I was in Haar, a Munich suburb, to watch the Haar Disciples host the Regensburg Legionäre. Regensburg won the first game, but Haar came back to take the second: http://www.baseball-bundesliga.de/spiele/?date=05-01

I also took a few pictures...

I know it's only spring training, but still.....

From the article: Enclosed in a letter to the SBDA received last week was a generous donation made by the Chicago Cubs... ...The Cubs representative also enclosed a letter which stated that this donation was made on behalf of the Samardzija brothers, Jeff and Sam...

Recently two articles in Baseball America and ESPN.com shed some light on the future of International Baseball...

The rise of the Netherlands into the top 5 represents a milestone for European baseball developemnt with a total of 7 teams in the top 25.

The top ten are:

* Cuba
* United States
* Korea
* Japan
* Netherlands
* Canada
* Chinese Taipei
* Venezuela
* Puerto Rico
* Mexico

And Germany moved up two places to 17th.

From the article: ...according to the Confederation of European Baseball, the number of competitive European baseball players has surged from 18,133 in 1970 to 112,303 in 2010...

Does anyone know how actively the Cubs are scouting in Europe?

This sounds very cool to me. I wish I had known about it ahead of time, because I would have loved to watch them play.

....And, now, some big league ballplayers.

This is the second "Cubs organisation" in Europe I've stumbled across.

Their webpage is in German.

The Stock City Cubs finished the 2011 season 13 games back (6th place) and played .357 ball.

...In March this year the municipality hosted a press conference about the newly to be built stadium and the ambition to open it ceremonially in 2014 with the first official MLB games in Europe. MLB delegate in Europe Clive Russell came from his office in London to the Netherlands, in order to describe the plans in cooperation between Amsterdam and Hoofddorp as "pole position for the Netherlands"...

Also, if interested, see: Major League Baseball Europe on Facebook and Europeans in the USA at Mister Baseball.

The season is now over for the Coburg Cubs and with an 8-4 record, they are in second place in the Bavarian Bezirksliga Nord (Herren). The final standings will not be certain for another couple of weeks, as other teams still have games to play.

Coburg Cubs in German.

BTW: The German Baseball Bundesliga playoffs have started: http://baseball-deutschland.de/ (in German)