When one thinks of baseball's superpowers, the mind gravitates to the United States or Dominican Republic or Cuba. Or perhaps it wanders east to Japan or Korea. Yet, there is a European nation with a long and proud history with this game. It boasts two WBC semifinal appearances and an incredible 23 European titles. In the pre-WBC era, this nation was the 2011 World Cup winner. It is the 9th ranked nation by the WBSC and numerous current and former big leaguers including a Hall of Fame pitcher. That country is the Netherlands.
The Dutch are the masters of European baseball but how? How did baseball get to Holland? Why are they so much better at it than the rest of the continent and why did the game become popular there? That is what I will answer in this piece.
The origins of honkball, as baseball is known in the Netherlands, can be traced to a vacation. J.C.G. Grasé was a Dutch English teacher who lived in the early 20th century. In 1911, he took a trip to America that would extricate him from anonymity and turn him into the pioneer of Dutch baseball. Having become acquainted with baseball in America and procured a copy of the rules, Grasé would return to his home country to produce the first Dutch copy of the game's rules. Within a year, he had founded the Dutch Baseball Union and within two, he had founded Quick Amsterdam, the oldest baseball club in Europe. Today, this club operates four baseball teams in three tiers of Dutch baseball and also runs men's and women's softball teams.
By 1922, the legendary Ajax football club had opened a baseball team of its own. This team would sadly be shut down in the 1970s due to financial issues. Oh, and did you know THE Johan Cruyff was a pitcher and sometimes catcher in his youth. He had even contemplated representing the Netherlands in baseball until his one of a kind footballing skill scuttled the idea. Nevertheless, he would remain attentive to baseball for the rest of his life and even went so far as to shout out the 2011 Dutch World Cup winning baseball team in a piece for De Telegraf discussing the Ajax football team's Champions League hopes.
The Dutch league would play from 1923 with four Amsterdam based clubs. S.C. Haarlem would wrest the monopoly away from the capital winning their first title in 1929. A team of Mormon missionaries called the Seagulls joined and won the league in 1939. The Salt Lake City based team was the lone league winner during the pre-WW2 era to not hail from either Amsterdam or Haarlem. And there were peculiarities. For instance, bunting and walks were frowned upon. Shorts were also part of the attire and for a time, time limits were a thing with games timed to two hours duration.
The war years were a hard time for sports as a whole and for baseball in the Netherlands there was no exception. Makeshift bats and balls were the norm. The country was under a brutal Nazi occupation that would only end after the hellish hongerwinter of 1944-45 that would leave 20,000 dead from famine. Still, the Dutch league played on throughout the war years from the bombing of Rotterdam to liberation in the spring of 1945. Games were still played and champions still crowned. Blue White Amsterdam would be the team of the war years, indomitable from 1943-46 inclusive.
Upon liberation, Marshall Plan aid flowed into Dutch harbors as it did to most of western Europe. As part of this aid, the Americans shipped baseball equipment across Europe. This and the prescence of American servicemen would serve to reinvigorate the Dutch game. They overpowered the locals in games but this would help provide valuable groundwork for future success. Another pillar of what would become a highly successful Dutch baseball program was the Indonesian (then called the Dutch East Indies) born journalist and filmmaker Albert Balink. A pioneer of Indonesian cinema as well as Dutch baseball, Balink had emigrated to America in 1938 and settled in Queens. He worked as a correspondent for a Dutch newspaper and published a well regarded socioeconomic study of the Caribbean called My Paradise Is Hell in 1948.
Now to what makes Balink relevant to our tale. In the early 1950s, he founded the Knickerbocker, a magazine catering to the Dutch American community. Using this platform and the contacts he had cultivated in America, he managed to secure a trial with the New York Giants for Han Urbanus, a Dutch talent with a fearsome reputation back home. Such was his reputation as a pitcher that one hit off him was said to secure a spot on the Dutch national team. He did not stick with the Giants, in part because he decided to take his experience in America home to help cultivate the next generation of Dutch talent. By 1956, the Netherlands had its first European title. There would be 22 more. There would also be a bona-fide, baseball specific stadium that today hosts the annual Haarlem Baseball Tournament.
