Interview with the founders of Grand Slam Baseball: Gurmat Raunaq and Jackson Golden

GSM co-founder Jackson along with the budding Indian Baseball players

Baseball is a one of the lesser known sport in the Indian subcontinent. This sport has the religion like following in Northern Part of the American continent and Japan too. In India, the sport is limited to the diplomatic community schools around the embassies. Though there is a Baseball Federation in India, but there has not been any significant initiative to take this game to the grass root level. Finally, two passionate Baseball players have taken the onus of popularizing this game in India. In a very short period of time, they have been able to garner support from the likes of the US embassy and UN.

GSB is still in the nascent stage but their intent is clear and it would not be long before we will be asking for tickets to see the home runs of our homegrown talents. We managed to get the two to answer our queries regarding GSB and New Delhi Little Leagues. Here is the interview:

What was your inspiration behind starting the GSB?

Grand Slam Baseball is the brainchild of two baseball enthusiasts. Founders, Gurmat Raunaq Sahni, and Jackson Golden had been playing baseball in India for over 15 years. During their time, the sport was played mainly at the American Community Support Association field, India’s only baseball facility located inside the US Embassy.

In the years before Grand Slam baseball was conceptualized, strict security norms at the US Embassy discouraged participation from local players. Hence, the majority of the players in the league were American, Canadian and Japanese expats.

The founders’ passion for baseball and their dream of making baseball the next big sport in India led to the birth of Grand Slam Baseball. The initiative was an attempt to bring the sport closer to the hearts of young Indians. They dreamt of growing the popularity of the sport in India by transforming the base of players from a niche expat community to the masses.

To achieve this dream, they not only created an inter-cultural baseball community but also one where players from different backgrounds come together to represent the true value of sports. Not only has Grand Slam Baseball introduced the sport to three renowned three private schools in Delhi but it has also set up sponsored baseball programs several government schools too.

New Delhi Little League, Grand Slam Baseball’s flagship league will have around 100 expat players, 100 private school players and 80 government school players this season. The United Nations declared us as a sports venture that truly addresses the message of “unity through sports” and has chosen Grand Slam Baseball to be its partner in celebrating their 70th Anniversary in Delhi on 24th October 2015.

Do you believe in a cricket crazy nation like India, Baseball has a future?

Absolutely! Both the co-founders grew up playing both, cricket and baseball. Even though baseball isn’t exactly the same as cricket, both the sports have a lot of similarities. The bat and ball dynamic will always appeal to an Indian because he learned how to hold a cricket bat and throw a ball the day he was born.

Cricket will undoubtedly be the dominant sport in India for a long time but due to the immense amount of competition in the sport, younger generations are realizing that taking up other sports is a smarter option.

We can feel that shift in schools already. Cricket teams in schools have grown so big that kids hardly get any opportunities to play in matches. As a result, they are now choosing to excel at sports where they get opportunities to make the first team.However, that isn’t the only reason why we believe baseball has a future.

A big part of Grand Slam Baseballs model is not only to promote the sport but to develop a professional sporting culture at schools and colleges. The most attractive feature of our business model has been to create exceptionally professional standards for youth leagues. To fulfill that objective we have created school baseball brands such as the Modern School “Warriors” to create brand loyalty and build excitement.

Our league games have live commentary and stats tracking. The venues have great F&B services and side attractions. We have built a strong social media presence where we promote our players so that baseball becomes trendy at schools.

All these features have thereby attracted the players’ parents and friends to come out and attend the games. It’s very encouraging for players to see an audience and hear their names being announced on the speakers along with entrance music.

India has created some great professional leagues but has failed to link these professional leagues to strong youth programs. How often is it that you see a well-marketed school or college league in India that could be at power with the standards of the NCAA or the Little League in the United States? Grand Slam Baseball’s model seeks to create such standards for youth sports in India and set a benchmark for all other youth sports programs.

What’s the response been like in the schools till now?

The response from the players has been overwhelming. Grand Slam Baseball is so confident in its program that it has started offering a one-month promotional trial to schools. We provide them free instruction, world-class equipment and even free league enrollment for a month. They can make a decision after they have tested our product.

