2038.1 Baseball comes to the Holy Land

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The dust seems to have, for the most part, settled on the creation of the UMEBA so its time to dig in to what happened. After years of groundwork with little to no fanfare, the brainchild of Barney Everhart and Brodie Burt was born. The surprise announcement of the impending creation of a baseball league centered in the middle east with the complete blessing and backing of the BBA happened late April 2036 in a press conference in Jerusalem. Peace had really only come to the region the year before so it was pretty shocking to see the haste with which the league was thrown together. No announcements had been made yet a year later in 2037 so no one could be blamed for not expecting what happened on June 23rd, 2037.

That fateful day marked the first professional baseball games for the newly birthed league with the eventual champions (albeit in a much abbreviated season) Manama taking down the Hammers in Jerusalem 5-1. At that point the league was off and running. Rather than wait until 2038 to go with a full league year schedule, league management decided to just dive right in and adjust things on the fly. No team had its own real stadium yet (although construction was well underway) so games were being played at any available venue near the host city. The league's financial structure was still in its infancy. Owners and management structure had yet to be figured out for all the teams so much of what happened was done under the watch of volunteer BBA GM's and their front offices. The relationships between the teams themselves were barely established leading to only a single trade happening leaguewide and even that trade was mostly made to just see if it could be made. Even the players themselves that played in the debut season were left in the dark. Many of the players were either BBA retirees who treated it as a paid vacation of sorts and/or "has beens" along with local "never weres" so to speak.

To nobody's surprise the baseball itself wasn't great but the league very quickly established a nice fan base. A lot of effort was put into creating a fun environment for the fans to build for the future (especially in Bucharest...) and it really seemed to strike home and bodes very well for the league going forward. As the 2038 season looms it seems that all 8 of UMEBA teams will actually be in their newly constructed parks with better players, better coaches, better financial structure and a full league calendar to look forward to. Exciting times!