Baseball
Norwood has also hosted Baseball since 1951 with the South Australian Baseball team being tenants until 1988. Between 1951 and 1988 Norwood Oval hosted the Claxton Shield competition on six occasions (1951, 1956, 1961, 1966, 1971, 1976 and 1981) with the winners being NSW (1951), Victoria (1956 and 1981) and SA (1961, `66, `71 and `76).
The original Australian Baseball League (ABL) started in 1989 with Adelaide represented by the Adelaide Giants. The ABL ran from 1989 until it folded in 1999 with the Giants playing all of their home games at Norwood Oval with most being under lights. During their time in the ABL the Giants were affiliated, as were every other team in the league, with a team from Major League Baseball. In a massive coup the Giants managed to get themselves affiliated with the 1988 World Series champions the Los Angeles Dodgers with the team receiving 3-4 'import players' a season from the Dodgers Minor League system to compliment their array of 'local' talent. Unfortunately during the ABL the Giants never made the ABL's championship series.
Following the collapse of the ABL after 1999 and the short lived International Baseball League of Australia (IBLA) which ran from 1999-2000 until the 2002 the Claxton Shield was revived in 2003 with South Australia playing their games at the Thebarton Oval before moving back to Norwood Oval in 2009.
In August 2010 it was announced that there would be a new Australian Baseball League and that Coopers Stadium would be the home ground of Adelaide Bite, the team representing Adelaide in the ABL.
As of February 2012 Norwood Oval's field dimensions for baseball are:
Left Field - 320 feet (98 m)
Centre Field - 390 feet (120 m)
Right Field - 290 feet (88 m)
Read more about this topic: Norwood Oval
Famous quotes containing the word baseball:
“How, in one short century, has this ersatz sport so strangled the consciousness of the country in the grip of its flabby tentacles that the mention of women’s baseball gets no reaction other than blank amazement?”
—Darlene Mehrer, As quoted in Women in Baseball. Ch. 6, by Gai Ingham Berlage (1994)
“Compared to football, baseball is almost an Oriental game, minimizing individual stardom, requiring a wide range of aggressive and defensive skills, and filled with long periods of inaction and irresolution. It has no time limitations. Football, on the other hand, has immediate goals, resolution on every single play, and a lot of violence—itself a highlight. It has clearly distinguishable hierarchies: heroes and drones.”
—Jerry Mander, U.S. advertising executive, author. Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, ch. 15, Morrow (1978)
“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)