ELB games Amsterdam Baseball postponed

A sudden move by the CEB forced the managment of the Euro League Baseball to postpone the upcoming games between Amsterdam Baseball and Draci Brno. 
It looks like the CEB does everything that is in her power to prevent the ELB from succeeding. 

The Euro League Baseball League games between Amsterdam Baseball and Draci Brno which were scheduled on May 15 and May 16 are postponed until further notice. This is what the management of the Euro League Baseball announced this morning through a press release.

The reason for this postponement is a sudden and odd move by the CEB (European Baseball Confederation) to declare that the players of L&D Amsterdam Pirates may not be eligible to play in the European Cup games if they decide to participate in ELB games. This was announced in a letter, signed by CEB President Jan Esselman, which was sent to L&D Amsterdam Pirates.

The rule is described as follows:

All the players participating in the European Cups shall be:
– regularly registered with their club.
– regularly registered in the national competition with their club the running year, with which they participate in the European Cup competition. The player is not allowed to play for another team in the running year till the start of the European Cups.
In case of a complaint, the information received by C.E.B. from the National Federation, will rule.

The original reason for the introduction of the rule was to ban competition fraud, which is not the case in this particular situation. According to the ELB, there have been similar situations in the past, which did not lead to disqualification.  It’s comparable with college players returning to their parent club in Europe, like Stijn van der Meer did last year when he played college ball in the USA and returned to Curacao Neptunus to win the European Cup.

The move by the CEB comes as a surprise since the KNBSB (Royal Dutch Baseball and Softball Federation) recently agreed with the chosen formula of Amsterdam Baseball. The team was created to fill a void in the number of teams in the ELB and it was agreed that the players that were selected for the Dutch national team a.k.a. team Kingdom of the Netherlands would not participate.

The rule that the CEB comes up with comes out of the blue. Most of the players of Amsterdam Baseball are already part of L&D Amsterdam Pirates, except for those few players that were retired; players like Dirk van’t Klooster and Percy Isenia. But these players will not take part in the European Cup organized under the auspices of the CEB.
So there is no reason for the CEB to assume that there will be players switching teams to boost the L&D Amsterdam Pirates roster. 

Of course the ELB does not want to risk the eligibility of the players of L&D Amsterdam Pirates in the upcoming European Cup tournament, even though the managment of the league is convinced that the rule doesn’t hold up in court or in an arbitration committee.

The sudden move by the CEB is even more strange because the CEB recently has informed the ELB that it would follow the national federations.

This is starting to become a fishy tale.