{"id":386733,"date":"2025-08-31T07:13:14","date_gmt":"2025-08-31T07:13:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/386733\/"},"modified":"2025-08-31T07:13:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-31T07:13:14","slug":"how-softball-is-helping-combat-loneliness-in-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/386733\/","title":{"rendered":"How softball is helping combat loneliness in London"},"content":{"rendered":"

Emilia Martinez-BarnfatherBBC News, Wandsworth Common<\/p>\n

\"BBCBBC<\/p>\n

Softball games are played in London’s parks every night of the week during summer<\/p>\n

When Dom Kleeman and her husband moved from the US, they had an isolated start to their new life in London.<\/p>\n

“We moved over in the pandemic – we didn’t know anybody,” said Ms Keeman.<\/p>\n

Since then, the couple have formed their social circle on a diamond-shaped pitch, by joining a local softball team.<\/p>\n

And like nearly 5,000 Londoners who play the sport each week, they have found a welcoming, inclusive community as well as a healthy hobby.<\/p>\n

“We found MI6 (softball club) and they took us in,” said Ms Keeman.<\/p>\n

“Softball for us and for me became my social circle – it’s super social, everyone’s really friendly with each other.<\/p>\n

“I’m so grateful that I’ve found this community because it is my community in London. So, yeah, we are really lucky.”<\/p>\n

\"Dom<\/p>\n

Dom Kleeman and her husband started playing softball to meet new people<\/p>\n

Softball originated in the US more than a century ago and has two formats – fastpitch and slowpitch – the latter being more popular in the UK.<\/p>\n

Different rules in slowpitch, including how the ball is thrown, allow for the sport to be mixed-sex (co-ed), which players cite as one of its main draws.<\/p>\n

Duncan Waugh, who plays for MI6 and National Softball League team Legends, said: “It’s unique because if you go back to the States, it’s a very single-sex-driven game, just guys playing guys and girls playing girls.<\/p>\n

“Over here, because of the balance of that it adds different strategy, different tactics and different levels of value across the board.”<\/p>\n

“You really get that sense of community from men and women playing together,” said Gelske Huyer, who plays for Greater London Softball Mixed League (GLSML) Division 1 team MI6.<\/p>\n

For Ms Huyer, who also plays for Legends, the co-ed aspect “creates an atmosphere of quality and tolerance”.<\/p>\n

She added it was “very important to give people an outlet for competition in adulthood”.<\/p>\n

“There’s competition and levels available for everybody – from novices to seasoned players – and the competition and camaraderie are high,” she said. <\/p>\n

\"Gelske<\/p>\n

Ms Huyer says she’s played softball with people from “every imaginable background”<\/p>\n

According to David Peters, who plays for the Fuzzy Ducks team, it is not just the gender balance that makes the sport feel so inclusive.<\/p>\n

“In most sports, by the time you’re over 35 or something, you’re certainly in the autumn of your playing days,” he said. <\/p>\n

“The great thing about this is there’s people playing a decent standard well into their 50s.”<\/p>\n

He added the softball scene in London was a “really welcoming community”.<\/p>\n

Softball rules<\/p>\n

While softball shares similarities with baseball, there are some key differences. <\/p>\n

Softball is played with a bigger ball, and the ball is thrown underhand rather than overhand as in baseball. <\/p>\n

The “diamond” (area of play) in softball is smaller in softball, with bases being 60ft (18.28m) rather than 90ft (27.43m) apart. <\/p>\n

And softball games have fewer innings than baseball, with seven rather than nine.<\/p>\n

\"Players<\/p>\n

The London Softball League has six divisions with games played weekly from April to August<\/p>\n

John Boyd, CEO of BaseballSoftballUK (BSUK), said softball had also “captured a lot of the corporate psyche” in London.<\/p>\n

“If anyone wants to walk through Regents Park, you’ll see 19 fields of softball being used for teams playing across many different corporate leagues,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Because it’s a mixed sport – it’s genuinely 50\/50 – it creates a very positive environment for the workplace and from a social perspective too.”<\/p>\n

Inclusion is a key part of BSUK’s strategy, Mr Boyd said. <\/p>\n

A few years ago, the agency set up an LGBTQ+ panel to look at evolving the sport into something “more modern than a binary-gender based game”. <\/p>\n

He added: “[The panel] came up with this set of rules called ‘inclusive’ softball rules.<\/p>\n

“That helped promote not just the two genders, but wider involvement from across the whole of the spectrum.”<\/p>\n

Those rules have since been adopted “widely across the sport”, meaning players are categorised as “small ball hitters” and “big ball hitters” rather than men and women, he explained.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emilia Martinez-BarnfatherBBC News, Wandsworth Common BBC Softball games are played in London’s parks every night of the week…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386735,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,393,4884,257,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-386733","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-london","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386733\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}