Rotterdam Journal By JOHN TAGLIABUE Published: May 21, 2008 ROTTERDAM, the Netherlands — Robert Eenhoorn’s cellphone rang to the tinny tune of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” interrupting a discussion of the vigorous state of honkbal in his native land. Honkbal is the Dutch word for baseball, and Mr. Eenhoorn, 40, the coach of the Dutch national baseball team, should know something about it. A former infielder with the Yankees, Mr. Eenhoorn coaches the Dutch team that was the only one in Europe chosen to compete in the Summer Olympics in Beijing. He got his start playing ball at Neptunus, the club outside this port city, before playing 37 games in the majors. His father played ball, he said over coffee, recalling the years under the German occupation in World War II, when Dutch kids turned to American baseball in defiance of the German occupiers. A letter dated 1947 on New York Yankees stationery hangs on the wall of the Neptunus clubhouse, promising the club a fresh supply of caps and catchers’ masks to replenish those worn out during the war. Yet, as attested by the trickle of young Dutch ballplayers now entering the minor and even the major leagues in the United States, that wartime popularity never faded. Asked what Dutch youngsters like about baseball, Mr. Eenhoorn said: “It’s American; it’s a summer sport, filling the gap left by soccer in spring and early summer. You know, we did research and found that kids like baseball, they like hitting the ball with the bat, they like the clothing. I don’t think it’s peaked.” Most Dutch baseball teams were in fact started by soccer clubs in search of a sport for the months between soccer seasons. Johan Cruyff, the king of Dutch soccer, began his career as a catcher for Amsterdam Ajax’s nine, before he ever kicked a soccer ball. Mr. Eenhoorn said his own years as a soccer player improved his baseball game. “As an infielder,” he said, “I was always a good defensive player, because I played soccer, where footwork is important.” Of course, peanuts and Cracker Jack are missing, and the Dutch have to contend with a rainy climate. “Sometimes you wait till the rain stops,” said Pim van Nes, a retired diplomat and part-time sportswriter. “But in Holland, sometimes the rain never stops.” Certainly, the Dutch baseball federation, with its 30,000 members, cannot compete with soccer, whose federation boasts 1.5 million. Give a Dutch boy a ball, and he will usually drop it and try to kick it. (Sort of like this year ’s Yankees.) But not everyone is cut out for soccer, particularly not tall, lumbering young men who can throw hard. And increasingly, those sorts are finding their way to the United States. Henricus van Den Hurk, 23, a 6-foot-5-inch pitcher who got his start with a club in Eindhoven, has started 21 games for the Florida Marlins — where he is known as Rick Vanden Hurk — in the last two years, with less than stellar results. Loek van Mil, 23, a 7-foot-1-inch, 225-pound right-handed pitcher from Oss, in central Netherlands, was signed by the Minnesota Twins in 2005 and is pitching well in the low minors. Sparta Feyenoord, a club on the edge of Rotterdam, lost three players last year because of major league contracts. In 2007, five Dutch nationals were playing in Major League Baseball in the United States, among a total 250 foreign players, according to the Baseball Almanac. Statistically, the Netherlands limped behind countries like the Dominican Republic, with 145 players, Canada and Mexico, each with 22, and Japan, with 17. But for the Dutch, it is not just about numbers. Indeed, some Dutch fans, like Mr. van Nes, speculate that baseball could be a descendant of the Dutch game of tripbal, now extinct, that the Pilgrim Fathers may have taken with them when they left the Netherlands for America. If true, that unlikely tale would make Rotterdam, not Hoboken’s Elysian Fields, the cradle of baseball. Whatever its origins, the game here gets its start at fields like the one behind the Neptunus clubhouse, where a gang of 11- to 14-year-olds were taking batting practice on a recent cloudy Friday. Yolanda Silfhout, a lawyer and the mother of two team members, leaned against the batting cage and reflected on the Dutch attraction to baseball. “It has tactics, and the game has a lot of variety,” said Ms. Silfhout, who plays softball. “You bat, you run, you catch the ball. It’s a bit of thinking, a bit of doing.” Her elder son, Rune Verkerk, 13, an infielder, walked to the dugout as practice ended. What drew him to baseball? “I like the fielding and the batting,” he said. He added that his father played baseball, too. And in fact there is a kind of dynastic element in Dutch baseball. Iga Geerman sat in the bleachers on a recent afternoon so chilly the boys of summer were shivering as she watched her sons, Darryl and Dwight, help the Amsterdam Pirates beat Sparta Feyenoord, 6-4. She and her husband are natives of Aruba, a Dutch territory off the coast of Venezuela, she said, but migrated to the Netherlands, he for work, she to become an optician. Her husband was a rabid Mets fan, she said, so when the boys were born the older, now 20, was named for Darryl Strawberry and the younger, now 17, for Dwight Gooden. “They couldn’t pick soccer,” she said of her boys. “Not with that father. ” Her grandson, now 4, will soon join the Peanuts, the lowest division of Dutch baseball, she said. As with Ms. Geerman’s sons, some of the best Dutch players are from Dutch territories in the Caribbean, like the Netherlands Antilles, an autonomous part of the Netherlands that includes the island of Curaçao and part of St. Maarten. Eugene Kingsale grew up playing ball in his native Aruba, but in 1996, at 19, he joined the Baltimore Orioles organization, and later went on to Seattle and San Diego, for 211 major league games. “We sent five guys to the major leagues in six or seven years, on an island with not even 100,000 people,” Mr. Kingsale, 31, said, taking a break from a practice session with a team here. In 2004, he was knighted by Queen Beatrix with two other major league players from Aruba, Calvin Maduro and Sidney Ponson. Still, for the Dutch, Mr. Eenhoorn said, soccer remains the principal sport. Tim Roodenburg, a 19-year-old pitcher with Sparta Feyenoord who got a tryout with the Yankees last year at a camp in the Dominican Republic, tends to agree. A former basketball player, he gave it up to focus on baseball, and now teaches city kids to play baseball and softball. “I’ve seen it on the street,” he said. “Kids will take a softball, drop it on the ground, then kick it.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/21/world/europe/21dutch.html --

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