Within one year, we were able to create 100 baseball players at Modern School, New Delhi alone. These players have started living and breathing baseball. We have even started seeing exceptional talent bloom at the school. Players that might even end up playing at the semi-professional level internationally. That is a big deal considering that the program is relatively new and that there is no well-established pro-league in India to support the sport.

Keep in mind that these results have been achieved despite the fact that Modern School has not listed baseball as an official sports program. There is a lot of resistance from physical education departments at schools because they don’t take baseball seriously.

Moreover, as the old in-house physical education departments at schools are being replaced by professional sports academies, sports teachers fear losing their jobs. We are not allowed to run recruitment camps at the school and we receive no assistance from the physical education department at these schools. Rather the PE departments are at constant war with us to shut us down. We are only allowed to run practices before school or after school, not during PE periods. As a result, the players we get are only through word of mouth promotion.

Players who are part of our program encourage their friends to join the team. But it works better for us that way. It would be chaotic to manage more than 100 kids. We would then be contradicting our own words by taking on more kids than we can accommodate. We would be discouraging kids by giving them less playing opportunities.

The Modern School “Warriors” is our oldest brand and we have seen the program evolve in just one year. We have realized something very special that we want to build on in the future. The “Warriors” has now become a highly respected entity for our players.

Through the brand, we have started focusing on character building skills. We make the players feel like a place in the “Warriors” must be earned. It can be earned not by your baseball ability but by your attitude on and off the field. Being punctual, receptive, well-mannered and displaying qualities of leadership make a ‘Warrior”.

The whole model has worked very positively for the players. We have seen players become much more responsible not only for themselves but also for the rest of the team. The seniors make an extra effort to help out the juniors. There is a sense of family within the team. Their code of conduct must be carried beyond the field into the daily life as well. We are trying to polish these players to become respectable brand ambassadors for baseball. They love to be treated as mature individuals.

The other great thing about the program is that we have been able to get the players’ friends and family involved. Keeping parents updated about their kid’s performance through regular feedback and encouraging them to attend all the games has been a game-changing strategy. This way we can teach the sport not only to kids but also to an older generation that would not have taken up the daunting challenge of learning a new sport at such a late age if it weren’t their kids playing.

What were the main hurdles you both faced in setting up Grand Slam Baseball?

The first hurdle we faced was building a critical mass. When we started the program we didn’t have a league or a venue. We had no players. No local school was playing baseball. It was hard during the first few months to get the first set of players interested. However, after the first few months everything started falling into place. We got the offer to manage New Delhi Little League, which was suffering from poor enrollment numbers at the time.

The next challenge for us was to get a local school on board to increase enrollment. Pleasing physical education departments at schools was very tough. A lot of the old established schools in India have a very slow and bureaucratic decision-making process. You need approvals from several people. When you are a new firm trying to promote a sport no one has heard about, it becomes a lot tougher. We somehow convinced Modern School, Barakhamba to let us run a month-long free trial program at their school. After that first month, the kids were hooked.

Another tough challenge for us has been finding venues for our games. Currently, we run our games at the US Embassy’s baseball field and on the cricket fields of the few local schools where our programs run. However, we are desperately in search of a new facility now. We are seeking to promote a professional environment for our games so we need to build a professional baseball stadium. One which has a proper infield turf and a backstop.

The other challenge that we face is that the baseball federation in India hasn’t taken an initiative to better the standards of the game in the country. The Amateur Baseball Federation has been operational since 1983. That’s more than 30 years. We still don’t have a single baseball facility in India and all the state baseball organizations lack proper equipment and funding. The federation is almost a political dictatorship, where the top administrators misuse their positions for personal gain. Having a strong federation to support initiatives like ours would have really accelerated the growth of baseball in India.

Do you think that Baseball being similar to cricket (in appearance only) will find a footing eventually?

The similarity in appearance to cricket will definitely help baseball in its initial growth. The bat and ball dynamic raises a feeling of inquisitiveness among Indians. We ran a research to support this assertion early last year. Since we were not allowed to run an official recruitment program at Modern School, we made a few of our coaches play baseball on the side while Modern School’s cricket practice was going on. A lot the of the cricket players’ on the field came to us to try their hand at baseball thinking that it was similar to cricket.

