Cobras and Raiders bring action back to the diamond

On any field in any country, few sports are as cinematic.

Fast balls, stolen bases and the ping of the aluminium filled the Bill Jardine Stadium on September 19. Maraisburg-based Cobras Baseball took the short drive across the N1 to take on familiar foes, Raiders, in the first action on the mound for many months. The season had been in full swing in the first quarter of 2021, but coronavirus cases across clubs brought an abrupt and frustrated end to proceedings.

Sunday’s friendly between neighbours was a good-spirited derby that took on more an atmosphere of a family get-together than a fierce fight for home plate ascendancy. For the unacquainted, ‘America’s pastime’ usually lasts for nine innings with three outs needed to alternate a team’s time at the plate. Innings can last as long as they need to so local sides put a 150-minute time limit on a match, playing as many innings as can be squeezed into those two-and-a-half hours.

On this latest return to the diamond, a total of seven-and-a-half innings were playable before the rusty swingers called time. Starting well, Cobras went into an early lead but Raiders quickly regained the upper hand, with smarter management of men on bases and taking advantage of some understandably erratic glove work in the outfield. Cobras pulled it back to five runs each by the end of the fifth innings, but the final two-and-a-half innings would be run fests with the dust eventually settling on a 13–10 Raiders win.

Both teams play under the Gauteng Province Baseball Council which include teams from the northern and eastern suburbs of Johannesburg. As with all sports, leagues are in disarray but with a passion for the sport and a desire to compete, more time at the base and in the outfield is on the horizon.