09/09/2026
Official Statement on Baseball Ireland's Upcoming Fundraising Event
This weekend, Baseball Ireland is hosting a fundraising event at Rory Dolan's Restaurant in Westchester County. We want to be clear that this event is not affiliated with the Irish American Baseball Society, the Irish American Baseball Hall of Fame, Team Ireland Baseball, the Irish Wolfhounds Baseball Club, or our partners at the Ancient Order of Hibernians.
Given our roots in Westchester, including our long history on McLean Avenue and in Woodlawn, and the many IABS members and players from the area, we wanted to make that distinction unmistakable.
We're also using this moment to speak directly about a deeper concern with Baseball Ireland's policies.
Baseball Ireland hired a new CEO on April 1. Since then, the organization has spoken publicly about its ambition to reach the World Baseball Classic and has even raised the possibility of bringing a Major League Baseball game to Ireland. We share those goals and have been working toward both goals for years, so we are encouraged to hear Baseball Ireland embrace them publicly.
But there is a fundamental problem: Baseball Ireland continues to use quotas that restrict Irish-American dual citizens from trying out for Ireland's National Baseball Team. We believe this policy is wrong.
We've stayed mostly quiet about the issue over the past few months, hoping that new leadership would bring meaningful change. It has not.
Five months later, the quotas remain in place. We've spoken with Baseball Ireland's CEO several times and asked to see a plan for reducing and ultimately eliminating them. This policy is holding Ireland back by limiting the talent available to the national team, hindering the development of youth baseball in Ireland, and preventing Baseball Ireland from unlocking significant potential support from Major League Baseball.
Instead of having a substantive conversation about the effects of quotas and how to end them, Baseball Ireland's CEO told us to stop talking about the quotas publicly.
That's not going to happen. We don't take direction from Baseball Ireland, and we will continue to speak openly about its quota policies until they are gone.
We want to see Ireland reach the World Baseball Classic in our lifetimes. We want to see youth baseball thrive across Ireland. And we want to see Major League Baseball played on Irish soil.
This summer, under new leadership but the same old policies, Ireland once again failed to advance out of Europe's B-Pool tournament. As a result, Ireland cannot reach the World Baseball Classic until at least 2034.
Goals require more than talk. We remain hopeful that Baseball Ireland's new leadership will choose a better path.