By 1970 however, there were no Dutch big leaguers, this is until the Twins promoted Bert Blyleven. He was a native of Zeist but grew up in California. He would go on to register 287 wins, over 3000 strikeouts and win two World Series. In 2011, he would become the first Dutchman to reach the Hall of Fame. The first to actually grow up in the Netherlands was Win Remmerswaal who pitched briefly for Boston from 1979-80. The 1980s would be a rough time for Dutch baseball though with financial troubles forcing the shut down of multiple clubs. The troubles would continue into the 90's.
International success remained forthcoming though. European dominance was almost total, having never failed to medal at the European Championships. The Dutch were also regular participants at the Baseball World Cup although true success only came in the new millennium with two 4th place finishes and finally victory in the 2011 edition. Curaçao native Curt Smith would be the MVP. By virtue of their European success, the Dutch also became regular European representatives in Olympic baseball, missing out only on the 1992 Barcelona games and these most recent Tokyo games. Their cumulative Olympic record though is 11-20 with no medals.
The competition where the Dutch have truly shined of late is the World Baseball Classic where they can bring the glut of major league talent they possess into the fray. (think Gregorius, Schoop, Simmons, Jones etc.) They were among the invitees for the original 2006 edition and went 1-2 bowing out in the first group stage. The one win however was the Jair Jurrjens seven inning no-hitter versus Panama. Their losses were against the powerhouse Dominicans and Cubans. They would exact revenge twice over in 2009 though, beating the Dominican Republic twice to send them packing in round one. This would lead to the second group round where they would bow out with losses to the US and Venezuela. They would equal their 2009 performance with wins over Korea and Australia and then surpass it by avenging their 2006 loss to Cuba twofold to book their maiden semifinal berth. They would lose to the eventual champion Dominican Republic. 2017 would see a repeat performance in spite of an early shock loss to Israel (later avenged in crushing fashion) with further wins against Korea, Taiwan and Cuba. They would wind up perhaps a baserunning blunder away from a final losing 4-3 in 11 innings to Puerto Rico.
Much WBC Dutch success is powered by players from the Dutch West Indies. Curaçao in particular is a hotbed of talent boasting multiple MLB players including Xander Bogaerts, Andrelton Simmons, Kenley Jansen, Ozzie Albies and Jonathan Schoop. Previous players include Hall of Fame candidate Andruw Jones. Aruba too boasts big leaguers. So how did this happen?
Curaçao benefits from close proximity to baseball hotbeds Venezuela and the Dominican Republic. In fact, the first game on the island is said to have been between Dominican and Venezuelan laborers over 80 years ago. The first big leaguer was Hensley Meulens who debuted with the Yankees in 1989. His playing career was short but he has gone on to a successful coaching career that saw him manage the Dutch 2017 WBC team. The floodgates truly opened in 1996 though with the debut of 19 year old Andruw Jones. There was a fivefold increase in youth baseball enrollment between 1993 when Jones signed with the Braves and his debut in 1996. This would lead to a maiden Little League World Series appearance for Curaçao in 2001. They would win the thing in 2004 and Jurickson Profar as well Jonathan Schoop from that roster are major leaguers today. Poor playing surfaces have actually served to cultivate slick fielding infielders that Curaçao is now known for since bad hops are nothing new to them. They are also fairly enthusiastic about international play. Meulens had in his dugout almost all of the Curaçao born stars including Sir Didi. Most teams have a harder time selling stars on the WBC and seeing an exception is nice. Further Dutch baseball success will likely emanate mostly from here for years to come.
The future looks bright for baseball in Holland. In Europe, they remain the strongest clear challenger save for maybe Italy and the new kids on the block in Israel which has made rapid strides over the last decade. The upcoming European Championships will be a good indicator of how close these two really are to ending Dutch dominance over the European game. The next WBC will also bring high expectations for a team that is a consistent contender and well stocked with major league caliber talent. There is not much reason to believe they will disappoint.
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