Randoms #2

Today was a short pratice. We have 7 huge games coming up in a row (minus the rainout day in the middle). Also, today we saw blue sky for the first time since we have been in Beijing, it was nice to see, but the temperature went up about 4 degrees... so for now, I'm not too unhappy about the smog.

We play bright and early against Chinese Taipei at 10:30 am local time. We are 12 hours ahead of the eastern timezone in the USA, and 15 from the west coast. I'm not sure yet, but there are possibilities to see the games online. Either
http://os2008.nos.nl/index/live , or go to www. NBC.com and follow the links to watching the olympic events live, supposedly they are showing every event online.

Here's a few randoms pictures since we've moved into the Olympic Village, some of the guys, and some sights...



TJ (catcher) and I with some time on the bus. I figured out some different settings on the camera, so I decided to get him in on a trial run of a new colour setting.



Our big guy, 7 foot 1 Loek Van Mil went up to Yao Ming at the opening and chatted for about a minute or two with him. Tiny was able to get up pretty close with him and pop a couple pictures, this is the best pic of the 2 giants conversing, probably about how tall they are and how small other people are...



Jeroen Sluijter (shortstop) and myself soaking in the parade of nations introduction of the Netherlands



Percy Isenia (first base / DH) posing in the act of jumping, don't know why, but that's P



The Gymnastics arena...



Kingy (centerfield) getting on the bus. He came into my room about 30 minutes after we got home and assked if I had posted this yet... haha. Very cool guy, also a Neptunus player, and former major leaguer for several seasons



One of the housing unit gates in the village... they are pretty massive



This IS our closer. But a sad story to him this trip. Loek was warming up in the bullpen in a practice the day before the opening ceremonies and tore a ligament in his elbow. It was horrible news for us, and obviously worse for him. The coaches had to make a quick decision to fill his spot on the roster, and picked up national team veteran Dave Draijer. Loek was able to participate in the opening ceremonies, and was even ushered to the front of the Netherlands team parade by our "Chief de mission". He took the news hard at first, but reacted better than anyone would have thought. He left the team 2 days later in a positive and very classy manner. Good luck in your rehab back in Minnesota Loek.



Outfielder Danny Rombley, this guy has a different handshake for every single person on our team almost, even coaches. This is him strutting onto the bus today



If you watched the opening ceremony you would have seen all these guys. We drove by about 120 of these trucks in a row filled with about 18 year old chinese boys. All the same size kids and everything. We later realized they were the ones who were the catalyst in the opening ceremonies.



This is about 5% of the workers from one of the fields here. There are so many people hired as field crew, and cleaning and whatnot. At any time there are at least 30-50 at each of the 3 fields