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Baseball had become immensely popular throughout eastern Asia especially since World War II. East Asia Baseball, Austronesia Professional Baseball, and Chinese League Baseball each showed how the game could thrive throughout the continent. That popularity and love of the game bled over to the neighboring nations in southeastern Asia and the Indian subcontinent. However, it was an area marked by turmoil and war while baseball grew. Any attempts or plans for organized leagues of any significance were quickly thwarted.

Baseball started to get more traction in India in the 1960s and 1970s. Cricket had already been popular in the area and much of the field infrastructure could be easily adapted for baseball. There were certainly enough people and major cities to create a substantial baseball league and efforts to do so progressed quickly as the modern Indian state developed post World War II. The hope was to create an organization that could join and compete among the Global Baseball Alliance leagues, although some questioned if a league within India alone would suffice.

Some suggested a league made up of the neighboring lands previously colonized by the British, but India’s many conflicts post colonialism with Pakistan made that a non-starter. They did have much better relations with Bangladesh, but despite its large population, Bangladesh had very few cities able to support a major baseball franchise. Myanmar had the same issue with similarly mixed relations at times. They looked to the remaining Southeastern Asian states, but the Vietnam War and associated conflicts meant the region was incredibly unstable.

While things certainly weren’t sunshine and kittens, the area stabilized just enough by the end of the 1970s to open up more potential baseball markets. Southeast Asia certainly had plenty of people who enjoyed the game and wanted a diversion from the conflicts of the prior decades. Enough officials from the major cities of the area were able to come together and ultimately form the organization known as South Asia Baseball (SAB).

In its original form, SAB had two 12-team leagues. The Indian League, as the name suggests, had teams from India. The IL was divided into three divisions of four teams each. The South had Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Visakhapatnam. In the Central were Delhi, Jaipur, Kanpur, and Kolkata. The West Division saw Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Pune, and Surat. The Indian League would opt not to use the designated hitter rule and there would not be interleague play.

Meanwhile, the Southeast Asia League (SEAL) would use the DH. It would instead by divided into two divisions of six teams each. The North Division had Chittagong and Dhaka (Bangladesh), Kathmandu (Nepal), Mandalay and Yangon (Myanmar), and Hanoi (Vietnam). The South Division had Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam), Bangkok (Thailand), Kuala Lumpur and Johor Bahru (Malaysia), Phnom Penh (Cambodia), and Vientiane (Laos).



Both leagues would have four teams advance into the postseason. The Indian League had the three division winners and a wild card, while it was the two division winners and top two wild cards for the Southeast Asia League. The first round was best-of-five, followed by a best-of-seven League Championship Series and a best-of-seven South Asian Championship. The first official season would be 1980.

SAB would initially have six years required of minimum service time for free agency. Unlike their immediate neighbors from CLB and APB, SAB’s early offensive numbers would be more in the below average range as opposed to the very low. By the 2000s, SEAL would be viewed as an above average offensive environment with the IL more near average.