The Southampton Mustangs have begun the 2025/2026 season academic season with open tryouts for the university team, welcoming a variety of players, ranging from those who have played the sport before to those who are complete novices.
Despite this, sports such as football and rugby continue to dominate universities throughout the UK. Infact, the Mustangs are just one of 25 registered baseball or softball university programmes.
So why does baseball struggle to grow in the UK:
Like most sports, baseball is costly and requires specialized facilities such as batting cages or pitching mounds which arent common in the UK
There aren’t enough volunteers who coach the game to younger people. The abscence in schools struggles to give the game a platform to develop
The development of existing sports such as football, rugby or tennis will naturally be more appealing to people in the Uk
There aren’t teams or a national identity with the sport. Baseball rarely comes to the UK and when it does people don’t feel a sense of belonging to a particular team.
However, Southampton Mustangs pitcher Dan Myrmell has played baseball all over the globe and is now passing on his invaluable knowledge to those who are begining their baseball journey.
He said: “I love the game, I’ve played my whole life, if i can pass on some of the knowledge that i’ve picked up along the years and grow the game in the uk even if its just to some of my teamates then thats great becasuse it’s just not as big here, it doesn’t have the exposure, funding so any bit from me i guess helps. if we can get people in earlier, followed by more money then we can see a gradual change in popularity over time.
Dan also believes more exposure of the sport in the UK, recreationally is the key to establishing greater popularity of the sport.
“To actually grow the game it just needs more coverage. Yes its origins are from America but it’s now a global game. all of South America play, it’s massive in Asia and Australia has a league, if we can get just a level of competetiveness slighltly better than it’s now, you start to get better players at a younger age who develop a hunger and want to go to the states for college which will just improve them. The more success at grassroots level the more development youll get.”
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