European Team Announced For Global Baseball Games vs Samurai Japan
On March 6 and 7, a selection of European baseball players will take on team Samurai Japan in Osaka. Today, the roster of the European team was announced.
The European team will contain players from Spain (eight players), Germany (three players), Czech Republic (four players), Italy (six), and the Netherlands (seven).
The roster will look as follows:
PITCHERS (14) Daniel Alvarez, Fernando Baez, Rhiner Cruz (Spain); Matteo Bocchi, Tiago Da Silva, Luis Lugo (Italy); Tom De Blok, Lars Hujer, Kevin Kelly, Franklyn Van Gurp (Netherlands); Martin Schneider (Czech Republic); Sven Schueller, Marcus Solbach, Dalton Von Schamann (Germany).
CATCHERS (3) Martin Cervenka (Czech Republic), Gabriel Lino (Spain), Alberto Mineo (Italy).
INFIELDERS (7) Wander Ercanacion, Edison Valerio (Spain); Alex Liddi, Ricardo Paolini (Italy); Martin Muzik (Czech Republic); Juremi Profar, Sharlon Schoop (Netherlands).
OUTFIELDERS (3) Engel Beltre, Daniel Jimenez (Spain); Mareck Chlup (Czech Republic).
UTILITY (1) Delano Selassa (Netherlands).
Also the coaching staff will contain two Dutch baseball greats: Sydney de Jong (bench coach) and Evert-Jan ‘t Hoen (infield coach). Manager of team Europe will be Marco Mazzieri from Italy.
Unfortunately, these games are overshadowed by the threat of Peter Kwakernaak (Technical Director of the Dutch Baseball Federation) to withdraw all Dutch players from the roster if Wladimir Balentien would be appointed as coach of team Europe. The NPB expressed the wish to add Balentien to the coaching staff of team Europe, since he is a baseball great in Japan. He is the player that broke the seasonal home run record of Japanese baseball legend Sadaharu Oh. The reason for Kwakernaak’s behaviour is still not clear, but it is a fact that he insulted the Japanese baseball community with this threat.
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