On Easter Sunday, the people of Schwechat should have been swinging their racquets on the new facility for the first time. However, the premiere in the first Bundesliga game fell through. A part of the playing field, the so-called “pitching mound”, i.e. the hitting mound, was dimensioned too large.
“An embarrassing situation,” club chairman Phil Weller described the moment before the game started. “We’ll fix it by the next home game in a week,” Weller had to apologize to the guests from Traiskirchen, who eventually had to travel home. “But they didn’t take it badly at all.”
According to Weller, the encounter will be rescheduled at a later date. The association announced in a press release that a decision on the rating of this game is still pending.
The day before, the two teams had dueled in Traiskirchen. The Braustadt team quickly fell behind by 0:7, but soon found themselves back into the game. In the end, the Grasshoppers had just won with 14:10. “We will always get the maximum out of ourselves in the future. It will be a successful season,” Weller also relies on the experiences of legionnaires Matthew Neil Jensen (pitcher and shortstop) and Spencer Muirhead (catcher and infielder). You recently joined the club. Both played in colleges in Canada and the United States respectively: Jensen in Toronto and Muirhead in Washington State.
In addition, the talented young players Felix Stephan, Tim Gruber and Nicolas Niederl should be given more opportunities. “Last season it was a slow approach, now they’ve gotten bigger and more experienced.”
The Blue Bats will now also celebrate the opening of the facility with the upcoming Saturday game, which was advertised in advance as the official season opener with musical accompaniment. Guests are the Wiener Neustädter Diving Ducks. Game starts at 1 p.m.
