What brought me to writing a blog?

As I have told before, I am a baseball fan since 1981. And it took me until 1986 to attend my first ever baseball game. In 1992 I played my first baseball game, after spending the previous seasons with playing slow pitch softball. The first baseball pitcher that I faced threw so slow that I had no trouble to hit the ball. My first thought: “It’s not that hard.” DUH!!! Well, the pitcher that I faced in the next game threw a lot faster. I soon realized that hitting wasn’t all that easy. In the years that I played baseball I was a .200 hitter at best, except for my last season. In 2007 the team that I played for got a new coach. He told me to adapt my stance and from that moment on I started to hit. Until that moment I enjoyed playing defense more than I did enjoy hitting. But my new stance brought me a lot of confidence and halfway the season I had a batting average of .458 or .482 (I don’t know exactly anymore). But then after the summer break (yes in the Netherlands we have a summer break to give players the opportunity to go on vacation), I blew my arm out and that was the end of my “career”.

From that moment on, I fell into a deep hole. No baseball anymore. Now what to do? At that time I used to be active on several baseball forums. At some point I started to write about Dutch baseball and Dutch  players in the USA. I posted those threads on Facebook. Apparently they liked it because I was approached to write similar posts on Facebook in Dutch. In the meantime I was approached by the editor/owner of the Cuban baseball magazine Universo Beisbol. He asked me to write a monthly columm for his magazine. Eventually the Dutch baseball federation approached me to write for their website as well.

To get to the reason why I started to write a blog, I have to go back in time a bit. When I spent my 2008 vacation in California, I joined the stadium tour in Dodger Stadium. The tour guide asked some trivia questions during the tour. His first was: Who is the only player that still wears #42? Nobody answered,so I said Mo Rivera. He asked several other questions that I answered because nobody said something. At some point during the tour, when we went out of a video room, he asked me where I came from. When I said that I came from the Netherlands, he asked “Do you play baseball overthere?” I told him to watch the 2009 World Baseball Classic. I hope that he remembered my words when the Dutch humiliated the Dominicans by sending them home. The guy also asked how I managed to know this much about the history of the game. I said that almost everything can be found on the web.

So a few weeks after I started to write for the website of the Dutch baseball federation, the moment that I described above struck my mind. It made me decide to write a blog about (mainly) Dutch baseball in English. Just to show the world and especially the USA that we Dutch know how to play baseball.

Since August, five months have passed. Of course I was in doubt when I started this blog: in doubt if people would like my brainchilds. But to me the most important thing is that I like what I do. It is a big plus if people like my posts too, but the main motivation is that I want to show the world what Dutch and Netherlands Antillian baseball players are capable of.

Recently someone asked me “How to write a good (baseball) blog?” The fun thing is that I asked my example Benjamin Hil (writer of Ben’s Bizblog) about the same question. But how the heck do I know how to write a good blog. I am in the blogging business for only five months. In my humble opinion the most important thing is to enjoy writing. I also think it is important not to take yourself too serious. Baseball may be big business but it is still a GAME. And of course you have to do your homework, something that I forget once in a while. But I know that there will be persons to point out my mistakes. 😉  It sure is something to learn from.

Anyhow, I don’t regret that I have started a blog. I love to write about my favorite game. Next to playing the game, there is nothing better.