The Best of British Baseball

The other day I vented on twitter, "can't believe they're making golf an Olympic sport while baseball and softball aren't."

(Actually, it's kind of a good thing they got kicked out because it made the World Baseball Classic a top priority. It sucks for softball though.)

A Dutch friend of mine replied, "It's cause golf is played around the world and... well, the States aren't the world :P"

Oh, people. Especially Dutch people, who don't even know that their country has won the European Championship 20 times, or that it beat the Dominican Republic twice in the last World Baseball Classic. Let alone the fact that they play baseball.

Well, now that the Red Sox season is officially over, and I'll be following the MLB playoffs from afar, I'm returning my focus to baseball on this side of the world. (I currently live in the Netherlands.)

As most fans know, baseball is played in huge parts of Central and South America, and Southeast Asia. South Africa competes in the WBC, though they haven't been very successful. I've heard a little about baseball in Israel.

But very few people seem to be aware of baseball in Europe, and then if they are, even fewer seem to take it seriously. (Hopefully those Dutch upsets of the DR are changing that.)

But today, as I sifted through blogs I follow on my dashboard, I came across an entry on Baseball GB about the first inductees to the British Baseball Hall of Fame.

A little more research, and what can I say? Surely nothing more than they can at those links.

But boy is it exciting to see the game spreading and growing like this. Congratulations to British Baseball and its fans!

Baseball, Amsterdam Time - Part II

Or, How To Be A Nocturnal Baseball Fan


This entry is a little out of place here, because I published Part I on my other blog last October: dealing with baseball games at inconvenient times. If the game starts at 7.05 PCT, then I can get up at 4:30 a.m. and still catch the last few innings. If it's a day game, I can watch it here at 7 p.m. if it takes place on the West Coast, or 10 if it's on the East Coast - both entirely doable.

If the game starts at 7:05 on the East Coast, though (which happens a lot with the Red Sox), I'm pretty much out of luck - that's 1:05 a.m. over here.

During the playoffs, I'll go to bed at 8 or 9, get up at 1.30, and go back to sleep (hopefully) around 5. That adds up to a decent 6 or 7 hours of sleep.

That's only for the truly hardcore, though, the do-or-die (the playoffs). When I know I can't justify so many hours of baseball (for example, when there's a gauntlet of schoolwork to run over the next three weeks), I go for Time Difference Option #2.

The Sox are playing the Yankees this weekend, and no Sox fan wants to miss that. For Friday's 7.05 game, I set up my laptop next to my bed and watched the first inning (did you see Jacoby score on a passed ball from second base?! That's my boy!) while I wrote in my journal. Around 1.40, I turned out the light, but left the game on, and set my alarm for 3:40. The alarm would wake me up in time for the last inning or two.

I don't remember waking up for the ninth inning, but because of the sound coming and going for commercial breaks, I woke up periodically. I remember seeing the Sox were losing 4-2.

Next thing I know, it's 5:40, and I'm wide awake. I check my phone and see I've already re-set the alarm for the morning. I check the game. It's the top of the 11th inning.

It's like I have a biological Red Sox clock, or something.

Because what happens in the top of the 11th? The Yankees nearly score - but NO CIGAR!

And what happens in the bottom of the 11th?

That would be Kevin Youkilis. Yes, Youkilis happens. He hits a walk-off home run to end the game.

Can I get a boo-yah?
Then I rolled over and fell back asleep. I woke up happy, if not refreshed, because it's not a good way to get a good night's sleep. But it is a decent way to catch the game, if you happen to be an expat baseball fan.