Results tagged ‘ world baseball classic ’
A Great Day for European Baseball
Saturday’s amazing upset by the Netherlands over the Dominican Republic in the World Baseball Classic showed the world European baseball is not to be laughed at.
Even though they won by the narrowest of margins, 3-2, beating one of the very best nations in baseball was a remarkable achievement, especially considering that except for veteran pitcher Sidney Ponson, the Dutch team consisted of players from the American minor leagues (mostly A level) and the Dutch league. The team they defeated had major league players, some All-Stars and MVPs, at every position.
The Dutch may have scored all their runs in the first inning through a series of flukes and bloopers, but they held on to beat the mighty Dominicans. It was certainly no disgrace to be shut-out for three innings by Pedro Martinez.
Three years ago the Dutch upset Panama in the first World Baseball Classic. That was a surprise, but Panama is no where near the powerhouse that is the Dominican Republic. No matter what the Netherlands does in its game against Puerto Rico, its national team has established the quality of European baseball.
NASN Loves the Grapefruit League
Here on the last day of Spring Training we can look back at the coverage those of us living in Europe have been able to enjoy from NASN, the North American Sports Network. It’s wonderful that we can watch baseball at all, but one has to wonder why every single game this Spring has been from Florida?
What happened to the Cactus League in Arizona? Not a single game.
Possibly more upsetting, NASN didn’t bother to let us watch either of the two games between the Dodgers and the Padres from Beijing. You can get a glimpse of them for free from MLB.com, a video feed from China with play-by-play from a TV studio in San Diego. It looks fascinating, and how wonderful if might have been to see those history-making games on our TV sets.
Today NASN is actually leaving Florida to show us yesterday’s Civil Rights game in Memphis, but that’s probably because there are no games left in Florida. It’s bad enough that major sports news sites have a habit of ignoring games in the West, which tend to finish after East Coast writers want to go to bed. But what has prevented NASN from showing a little Arizona baseball?
All this will be forgotten, of course, as soon as the season starts in the US (NASN did give us the two opening of the season games in Japan). But one hopes the same error isn’t made next year. Of course, then we’ll have the World Baseball Classic to enjoy, and that most certainly will not be restricted to Florida!
George Wood
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