The Australian Baseball League (ABL) is a professional baseball league in Australia. The league is governed by the Australian Baseball Federation (ABF), and is jointly funded by the ABF, Major League Baseball (MLB) and the Australian Federal Government. It uses the same name as a now defunct competition held during the 1990s, and though it shares some history of the original league with the Claxton Shield awarded to winners of both competitions, it is considered to be a separate competition.
The current champions are the Perth Heat, having won the 2011–12 season by defeating the Melbourne Aces two games to one in the championship series, after also defeating the same team in the major semi-final series. In doing so, they successfully defended their championship from the previous season, and remain the only team to be ABL Champions under the current version of the league.
Because the ABL's season takes place from November through February, the ABL has several players who also play in the minor leagues in North America, making it a winter league (although it is summer in Australia when the season takes place.)
Read more about Australian Baseball League: Organisation, Media Coverage, Current Teams
Famous quotes containing the words australian, baseball and/or league:
“Beyond the horizon, or even the knowledge, of the cities along the coast, a great, creative impulse is at work—the only thing, after all, that gives this continent meaning and a guarantee of the future. Every Australian ought to climb up here, once in a way, and glimpse the various, manifold life of which he is a part.”
—Vance Palmer (1885–1959)
“It is not heroin or cocaine that makes one an addict, it is the need to escape from a harsh reality. There are more television addicts, more baseball and football addicts, more movie addicts, and certainly more alcohol addicts in this country than there are narcotics addicts.”
—Shirley Chisholm (b. 1924)
“Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward the Light Brigade!”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)