Swen Huijer calls it a career

Relief pitcher of Dutch Hoofdklasse team Vaessen Pioniers, Swen Hujijer announced that he has hung up his spikes. He made the announcement on his Facebook page. The reason is that it is hard to combine playing at the highest level in the Netherlands and to have a job with shifts next to it. According to people who know Swen, he did not make this decision overnight.

The last couple of years, Swen was raising money for the battle against cancer with his foundation “Baseball against cancer”. Recently he was on the Dutch national radio to raise awareness for this terrible disease.

At the age of seventeen Swen was signed by the Boston Red Sox, after an impressive career with the rookie team/minor league team of Vaessen Pioniers. In the first three years with the Red Sox, the reliever played in the Gulf Coast League but played for the A Short Season Lowell Spinners of the New York-Penn League in 2011. Before the start of the 2012 campaign, Huijer was released by the Red Sox, despite decent stats; in 2011 he appeared in 14 games, won two and lost two, he struck out 37 and walked 14 in 40.2 innings. He kept his opponents at a batting average of .218.

After the Red Sox released him, he returned to Vaessen Pioniers where he played until the announcement of today. Last season Swen posted a decent ERA of 3.00 and he kept his opponents to a batting average of .205. In the 2014 season he showed that he has some good stuff. When you read the reason for his retirement, you may understand why he didn’t put up similar numbers so far like he did last year.