Slavic Baseball Brotherhood
| Slavic Baseball Brotherhood (SBB) | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Sport | Baseball |
| Founded | April 3, 1942 |
| Inaugural Season | 1942 |
| Commissioner | Philemon Andrejew |
| No. of teams | 16 |
| Country | Slavic Union |
| Current Season | 2021-22 SBB Season |
The Slavic Baseball Brotherhood is a professional baseball organization.
History
Founding
For decades in the Slavic Union baseball was a fringe sport, with multiple leagues trying and failing to establish themselves. In 1940 Nikifor Osipov established himself as the nation's dictator, Osipov was a major fan baseball, and poached top teams from several other leagues to form the Slavic Baseball Brotherhood, the league's eight teams where some of the best in all of baseball (Save for the Vozhds, which was Osipov's personal team), those teams were the Chetsk Commanders, Ivanovgrad Predators, Kalyov Emeralds, Korogarsk Kings, Osipov Steelhounds, Osipovgrad Vozhds, Sosovrov Whitehawks, Zhukovgrad Hornets.
Early Days
The early SBB, despite Nikifor Osipov's efforts to load the Vozhds with top talent, was very even, with no team managing to dominate the league up until the mid 50's to early 60's, where the Osipovgrad Steelhounds won the Vozhd's Crown six times in eight years between 1955 and 1962. The league has expanded multiple times over it's history, the first in 1951 when it forced the competing National Baseball Organization out of business and allowed it's two most successful teams in the Tuvodsk Trail Blazers and Noyalensk Captains to join the league (Not before the teams rosters were raided by the pre-existing SBB clubs of course).
The Slavic Baseball Hall of Fame was created in 1965, and it's first hall of fame class included Vladik Wetkin, who the award for the best pitcher in Slavic baseball is now named for (He won the award himself three times), and three time MVP Boryenka Votstinsky.
The league expanded again in 1964 with the addition of the Khizny Jets and Wodrov Mavericks, and two seasons later the league restructured into four divisions instead of the original two, also adding two more playoff teams and another playoff round, that same year a luxury tax was implemented to prevent big market teams from dominating like the Steelhounds had done in the 50's and 60's.
Previously the league wasn't known for it's homerun hitting, never having a player hit 30 or more before the 1970's, but in 1971 Fredek Venchakov blasted 34 homeruns before having his record broken by Stepka Atlasov the following year with 39.
Early on the league almost zero foreign players, but in the 60's and 70's foreign players flooded into the league, and in 1978 the Zoygaria Tokinobu Kawamura became the first foreign born player inducted into the hall of fame.
In 1981 the league experienced more expansion, and the schedule was extended from 80 games to 104 as a result, the 1980s were in general an interesting time in the SBB, with more and more foreign players, with Raul Ortiz hitting a record 79 homeruns in 1987, shortly after that he was controversially permanently banned from the league after he tested positive for steroid use, his stats and two MVP trophies being revoked.