“A really nice move, very well forced. You approached the ball well; that it then jumped away, you can’t do anything for it.” Praise from the youth coach Holger Simonszent for one of the boys who have been practicing on the baseball square on the edge of Gauting for days. Beat, run, catch, and now go for it. They run towards the hard leather ball, which rolls towards them on the ground and shovel on them with a comparatively huge leather glove, then two shuffle steps and throw. “Great throw, went well.” That motivates.
It is a Thursday afternoon in the summer holidays on the baseball turf of the Indians at the extreme edge of Gauting, a piece after the “Arschbackenbergerl”, as a small hill in the village is called. Dense beech forest on one side, on the other side the Leutstettener Straße leads past and ends soon. Then it only goes by bike or on foot along the Würm towards Starnberg. Again and again the metallic singing sound of the aluminum racks can be heard. Here the baseballs of the Gauting Indians who have completed a special season, because the men’s team has succeeded in returning to the first division to the German Baseball League (DBL) South, as the official title is. From 2004 to 2011, the Gautinger had already been in the first Bundesliga.
The return may be a special drive for the U 10 players, who have been practicing with great perseverance for days, several hours every afternoon, and that at increasingly high temperatures. Almost all of them wear dark blue T-shirts with the curved Indians lettering, blue caps and long gray pants. At the end there is pizza that day, and you watch a baseball film together. This view may also motivate. In any case, the sporting perspectives have improved clearly since Christopher Howard has returned as a trainer.
“A few years ago, it was the case that those who were good and recommended themselves for the first league went somewhere else,” says youth coach Simonszent during a short training break. In addition, he has to keep an eye on his 16 boys so that the eight and nine-year-olds do not do too much nonsense. “Some went to the disciples of Haar to the Caribes in Munich or immediately to Regensburg.” Now it’s different. Now the talented players stay in Gauting.
The U12 youth is preparing for the German championship
The 42 -year -old player Jakob von Mosch, for example, who helps with training this Thursday, can only confirm this: “Because of Christopher, the young people see a perspective. The danger is no longer so great that they go away.” While the first men’s team has just finished the first season in the first division, the U12 youth are preparing for the German championship in September. At the Bavarian Championships, the U18 and U15 teams came to second place. And the second men’s team is in the playoffs in the Bayernliga; It is about promotion to the second division. The first team continues in April.
The success at the federal level should largely be a merit of the coach, who has already had his time as an active baseballer. The 36-year-old is Gautinger, attended primary and secondary school there, grew up with three siblings in a sporty family. Later he was in Regensburg in the sports boarding school and there with the baseballers. He played in the Bundesliga for a few years, became a German champion with Regensburg and was a national player, he was a sports director in hair and talent scout for the Cincinnati Reds. Team spokesman Simonszent praises his successful colleagues in the highest tones: “He is just a very good coach, one of the best we have here in Europe. He brings the players to the next level.” And that part -time.
In the German baseball league, as it is officially called, the Indians are in third place after the leaders of Regensburg and Heidenheim. “This is a great success. We can be totally happy with that,” says Howard. The team won 17 wins in 30 games, “this is the best season in club history”. And that in a challenging environment. The teams in the first division represent a completely different challenge than before, that is a “huge jump”, says Simonszent. “After the climb, we seamlessly made the connection to the top teams,” says the club spokesman. “You didn’t see the class difference so much.” In the game against hair, for example, the Gautinger were clearly superior.
The baseball club in the Würmtal currently has more than 200 members, the youngest of which are only four years old. The Indians specifically strive for the offspring. There are regular offers for schools that come to the sports area on the outskirts for a few hours with 200 children. In this respect, the club is not worried, although sport in Germany is still more of an exotic role. Worries are more concerned about the commitment. “We just don’t have enough space,” says Simonszent. He trains 24 children this August week, actually you would have to divid the group on two teams.
