Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Dear followers and readers,

It has been a turbulent baseball year. A World Series with at least one unexpected participant, an inaugural Premier 12 Tournament that had some hickups, a Dutch season in which Curacao Neptunus threepeated and a New York Yankees team that did far better than most expected.

Be honest, who thought that the New York Mets would clinch a World Series berth?  The Royals on the other hand proved that the 2014 season wasn’t a fluke.

The Premier 12 tournament organized by the WBSC, was a success sportive wise, but the organization had some hickups. Eventually the tournament didn’t get the winner that most expected. Instead of favorite Japan, Korea won the tournament by beating the USA in the final. The team of the Kingdom of the Netherlands managed to reach the quarter finals but was ousted by the runner up of the tournament.

The Dutch competion had a surprising end or didn’t it? During the regular season, Curacao Neptunus finished second behind L&D Amsterdam Pirates. But in the final two weekends of the play offs, Pirates needed only one victory to clinch a spot in the Holland Series, but they couldn’t clinch that sole win so Curacao Neptunus and Corendon Kinheim advanced to the Holland Series, where Neptunus proved to be way too strong.

At the beginning of this year there was a new initiative. A new professional European baseball league was founded: the Euro League Baseball. The intention is to play a competition with teams from Italy, the Czech Republic, France, Germany and the Netherlands next to their own national competitions. But due to circumstances, the Dutch Baseball Federation does not allow the Dutch teams to participate yet. And I have read on an Italian website that if the Dutch will not participate, the interest of the Italian teams may diminish or even disappear.
Let’s hope that the Dutch teams will be allowed to participate.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Let’s hope that 2016 will be another baseball year with some very surprising results. Let’s hope for a exciting European Championship in Hoofddorp in the Netherlands in which the participating countries have grown to each other level wise.

To finish I’d like to thank you all for stopping by in the past year. I hope that you liked my brainchilds.

Enjoy the holidays.