Baseball Dublin International Tournament: Joe Culley finds Ireland's baseball fraternity building up to a major weekend in west Dublin

Bottom of the sixth, tied 1-1, men on first and second, and in the humid night lightning begins to flash over the Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati. The Florida Marlins have already intentionally walked Sean Casey, batting an incredible .390, to get to the Reds' Ken Griffey Jr. Mistake. Griff sends Josh Beckett's second pitch over the right-field fence with one of those shots everyone in the park knows is gone as soon as it cracks off the bat. As he rounds third, Griffey, on his way to the Hall of Fame, glares into the Marlins' dugout. Do not disrespect me.

Classic baseball. Only in America.

Or maybe Clondalkin.

One of the overlooked legacies of the Celtic Tiger era is that many of her cubs - or Cubs? - have returned to Ireland to help establish a foothold for a sport which 100 years ago was dominated by Irish emigrants and their sons in America. Corkagh Park, near Newlands Cross, is the headquarters of Baseball Ireland, who oversee a 10-team league and a blossoming youths set-up.

Build it and they will come. In 1994, Peter O'Malley, the owner and president of the Los Angeles Dodgers and a long-time player in Irish-American affairs, pledged $140,000 towards building a proper venue for baseball here. Two fields were officially opened for play on July 4th, 1998, a regulation-sized adult field and an international-standard Little League field.

"Peter O'Malley got the things in motion," says Tom Kelley, PRO for Baseball Ireland. "He got us the gift of these fields, and we've been able to maintain them and get the most use we can out of them.

"In 1998 we had four teams, now we have 10 teams. We have two in Belfast, one in Greystones, and all the rest are based here in Dublin.

"It's a very multicultural and multinational league," Kelley says. "It's mostly Irish, from the Dublin area. We have a few who come up from Cork and Limerick every once in a while, but we have Americans, Canadians, Japanese, Argentinians, Venezuelans, Cubans. So I think what you can get from that is that baseball is a very international sport. And yes, in Dublin there are people from all over the place playing baseball. We've got people from 16 to in their 40s playing."

Despite the small player base, Ireland are quickly establishing a strong presence on the international scene. In 1998, Ireland made the last eight in the European Championships in Austria. They hope to go further in Germany this August.

"As you know, baseball is an Olympic sport," Kelley says. "Europe is broken down to an A bracket and a B bracket, and the top two teams in the A qualify for the Olympics. So Ireland, right now, we're in the middle of the B pool. Our first international European qualifier was in '96, in Hull, England. In '98 we were in Vienna, 2000 we were in Croatia, 2002 we were in Sweden, and we're going to Germany this August."

Baseball Ireland also have an admirable policy towards the "granny rule".

"This year there are 23 members of the international team," Kelley says. "We have a policy that two-thirds of that have to be resident in Ireland, even if they have dual citizenship, like myself. For instance, if you have an Irish passport, and you live in Ohio, you could declare for Ireland and play international baseball. But our policy is two-thirds have to be resident. Because we could, theoretically, go and scour the major leagues for people who could have an Irish passport. But our ideal is to be successful but also develop the game in this country.

"But most of our pitchers are from the States," he admits. "It's a very skilled position."

Still, maybe somebody should give the Reds' Sean Casey a ring.

As the president of Baseball Ireland, Sean Mitchell, points out, funding, as with any minority sport, is always an issue. "Unfortunately a lot of the players have to chip in themselves for the national team," he says. "It would be great if we were in a position where we didn't have to do that. But the Olympic Council is actually quite good to us. They're very encouraged by the progress we've been making with the national team. We got some funding through from them which should cover about half the cost for the trip to Germany, so that takes some of the pressure off the players."

Mitchell is also keen to emphasise the work they're doing in developing the game at underage level.

"The youth level has really taken off. There's about 400 or 500 kids playing it now at this stage. We've just started a youths programme with the local schools here in Clondalkin, and that's going quite well. And there's teams down in Bray, there's a few up in Northern Ireland, around Dublin there's Cabinteely, Howth, so there's a few around the place. So that's been growing quite well, and obviously that's the future of the thing."

But this weekend the adults take centre stage.

"This is our third year to run the Dublin international tournament," Mitchell explains. "We have a team from California coming over, who have a lot of ex-college and ex-pro players. They're a lot of 30 and 40-year-olds, but they've played to a very high standard so they should be quite good. So we'll have our full international team out against these guys, and there will also be an All Star team made up from the league here. It's a very strong competition and we treat it very much as a preparatory thing for the European championships."

Take me out to the ball game.