Owen Reid, who next season will suit up as a player/coach for the Feldkirch Cardinals (BBL) has just written an article for his hometown newspaper about his summer in Europe and with the Wanderers.

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Owen Reid is the son of Bill and Regina Reid and is a 2005 graduate of Moberly High School.  In May of 2009 he graduated from Winthrop University (Rock Hill, South Carolina) where he earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Mass Communication and a minor in Spanish while on a baseball scholarship.      

Some people jump right into the “real world” after they graduate from college.  I suppose I am privileged to say that I am not one of those people.  Although I am not the typical graduate who mixed right into a Fortune 500 company, started his own business or is still “trying to find himself,” I think I have a pretty unique and fascinating story to tell. 

Upon graduating from Winthrop University in May of 2009, I was given the opportunity to play baseball in the Austrian Baseball League.  Less than two weeks after my collegiate season was finished and my NCAA Division I Baseball eligibility was exhausted, I left the United States and headed to Vienna, Austria to join the SUPERFUND Wanderers for the 2009 ABL season.

Though I’ve traveled quite a bit in the Americas and surrounding islands (the Dominican Republic, Alaska, the Bahamas and México to name a few), I hadn’t ever been to Europe.  Consequently, flying from the United States to Switzerland and then on to Vienna was quite an experience.  After a long day of traveling, I landed in Central Europe in what would be home for the ensuing five months.  That alone was an eerie thought since I had never spent more than a ten-day period outside of the U.S. 

The first month of my European experience involved acclimating to the cultural differences I would be encountering over the next four months, and this was rather interesting at times.  From learning a sufficient amount of the German language to interact on a day-to-day basis, to using public transportation or a bicycle as my way to navigate in Austria’s capital city, some of the changes I had to make were significant for a 23-year-old Midwesterner.

On the baseball diamond, however, I was still playing the same game.  As one might imagine, baseball isn’t too much different in Austria than it is anywhere else in the world.  Fielders use gloves, hitters use bats and umpires call balls and strikes…sometimes.  It’s baseball.  Another commonality is that English is the language on the field, and this proved to be vital for me during the first part of my stint in Austria when German fit the perfect description as a foreign language for me.  Austrian German is a very unique dialect that strongly resembles the German language.  With the assistance of my teammates and some first-hand embarrassment, I gradually picked up on it.     

The shift from playing four years of NCAA Division I Baseball to playing in the Austrian Baseball League was the easiest I had to make in going from continent to continent.  My team was made up of 16 Austrians, a Canadian, a Slovakian, a South African, our Japanese player-coach and myself, the only American.  Like nearly every other European nation that plays baseball, our weekly schedule was rather nominal compared to American teams, as we practiced three times a week and played double-headers every Saturday against an ABL foe.  This made for a lot of individual practice time, but also some one-on-one instruction with our player-coach, who also doubled as my roommate.  My housing arrangement couldn’t have been much better as I was situated right at the field.  The club provided a house for our player-coach and me and this setup worked perfectly.  I was a baseball’s throw from the left field foul line, which gave a very literal meaning to the term “home game.”  I enjoyed having one of Austria’s finest baseball diamonds as my front yard. 

As the season shook out, our squad was hands down the best in the country, and we validated this by winning the 2009 Austrian Baseball League Championship with ease.  We blitzed through the playoffs without losing a game and earned the club’s first ABL Championship in two decades as we marched to the beat of a 29-5 record.  The coolest part of my entire baseball experience in Austria was that I was able to pitch, play the infield and hit, just like I did as a high school player.  After four years of top level NCAA Division I Baseball competition, it was nice to be more than just a pitcher again.  Fielding groundballs, taking batting practice and being in the lineup every game was a nice change of pace that I relished for the duration of my spell in Austria.   

In addition to my season with the Wanderers, I spent a week in Prague, Czech Republic with the Austrian National Team, competing in the annual Prague Baseball Week, a five-day series of games between European national teams.  I competed against such countries as Croatia, the Czech Republic, Russia and Sweden and this is when everything began to sink in with me.  I was an American playing for the Austrian National Team in the Czech Republic against other European nations.  Talk about cultural diversity!   Although it was a bizarre feeling, I was proud to represent the United States of America even though I was in an “Austria” jersey.  It was ironic for sure. 

Thanks to our limited baseball schedule, I was able to make the most of my free time with an abundance of sightseeing, traveling and, of course, learning.  During my 145 days in Central Europe, I visited ten different countries, interacted in an array of worldly vernaculars and took in more history than someone studying the subject in school.  In conjunction with my travels was the cultural aspect of my adventure.  Since my roommate/coach/teammate was from Japan, I was privy to learning bits and pieces of his native tongue throughout our five months of daily interaction.  Additionally, being in a country where the national language is German, I had no choice but to teach myself some of the language.  Thankfully, I figured out a system with my close friends and teammates for which I would teach them slang English, or “American,” phrases in exchange for some basic German words or expressions.  Furthermore, I was able to apply my extensive Spanish vocabulary not only when I traveled to Barcelona, Spain, but also amongst the dense Latino population in Vienna.  It was comforting and definitely made me feel worldly being able to interact in more than just English.

In the grand scheme of things, traveling is just another way to pass time.  Families take vacations to Europe to explore its culture and history.  College students spend semesters abroad to earn credit while staying in another country.  There are even those who go across the world for a new job.  But traveling to Europe to play a game that has consumed an entire lifetime for one young Midwesterner isn’t just another trip.  During my five months in Central Europe, I was exposed to more cultural experiences than some people get in an entire lifetime.  This was an epic excursion for me that will forever be engrained within me.  For right now, the “real world” can wait.      

Reid’s next adventure will take him to Auckland, New Zealand, where he will be a baseball instructor with the Central City Baseball Club.  In April he will return to Austria to play for and coach the Feldkirch Cardinals, a team located in The Alps of western Austria.  He can be reached via email at Diese E-Mail Adresse ist gegen Spam Bots geschützt, du musst Javascript aktivieren, damit du sie sehen kannst .