However, after a few weeks when the recruitment process was over, baseball was considered a separate entity. People realized that even though both the games were similar in appearance, they both are played with very different mindsets. The prerequisite skills are the same. Hand-eye coordination, throwing ability and even the way a ball is caught is similar to some degree. However, the psychology behind both games is very different. Baseball is more about minimizing risk and thinking about situations ahead of the play. In Cricket, slightly more risk can be taken and players need to make fielding decisions after the ball is in play. Even though baseball will be considered similar to cricket during the early stages, people will eventually realize that it’s a completely different ball game altogether.

How is US embassy involved in this initiative?

The US Embassy has been very supportive of our initiative. Although they themselves don’t have much to do with Indian baseball or with the New Delhi Little League, they have given us the platform and tools to consolidate our programs. The biggest support was the American Community Support Association baseball field that we are allowed to use for free. The other thing that has helped us is that they have made the ground more accessible to local players. The current US ambassador Richard Verma and the former ambassador Mulford were both present for the closing ceremony last year. Both of them are big baseball, enthusiasts. You can watch their interviews and our promo video below:

Are there any plans to organize a national level Baseball competition in future?

Yes, we definitely have our eyes on the big game. However, we want to lay down a strong foundation first. Several professional leagues have spurred in India over the past few years. Even though we will be competing with them soon, our main goal for now is to build something sustainable. We don’t want to have a capital intensive and glamorous league on one end of the spectrum without having a strong youth program to complement it.

We have chosen a bottom-up approach, something that makes our venture unique. Our first priority is to create strong school and college leagues in cities and to link all of them to a national youth league. Only after we have a strong network of youth leagues will we consider organizing a professional baseball league. It’s going to take around 5 years.

Tell us about the partnership with New Delhi Little league?

The New Delhi Little League is Grand Slam Baseball’s flagship league. The league was established more than 30 years ago, but there was very limited participation because of the strict security procedures at the American Embassy. Since the league was contained within the premises of the embassy, the sport failed to get exposure among the local community. The league only had around 60 expat players and 20 local players when Grand Slam Baseball took over it.

Last year, Grand Slam Baseball was given the responsibility of managing the league. Owing to the founders’ dream of promoting the sport among more Indian kids, Grand Slam Baseball set up baseball programs at several local schools and enrolled these school teams in the New Delhi Little League. This year New Delhi Little League will have more than 250 participants. This expansion was achieved in a year. By next season, Grand Slam Baseball is planning to expand to ten new schools and we are also thinking about signing a long-term lease for a field in Delhi to set up another baseball stadium for a league games.

Where do you see GSB in next five years?

It would be wrong to be sure about where we will be in the next 5 years. Like any other firm, we will need to make strategic changes along the way. We may even have to change the entire model owing to the situation that we are in.

However, we have set objectives for each year. Our objective for the first year is to set up a successful pilot project. By next year, we want to expand to 10 new schools in Delhi. Our second objective is to use your pilot project to secure funding and replicate the model in other metropolitans in India. By the third year, we plan to set up a national school league and hope to get all our school leagues accredited by USA based universities.

We want to do that so that we can create incentives for players who want to pursue their undergraduate education abroad. We have started talking to universities and Major League Baseball teams to establish scouting programs for them in India in the future. Players with exceptional talent will have opportunities study at US-based universities that have the world’s best college baseball programs. Our final goal that we aim to accomplish by the fifth year is to set up a professional league that will be strongly linked to our school and college programs.

Setting up leagues is not all we are thinking about. We wish to make Grand Slam Baseball the sole authority of all things baseball in India. We have been in talks with Mizuno and other baseball equipment brands to become sole distributors for their goods. We are thinking about setting up local and international summer camps. We are taking a team of players to a summer camp in the USA next summer. We are also about to start producing and selling merchandise for the school brands that we have created. This will include caps, promotional t-shirts, baseball cards etc.

Do you follow sportskeeda.com? We have an app too now.

Both the co-founders follow sportskeeda.com on Facebook. We’ll definitely download the app too.