PERTH, Australia — More than 10,000 miles from his home in chilly New England, Pawtucket Red Sox Manager Kevin Boles tucked a stopwatch into his sweatshirt pocket and clocked the first pitch of the game between his Perth Heat and the Canberra Cavalry. It was 80 degrees, a typical December day.
“It should be an absolute ripper,” one of the online commentators for the Australian Baseball League predicted earlier in the week. “And if Canberra can get over the line, they’ll have won four on the trot”— Australian for a four-game winning streak.
Managed by Boles in his off-season months, the Perth Heat play in what may be the world’s most isolated professional baseball stadium, a cozy 1,000-seat park just inland from a distant stretch of Indian Ocean coastline closer to Singapore than to Sydney.