History of Dutch baseball: 1869-1939

About ten years ago I wrote a piece about the history of Dutch baseball for the baseball forum baseball-fever.com. Through the years it has literally been copied and placed on Wikipedia.
This is an updated version of my piece.

1869-1939

Long it was considered that J.C. Grase, an English teacher from Amsterdam was the person who introduced baseball to our country. Mr. Grase has spent a vacation in the USA, where he saw a strange game called baseball. Mr. Grase was looking for a summer sport fit for his pupils at school. He was convinced that baseball was this sport. The sport was introduced in 1906. Due to his profession as an English teacher, he was able to translate the complicated rules. In 1952 a flaw in this translation was discovered (later more about this). But…. Recently a small book full of games and sports was found. The book was published in 1869 and baseball was one of the sports that was described in it. The book described baseball as a sport of courtesy and sportsmanship. So in fact this was the very first introduction of the game in the Netherlands.

Book with the very first introduction of the game of baseball in the Netherlands
(photo: University of Amsterdam)

Nevertheless, Mr. Grase was the spark plug of baseball in the Netherlands. He was the founder of the Dutch Baseball Federation and founder of the oldest still excisting baseball club in Europe, AHC Quick, in 1913. In the first years of Dutch baseball AHC Quick and the Dutch Baseball Federation would be closely interwoven.

Very first photograph of AHC Quick from Amsterdam. EIght players. The ninth had to operate the camera (photo: www.quickamsterdam.nl)

In those days, clubs came and went in a blink of an eye. Nevertheless AHC Quick stood the test of time. One of the first members of AHC Quick was Emile Bleesing. He would be chairman of the club for a long time. He was a visionair. He realized that when baseball wanted to survive in the Netherlands, AHC Quick had to send players to soccer clubs and convince them that baseball was the ideal summersport. These players from Quick helped the soccer clubs to start a baseball branch. For a very long time famous soccer clubs like Ajax Amsterdam, Feyenoord Rotteram had a baseball branch. Johan Cruyff for example was an excellent catcher in his childhood days.

Anyhow, in the first years there was not something as a regular competition. Most of the time, some single games were played. Eventually in 1922, the very first official competition of the Netherlands was played. Four clubs participated: AHC Quick, Ajax, Hercules and Blauw Wit (Blue White, also a soccer club). AHC Quick would win the very first championship in 1922. In the first years baseball would mainly be played in Amsterdam, but soon baseball would spread its wings and land in Haarlem, a city about 20 kilometers West of Amsteram. These two cities would dominate Dutch baseball until 1963.

In 1925 a US naval ship entered the harbor of Amsterdam. The players of Blauw Wit heard about the visit and invited the sailors to play a game of baseball. The game was advertised as the very first international baseball game in the Netherlands. After one inning, the Americans were leading 14-0 and after two hours of play, the final score was 27-2.
In the early years, baseball in the Netherlands was rater primitive. The players wore shorts and pitchers didn’t throw off a mound but stood on flat ground. The pitcher was the guy on the team that could throw the fastest pitch.

Until 1938 baseball was played by the hour. A game lasted two hours. At the end of the 1937 season, EDO from Haarlem and Blauw Wit from Amsterdam were playing a decisive game for the championship of the Netherlands. After the final out of an inning, the manager of EDO thought that his club had won the championship. But according to the umpire there were two more minutes to play, so another inning had to be played. The manager and the players of EDO were furious and tried to convince the umpire to call it a game. But the umpire was inexorable. Still furious the players of EDO started the new inning. But playing in a state of anger isn’t the ideal way to play a game. The result: EDO lost and Blue White was champion once again. But from the 1938 season, the games would last nine innings instead of two hours.

In 1939 a team of Mormon preachers played in the Dutch competition. They were vastly superior. They suffered two losses: 7-1 vs Blauw Wit and 6-3 vs HHC from Haarlem. All the other games were won by the team that played under the name of Seagulls. It would be the only year that a foreign team was declared champion.

Champions 1922-1939

1922 Quick Amsterdam
1923 Blauw Wit Amsterdam
1924 Ajax Amsterdam
1925 Quick Amsterdam
1926 A.G.H.C. Amsterdam (this was a high school team)
1927 A.G.H.C. Amsterdam
1928 Ajax Amsterdam
1929 S.C. Haarlem Haarlem
1930 S.C. Haarlem Haarlem
1931 Blauw Wit Amsterdam
1932 Blauw Wit Amsterdam
1933 V.V.G.A. Amsterdam (team of civil servants)
1934 S.C. Haarlem Haarlem
1935 Quick Amsterdam
1936 H.H.C. Haarlem
1937 Blauw Wit Amsterdam
1938 Blauw Wit Amsterdam
1939 Seagulls

Championships medal of 1925 awarded to AHC Quick (photo: Facebook page of AHC Quick)