In the United States, baseball is a national sport, more of a marginal sport in Germany, but really at home in Gauting. There are entire families who are involved in the Indians. Eleven -year -old Jakob Simonszent, for example, shares the enthusiasm of his father Holger, enthuses about Curveballs and Homeruns and knows that a good pitcher can miss the ball of a speed of 60 miles, just under 97 kilometers per hour. When asked what inspires him about sport with the many specialist expressions and the difficult rules in detail, the student says: “If you hit the ball correctly, that’s cool.” Head coach Howard expressed this shortly after his return to Gauting: “Cancing the ball away and having fun.”
So then, self -experiment in the cage with a few balls thrown by Jakob and definitely a good dose of luck: surprisingly, it works straight away, and it already feels crisp when the alumy owl hits the hard ball properly. Really good.
Here’s a breakdown of the image URLs and their attributes, focusing on the most relevant parts:
understanding the URL Structure
The image URLs follow a consistent pattern:
Base URL: https://www.sueddeutsche.de/2025/08/13/ followed by a unique identifier (e.g., b2a75909-78ee-4c1b-92c7-9b1ba9e428ce.jpg). This is the image’s location on the server.
Query Parameters: This part comes after the ? and specifies how the image should be delivered.
q=60: This likely controls the image quality (60 represents a level of compression, potentially).
fm=avif or fm=webp or fm=jpeg: Specifies the image format (AVIF, WebP, or JPEG). The browser will choose which format.
width=...: This sets the desired width of the image in pixels.
rect=0%2C...: This suggests an image cropping via defining the rectangle to be displayed.
Analyzing the srcset and sizes Attributes
The srcset and sizes attributes within the
srcset: This attribute provides a list of image URLs, each with its corresponding width descriptor (e.g., 1000w). The width descriptor tells the browser the actual width of the image.
sizes: This attribute specifies a set of media queries (like those used in CSS) and their corresponding image widths. It tells the browser how large the image should render within the page’s layout, according to viewport size.It can use more complex logic than described below, if, as an example, the images are smaller than the space the image will take up.
Breaking Down One Example (Simplified)
Let’s look at the first example and its
Here’s what it means:
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type="image/avif": The browser should first try to use images in the AVIF format, which is often more efficient than othre formats. -
sizes="(min-width: 768px) 704px,100vw": This is the layout or target size,explained as follows:
"(min-width: 768px) 704px": If the screen width is at least 768 pixels,the image should be rendered at a width of 704 pixels on the page.
100vw: If the screen width is less than 768 pixels, the image should be rendered at 100vw, which is 100% of the viewport (screen) width.
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srcset: This tells the browser which image source to choose based on the target image size AND the screen resolution/pixel density. As of thesizessetting, it is indeed saying that it will choose a source image from thesrcsetthat has the following attributes:
Widths of 1000, 210, 420, 840, 1536 or 2000 pixels, given the viewport is greater than 768 pixels. The format (AVIF) is chosen if supported.
Widths of 1000, 210, 420, 840, 1536 or 2000 pixels, given the viewport is less than 768 pixels. The format (AVIF) is chosen if supported.
The browser chooses the appropriately sized image from the source. It should pick the one that most closely matches the rendered image’s “target” size (704px for larger screens or the full width for smaller screens). Also, as higher resolutions mean more pixels, the browser will also factor in the pixel density to pick the appropriate source image.
Other image/webp
The rest of the fm=avif (AVIF format) is replaced with fm=webp (WebP format). It also uses the same sizes and srcset attributes as the AVIF version,so it is very similar,except that it will choose a WebP format where available.
Summary of the Image Tag
The
“Here’s an image. I want the browser to use AVIF images if it can, WebP images if not, and only if it can’t do either, then as a last resort, use the JPEG image that is also provided (below).”
For screens wider than 768px, the image should render 704px wide. For screens narrower than 768px, it should be the full screen width.”
“To make that happen,here are a bunch of different versions of the image at different sizes. Pick the one that’s closest to the size you need, but also think about the screen’s pixel density — use a bigger image if the screen has a higher resolution.”
In essence, this HTML is designed to provide a responsive, optimized image experience, delivering the right image size and format for the user’s device and browser.
