September 28 - Minus a select few from each organization that receive September call-ups to the big leagues, Triple-A players generally head home for the offseason once their season ends just after Labor Day.
But for Chris Berset, that offseason was delayed a few weeks as he joined Great Britain’s national team for the European Championships in the Netherlands and then a World Baseball Classic qualifier in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Six days after the Triple-A Louisville Bats’ season ended on Sept. 5, the 6-foot, 195-pound catcher was in the lineup as the British team played Germany on the third day of Euros. He would catch the team’s final five games.
“Everything was a blast, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” said Berset, a former Reston Little Leaguer who attended The Heights School in Potomac, MD. “Am I extremely tired and sore? Is my arm hanging? Absolutely, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
Berset, coming off his best pro season, hitting .249 with two homers and 28 RBI while catching a career-high 85 games with Louisville, has been playing with Great Britain in international events since the summer after his junior year at the University of Michigan in 2009. This year marked his third appearance with the team in Euros, and he also played in the 2009 World Cup and the 2012 WBC qualifier in Regensburg, Germany.
He qualifies to play with the British team because his mother, Bernadette, was born and raised in central London before relocating to Boston when she was 18 to further her medical career.
After missing the opening two games of Euros while in transit following his season with Louisville, Berset started behind the plate in the team’s final nine games at the two tournaments.
He appeared in five games and hit .333 (5-for-15) with a .524 on-base average, homering and driving in three runs at Euros, which was held from Sept. 9-16. The Netherlands defeated Spain, 3-2, to win its second straight title, its seventh in nine tries. The British team went 2-5 and finished ninth at the 12-team event, which is held every two years.
After a brief vacation to Italy and Ireland and then a quick trip home, Berset rejoined the team for two practices early last week prior to the WBC qualifier in Brooklyn. He went hitless in 12 at-bats at the the qualifier, but did draw two walks and drive in a run as Great Britain advanced to the final before falling to Israel, 9-1.
“The WBC had some good competition, I was kind of shocked by it,” Berset said. “Brazil threw a big leaguer [Andre Rienzo] at us, Israel threw [Jason] Marquis twice at us and every other guy was a Triple-A to big league guy. And that was the reason we lost in a sense, they just had a little more experience on the pitching staff.”
The winners of this year’s WBC qualifiers in Australia, Mexico, Panama and New York advance to next spring’s WBC, which is held every four years.
Berset, who resides in Alexandria, is a free agent after seven seasons in the Cincinnati Reds’ organization after the club drafted him in the 20th round in 2010. He has appeared in 407 games as a pro, and this season set career bests in at-bats, hits and runs. He is co-owner along with Yorktown coach John Skaggs of Prime Time Baseball LLC, an academy that fields several local travel teams.
While he awaits contract offers once the free agency period begins after the World Series, Berset has resumed working with his youth players, many of whom had the opportunity to watch him on MLB Network last week.
“They’ve always known me as a minor league player, but they’ve never seen me play,” he said. “This was their chance to see me on TV, and that, ‘Yea, he can play a little bit’.
“[The players were] emailing me and blowing me up, saying ‘Chris, we got to watch you play, we got to see you catch’. So that really made me realize that a lot of these kids really are looking up to me and watching me, and you can see that you’re making a difference.”
Photo of Berset courtesy of Great Britain National Baseball Team
