February drizzle and a sludgy Cambridge field aren’t exactly the usual backdrop for America’s summer sport. A regular ding of metal thwacking cork pierces the steady pitter patter of rain at Coldham’s Common; the player’s archetypally American jerseys at striking odds with the very British winter gloom. Rusting football goalposts and the steady whir of the airport radar tower preside over every pitch, run, and strike. The scene is utterly surreal, but then so is the success story it conceals.

Last Sunday, the Cambridge University baseball team completed a ruthless 27-0 rout of an outclassed Loughborough 2s, securing a historic - and completely unprecedented - place in the BUCS national finals. In previous years, the club has often struggled to notch more than a single BUCS win; in 2025 they ended the league campaign with a display so crushingly dominant that their opponents opted to call the game early.

“The club was ‘basically non-existent’”

Remarkable as their recent table-topping achievements are, the adversity that the fringe club has had to slog through to attain them is what truly stands out. The very moment that the ‘Cubs’ realised their national championships dream epitomised the continual hurdles of playing baseball in the UK that the team somehow manages to take in its stride. Sure, the usual mix of back slaps, Domino’s slices and celebratory pints were deservedly savoured. But barely minutes after their landmark triumph, the entire team set to work derigging the backstop nets, dismantling the makeshift diamond and uprooting several foot-high metal poles, before lugging the entirety of what had once constituted a baseball field away for storage using wagons - all amidst bitter, numbing temperatures. Before every game, players spend around an hour physically constructing their makeshift means of play - transforming an otherwise “dire” patch of grass into a baseballing fortress, at which they are yet to lose a game this season.

Recent years have seen the club struggle to scrape by, fighting for its future in the baseballing doldrums. Players keenly recall a not too distant past when the club was “basically non-existent” and “unable to win a game.” Over the past three years, the club has soldiered on with “maybe nine” players turning up to games and practices - the bare minimum for what is a 9-a-side sport. American college baseball teams have 34-player strong rosters for a reason. Alongside manpower difficulties, financial troubles have pestered the Cubs too, forcing the team to resort to crowdfunding just to stay afloat. Think of Cambridge sport, and those coveted light blue fleeces instantly come to mind; one year, the (literally) bare-bones baseball club could not afford uniforms to play in.

“Their claim to computer game fame is surely unparalleled”

So, just how has this once marginal club, that doesn’t even have proper training facilities, become one of Cambridge’s breakout sporting successes? In the words of big-hitting batter James Green, the “truly special” current captain Marc Theberge and president JJ Thio have provided the key to unleashing Cambridge baseball’s true potential. The dynamic pairing have managed to nurture a flourishing programme almost out of thin air, luring some 50 people to last year’s trials - numbers that the club could scarcely dream of only a couple of years ago. Baseball training facilities are typically extensive: think all-weather batting cages, state of the art pitching machines, and a slew of fielding drills. While the Cubs are far from privy to these sorts of luxuries, the ever-resilient team has refused to be deterred. To facilitate bi-weekly practice sessions during the winter darkness at a floodlight-less Coldham’s Common, players have taken to strapping on head torches to satiate an evident hunger for improvement.

Delve deeper inside this extraordinary club, and there are some equally striking individual tales to be told. Captain Marc and Cubs whizz James Green juggle Cambridge’s academic rigours with semi-professional baseball, strutting their stuff for British baseball’s most decorated team - the London Mets. Both formed an integral part of the Mets side that stormed their way to an eye-watering eighth consecutive National Baseball League title last season, with the Cubs’ skipper winning the competition’s coveted ‘rookie of the year’ award. On top of the pair’s undoubted on-field prowess, their claim to computer game fame is surely unparalleled among Cambridge student athletes. Amazingly, come the 14th of March baseball aficionados around the globe will be able to enlist Marc and James’ services in Out of the Park 26 as playable avatars. The very same month that their video game characters hit the shelves, Cambridge’s two baseball aces jet off to Italy and Norway to represent England. Unwilling to settle at national honours, James has his sights set at the very apex of the sporting world itself - striving to make the Great British roster for the 2028 Olympics.

From being unable to buy kits and playing matches in a near-dystopian setting, to churning out a potential Olympian and having a very real shot at winning the national championships, you can’t help but be swept up by Cambridge University baseball’s simply astonishing rise. This is a team that continues to battle a unique set of obstacles, but somehow finds itself on the brink of something quite brilliant.