History of baseball in the Netherlands

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The history of baseball in the Netherlands dates to shortly after 1900. The national baseball federation (Koninklijke Nederlandsche Honkbalbond) was founded in 1912, and the Holland Series was established in 1922, with the first winner being Quick Amsterdam. Today, the top level league is the professional Honkbal hoofdklasse (Major League Baseball) which sends its teams to the Holland Series. The Dutch national team has been one Europe's top national sides since the continent held its first international competition in the 1950s having won 15 European Championships.

History

1910 - 1921

The earliest evidence of baseball in the Netherlands is a photograph from 1908 in the collection of the Honkbal- en Softbal Museum, showing a coed game played "somewhere in Holland". Its discovery not only showed the "common knowledge" that baseball started in the Netherlands in 1911 with the games on the grounds of the Ice Club in Amsterdam (currently Museumplein) wrong, but also demonstrated that the answers to the questions how and when baseball was actually introduced in the Netherlands are lost.

Grasé, who had discovered baseball in the States, founded the Nederlandsche Honkbalbond in 1912. It did not went very well, the game stayed limited to Amsterdam, clubs came and went, and no serious competition could be played, and only A.H.C. Quick is still around from this period. In 1921 the number of baseball clubs was down to two, but Emile Bleesing "the man who made Dutch Baseball", sent two Quick member to Amsterdam's leading soccer clubs to found baseball branches there, this way Ajax and Blauw-Wit became names in the history of Dutch baseball.

1945 - 1976

In 1975 peanutball was introduced in the Netherlands.

The Netherlands in Major League Baseball

Four Dutch players have played in the Major Leagues, the most notable of whom is 287 game winner Bert Blyleven.

The Netherlands in international baseball

The Netherlands have won 15 European Championship titles, and participated in the Olympics twice, finishing fifth in 2000 Olympics after upsetting the Cuban team. At the Baseball World Cup, a fourth position has been the best achievement so far. Some of the players in the Dutch team are from the Netherlands Antilles. The World Port Tournament and the Haarlemse Honkbalweek are biannual international tournaments for national and club teams, organised in the cities of Rotterdam and Haarlem, respectively.

Further Reading

• Jesús Cano: "History of baseball in the Netherlands", mlb.com, February 28, 2023. [1]

Related articles

• Dutch Baseball Hall of Fame