The Baseball and Softball Club Mainz Athletics 1988 e.V., commonly referred to as Mainz Athletics, is a German baseball and softball club located in the city of

Mainz Mainz (; #Names and etymology, see below) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, and with around 223,000 inhabitants, it is List of cities in Germany by population, Germany's 35th-largest city. It lies in ...

Rhineland-Palatinate Rhineland-Palatinate ( , ; ; ; ) is a western state of Germany. It covers and has about 4.05 million residents. It is the ninth largest and sixth most populous of the sixteen states. Mainz is the capital and largest city. Other cities are ...

. The Athletics, along with Regensburg Legionäre, is one of the largest clubs in the Baseball-Bundesliga Süd in terms of membership, claiming to have hundreds of active players. The club has played in the Baseball-Bundesliga for more than two decades, winning the German Championship in the 2007 and 2016 season.

History

The team was established in 1988 as a split of the Mainz Rangers and played its first games in 1989 under the name Mainz Athletics. This name was chosen because, amongst the founders of the club, none of them had the

Oakland Athletics The Oakland Athletics (frequently referred to as the Oakland A's) were an American Major League Baseball (MLB) team based in Oakland, California from 1968 to 2024. The Athletics were a member club of the American League (AL) American League We ...

as their favorite team, so the nickname Athletics was selected.

Season by season performance (1st Bundesliga)

Ballpark

The Mainz Athletics played their home games at Sandflora Ballpark between 1988 and 2010. The field is located between the neighborhoods of Mombach and Gonsenheim, an area that was previously the grounds of an American military installation. Sandflora comprised a baseball and a softball field, both of which were occupied by the Athletics. Since the fields overlap, games could be played on both fields at the same time. The Bundesliga All-Star Game and the

European Cup The UEFA Champions League (UCL) is an annual club association football competition organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) that is contested by top-division European clubs. The competition begins with a round robi ...

were held at the Sandflora several times. The field also hosted the 1999 Junior European Championship and in the inaugural 2002 Softball All Star Game. The field lies in a residential neighborhood, so because a field can become loud during games, the Athletics had to find a new place to play. In 2011 the club played their first game in a new ballpark along the Hartmühlenweg, about 500 meters east of the former facility. Official page for new park File:Sandflora Baseball Park 2.jpg, Sandflora Baseball Park, stands overlooking third base line, April 2010 File:Sandflora Baseball Park 3.jpg, Sandflora Baseball Park, April 2010 File:Sandflora Baseball Park 4.jpg, Sandflora Baseball Park, Athletics mural, April 2010 File:Sandflora Baseball Park 1.jpg, Sandflora Baseball Park, baseball field in background, softball field in foreground, April 2010

References

External links

Official Page (German)
{{coord, 50.009, N, 8.226, E, source:dewiki, display=title Baseball teams in Germany Athletics Organisations based in Mainz