The story goes something like this: Mark Hamburger was late.

His Melbourne Aces team-mates were at the ground and the baseball game was about to start, yet the star pitcher was nowhere to be seen.

Manager Jon Deeble was getting understandably nervous and it was time to start thinking of a back-up.

So where was Mark?

"He was coming in on his skateboard. He skateboarded in five kilometres," Deeble recounts.

"Next thing I turn around and he's in a lather of sweat and he said, 'Hey boss, here I am!'"

He went on to pitch what Deeble described as one of the best games he's ever seen in Australian baseball.

"I said to him, you can skateboard anywhere you like," Deeble says with a laugh.

Maybe the story is exaggerated for effect, but it does highlight a few things you should know about Mark.

Firstly, he's a fairly relaxed individual. Second, he does things just a bit differently. And thirdly — perhaps most importantly — he is a true baseball star.

A star who has an idea that may help save an Australian baseball league that's on the ropes. But more on that later.

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So who is Mark Hamburger?

The 30-year-old American once starred for the Texas Rangers in the US Major League in 2011 and arrived in Australia last November to play in the Australian Baseball League.

He'd never even visited Australia before, but in his first season Down Under he became, statistically speaking, the best pitcher in the league.

His "earned run average" (a statistic devised to measure how many runs a pitcher gives up) was the lowest in the ABL at 1.90.

By way of comparison, the next best was 2.61 and the lowest career ERA recorded in the US Major League was 1.82, set by Chicago White Sox pitcher Ed Walsh between 1904-17.

"My whole life is about baseball," Hamburger told ABC News Breakfast.

"I play year round. I've been down in South America the last four years.

"They have a league down there that's really the only other winter league. So you'll have the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and Mexico, or you could come to Australia."

Since moving to Australia he's lived a somewhat different lifestyle. Rather than rent a house, he instead lives in his campervan, which he often just parks at a team-mate's house.

Mark Hamburger relaxes on his bed, made up in the back of his campervan that serves as his mobile home. ( ABC News: Patrick Wood )

It's a simple but effective set-up. The smallish bed doesn't seem to worry him ("I just sleep diagonally"), and in any event he'll be off to South America again soon, so why bother renting.

"The thing is, as a pitcher it's [a life lived] in solitude. He's out there by himself," Hamburger said.

"So that lifestyle that I'm doing, it's a very mindful way of living and in pitching you're supposed to be mindful of everything you do because if you're not mindful of one thing, like the runner or the count or how many outs there are, it can hurt you."

His pitching helped take the Aces to their first ever grand final series just last weekend, which they lost to defending champions the Brisbane Bandits.

If you didn't even know this grand final was on, then that's exactly the problem.

'We need butts on seats'

The Australian Baseball League has a small toehold in an increasingly crowded sports scene in Australia, but it's struggling.

In 2010 it underwent a dramatic funding shift when Major League Baseball began funding 75 per cent of the league, with Baseball Australia taking up the other 25 per cent.

But despite a jump in attendances in 2013, the slide began the next year and hasn't stopped since.

And a few months before the 2016-17 season began the MLB ended its funding — instead directing money to the development of the sport in Australia.

Baseball Australia made the call to fully fund the latest season, but there is no word yet how any future seasons will be paid for.

Aces catcher Allan de San Miguel summed up the situation neatly last week.

"For the league to survive you've got to get butts on seats," he said.

"If people don't come to games, teams don't make money, the league doesn't make money, the league folds."

So, what does Hamburger suggest?

Simply put: make the experience more entertaining.

"There has to be stimulation, that's just the age we live in," he said.

"The team I used to play for, St Paul [in the US], they have a pig that brings out the baseballs to the umpire. They have a barber [so] you can get a haircut during the game. You can get a massage from a nun.

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"They have all these things going on that almost make it seem like it's a circus in a way.

"But that's how it should be, because it's for the fans, that's what it started out to be.

"In actuality it's just about having a place that people can come and enjoy and escape reality."

De San Miguel said Australia was still learning how to do spectacle, but he likened the approach to cricket's Big Bash League.

"There's music pumping, there's flamethrowers going off. It's entertaining and it's quick. It's boom, boom, boom," he said.

And Mark practises what he preaches.

When a game was rained out and the tarps were put over the field last year, he took the opportunity to do belly flops and slides in the water just to have some fun. And when a fan asked him to autograph a hamburger — his namesake — he did it.

"It's like, what do you remember from going to a Melbourne Aces game? I remember the mascot, he was walking through the crowd, giving people jokes," he said.

"I remember a couple of really good plays in baseball.

"You want them to remember something from that night and you do anything possible to do that."

Hamburger is passionate about the cause because he's seen how life in professional sports can turn sour.

'Make a team into a family'

In 2012, after a run with the Texas Rangers, he failed two drug tests for marijuana and received a 50-game ban in the Major League.

"The reason that I failed was that I had a lot of anger towards baseball," he said.

"[I had] expectation in being back in the pros. Expectation of being treated the way you wanted to.

"I wasn't ready for the lifestyle at 25 years old.

"Instead of stepping back and re-evaluating things, I kind of started to abuse the things I was doing in my life. And when you abuse something it usually catches up with you."

In his time away from the Major League he has rediscovered a joy and freedom in baseball — particularly in Australia and far from the money that dictates so much of pro ball in the US.

Mark Hamburger has found peace in his mobile home and the freedom in skateboarding everywhere. ( ABC News: Patrick Wood )

He said Australian baseball was different and at the Aces he saw how a team could be like a family, where even the youngest player can have a frank conversation with the management about the direction the club is heading.

"In certain [Australian] teams it's more personable," he said.

Now, he feels ready to return to the Major League, and an opportunity has just presented itself.

Hamburger will head back to the US later this month for a try-out that could secure him a spot back with the Texas Rangers — four years after he last pitched for them.

So will he ever return to Australia to play, and will he see if his suggestions for a more entertaining experience have been adopted?

"100 per cent, yes", he said.