The Emerald Diamond

THE EMERALD DIAMOND
The story of Ireland's National Baseball Team

Baseball has been played in Ireland since the early 1990s. The Irish National Team made its debut in the 1996 European Championships in England. Today, baseball is played throughout the country - the National Team is based in Dublin and youth baseball is played in Cork, Kerry, Port Stewart and Greystones.

"The Emerald Diamond" is a 90-minute documentary about the Irish National Baseball Team. The film debuted to a sold out crowd in New York on February 25, 2006 and has been seen in 30 theaters in the US as well as screenings in Dublin and County Cork. It has been featured by The New York Times, New York Post, FoxNews, USA Today, Chicago Tribune and National Public Radio. The Emerald Diamond is now available on DVD.




Important Timecodes in this video:

0:00 - American Mike Kindle sees an Irish Softball Association bumpersticker while walking through Dublin in the early 1990s. The seeds for the Irish National Team is planted.

1:00 - Kindle assembles a ragtag group of Irish natives and American expatriates with little or no baseball experience. They teach themselves the rules and play on rugby and soccer fields in the rain. They have no uniforms and very little equipment.

4:00 - Ireland competes in the 1996 European Championships where they will be destroyed by teams with sketchy baseball pedigrees, including the Czech Republic,Norway, Poland and Lithuania.

6:00 - The first hit in Irish National Team history was by Gus Hernandez - a Mexican who gained Irish citizenship by marrying an Irish woman. Hernandez is immediately picked off first base and the Irish lose their first game by a score of 23-2.

11:30 - Dodgers owner Peter O'Malley donates hundreds of thousands of dollars to build the first real baseball fields in Ireland.

18:00 - The Irish head to the European Championships with a new player from New York. The team loses all of its luggage during a connecting flight. They appear at the Opening Ceremonies in T-shirts and shorts.

24:30 - After losing their first 3 games at the 2000 Euros, the Irish get drunk at the field the night before a game. They somehow win the next morning's game, their only victory of the tournament.

30:15 - The Irish National Team visits Fenway Park for an exhibition game against a local amateur team.

31:40 - A group of Cubans defects to Ireland and finds their way to the baseball fields that were built by Peter O'Malley.

35:35 - A look at baseball in Belfast, Northern Ireland, including a story about how Kindle and his Irish teammates accidentally drove into a Protestant parade and were interrogated by the police for being in the wrong place in uniforms with weapons (baseball bats).

41:00 - A group of Americans try to teach baseball to Irish kids in County Cork and Dublin.