History

Baseball was already played in Austria in the 1940s and 1950s. The US-Americans stationed in Vienna at that time played their games in the Hohe Warte stadium or in the army base near Tulln. However, this development came to an end with the withdrawal of the occupying power USA in 1955.

Baseball has been played in Austria again since the early 1980s. In 1982, three clubs existed in Vienna (WBV Homerunners, Roadrunners and City Boys), but only the Homerunners, now named Vienna Metrostars are still active.

In 1984, the first Austrian championships, in which four teams from Vienna and Linz participated, were held. In 1990, baseball was recognized in Austria by the Austrian Federal Sports Organization. In connection with this, since 1991 the champions Baseball, Fastpitch-Softball and Coed-Slowpitch-Softball have been allowed to call themselves Austrian State Champions.

The first softball championship in Austria was held in 1992. Already in 1994, the Austrian national team participated in the Fastpitch Softball World Championships in St. Johns, Canada. In recent years, Austria's ladies have been steadily climbing in the European rankings, and in 2013 and 2015 the softball national team was even able to achieve 6th place. In 2016, the second World Cup participation followed in Surrey, Canada, where our ladies were able to secure the sensational 18th place and finished the tournament as the fifth-best European team.

The men's national team faces a different density in Europe and has been knocking on the door of the A-Pool, the top 12 teams in Europe, for several years. Most recently, they missed out on joining Europe's elite by a hair's breadth each time, but Team Austria finally fulfilled their big dream of advancing to the A-Pool. In 2019, Team Austria reached 10th place, followed by 11th place in 2021.

However, Austria is one of the top nations when it comes to young talent. In addition to medals in various age categories, the U21 national team celebrated probably the greatest success in the association's history with the runner-up title at the 2014 European Championships. This also qualified the team for the World Championship, to which Austria's top talents traveled to Mexico in October 2016, where they became the first Austrian national baseball team to participate in a World Cup. For the ABF, this was an extremely successful premiere on the international stage and for the young men an unforgettable event.