancies with different length bats and thus provide a more direct measure of bat performance, the USA Baseball bat standard will allow youth baseball organizations in the United States to reach their goal of establishing a wood-like standard, a standard that will provide for the long-term integrity of the game.[56]