Bonding By BBQ...

We had a team barbeque yesterday after our game. It was very good timing as we had just beaten the Hoofdorp Pioneers to take our semi-finals, and secure a spot in the Holland Series which kicks off in 10 days. I took my camera, popped a few pictures of the players, fans and staff all enjoying some quality grill action.

About the games, we had an impressive series. The first game took 11 innings, but we finally took it 1-0. Game two was my start, I want 6+ (albeit not my best start) we still won the game 3-0. In the third game of the best of 5 series, we blew it open in the 5th, and ran away with an 8-0 win. 3 shutouts, giving us 7 in a row counting the last 4 games of the league play. That's 67 straight innings, between 8 pitchers without giving up a run (including finishing off the game before the streak with 4 shutout innings). I was telling some of the guys yesterday, I've never been a part of something like this. It's pretty special. Just have to keep on keeping on.

Now to the pictures...

Chatting about baseball...likely.

Team manager and friends Jorien and Naomi enjoying some good food, and lot's and lot's of Heinekens (bottom right)...
Leftfielder Mr. Kingsale in the brown hat, SS Dwayne Kemp in the green jumpsuit, 1B Jeff Arends in the green hat, outfielder Eldrion Regina (Jappy) in the red...

RF Danny Rombley and 3rd base coach Foxy Martinus...

I jumped in the middle..

Coaches JC on the left, and Adonis Kemp on the right... Having a deep chat about something baseball related... JC and his whiskey, haha.

Coaches wives... Mrs. Martinus and Mrs. Kemp

The grillmasters at work. Grey haired SS Jeroen Sluijter and catcher in the yellow shirt is Martijn Meeuwis, cooking up just a little chicken...

Foxy with the dutch league homerun king (from about 30 years ago). This guy is now a bit crazy and just yells at players the whole game from different parts of the bleachers while drinking beer he brought from home. Nice guy though...

Equipment manager/Dutch national team staff member also Ton Meiresonne. He wasn't smiling, so I poked his belly and he perked right up... haha

Typical dutch.

Some of the crowd...

A couple couples. Pitcher Kevin Heijstek and his lady friend Deborah on the left, and CF Tati (Shaldimar Daantji) on the right with his girlfriend...

People eatin.

On the menu = Pork loins, steak, ribs, chicken drums, rice and noodles. Oh, and sate sauce... mmmmm.

The meat bringer. Pitcher Ber Van Driel... He obviously ran out of hair product after the game...

The grillers... did a great job.

One of those days........

The sunset was beautiful tonight, I took a couple pictures, but being in the midst of the lazy-ass day I'm having... I don't feel like going through all the work of taking my memory card out of my camera, putting it all the way into the PC, opening the DCIM files, finding the pics, and actually dragging them to the right picture folder. Buh..... to much.

I've had what I'd call an 'off day'. Very little energy for no reason. I blame it on today being Friday the 13th, but that probably isn't it. I'm guessing my slowness stems from a week of two of the hardest workouts of my life... my own self inflicted running torture 3 times also, my first round of batting practice (albeit 10 swings) in 2 years, and being all alone again. My metabolism has been punched in the gut, and kicked in the ass also, so it's running on high right now, again.

The good thing is... Today is my one day this week where I don't need to, and shouldn't do anything. I start tomorrow in my last league start of the season. Normally the day before a start, pitchers rest their bodies, and save up as much energy as possible for the 2+ hour sweat-a-thon we endure on gamedays.



Screw it, I'll give you a couple pics... I feel lazy, but I hate being, feeling or acting lazy.




I took this all these shots out my window... this one is from this afternoon. We had a line of thunderstorms roll through, this one was rapidly approaching from the left (south) and hit with a monsoon about 20 seconds after I took this.

A bit ago...


The uraban sunset.


From my point of view...


Last shot of the night... beautiful skies.

Reboot

Hello again.

Obviously, I haven't written in more than 1... Jesus, maybe 2 .... wait I think it's more than 2 damn months by now. Brutal and boring I know. Save it.

UPDATE- I saved this post and created the vs. Germany post you can find below this after I wrote this one, so don't be confused people.

I'm sure the only people to drop by this page now are randoms, and my parents. Well time to get back at it somewhat. I have so much to write about, so many happenings over the past few months. Here are some things that have happened over the past 2 or so months that I haven't blogged about... since, well, I haven't blogged anything.

->Shorty (wife) joined me in Rotterdam for a month plus on her summer break, we had lots of good chill and quality time.

->A day after Shorty peaced out, my folks came out and spent a month watching a couple tournaments and spending quality time too.

->In case you don't know, I play on the Dutch National Baseball team, we hosted and won the Haarlemse Honkbalweek in early July.

->The National team (Oranje) then headed to Germany for a two week, rainy, dominant, then dominated tournament (European Championship). Needless to say we came second.

->We beat Cuba when I started, run ruling them for the first time in history 10-0.

->My folks left a week ago, and I've been getting back to semi-normalcy since. I've got a new room mate for the rest of the year... a 6'8" Aussie and his aussie lady friend.

->We are rapidly approaching our last 3 games of the club team season this weekend. We've already clinched the #1 position in the playoffs starting in 2 weekends.

->Shorty and I had plenty of sun in June, then July became rainy, and it's been shaky ever since... tonight, back to rain.

->What else happened, oh, I contemplated blogging about 8732489 times. I procrastinated, shook it off, couldn't think of what exactly to start with and basically I'm just a shitty constant blogger... wear it whoever reads this.

Anyways... I can write about almost anything right now, if anyone wants to know anything, has any questions about the national team (within reason) or my club team Neptunus... also about Shorty or my folks (also, within reason)... Let me know and I'll see what I can make happen on here.

For now... peace.

In Germany vs. Germany

I was handed the ball for our 4th game of the European Baseball championships. I was given the biggest threat to us in the first round, Ze Germans!!

It was tough leading up to that game. First off, waiting to start, and sitting on the bench for 4 games doing charts and chewing 34589 seeds gets old. But as a starter you get geared up for starts. I've blogged about this in the past, the routines... well, I had all mine lined up wonderfully for the start Monday against these guys. We roll up to the field and promptly a monsoon hits the field for 30 straight minutes. This turned the field into a lake. My dad was watching the game that was just finishing up, sporting only a small umbrella and wound completely soaked from the shoe soles to the knees... I'm telling you, it was flash flood worthy rain... raindrops the size of, well, baseballs.
Anywho, the game was cancelled, and move to 2 days later. That was fine, I mentally prepared myself for a rainout, not to be pissed or dissapointed. I came out Wednesday and threw well, 7 innings, 2 hits, 7 strikeouts and a walk. We won the game 3-0, which in this tounament is all that matters. We had to make the finals. We did.

The finals pinned us against Italy. They were good, very good. In our defence, I am the only guy on the Dutch team not born in a country that gives out Netherlands passports. It's not an excuse, but Italy only had 3 starters that were from Italy. It was basically America/Venezuela/Cuba/Italy vs. Netherlands (and a Canadian). I gotta give them credit though, we could have stepped up and won I think, but they played well, and they were stronger in every facet of the game.

Well here's a few pictures from my start against Germany in Heidenheim, Germany.


Outfielder playing first for the first time in 10 years. Bas DeJong making a play on a bunt, made a nice play.

A little semi-sidearm action.

Long time National team stud catcher Sidney DeJong (not related to Bas ablove). Biggest gamer, most clutch hitter and one of the smartest catcher I've ever played with.

Fastball, outside, 89 MPH, strikeout pitch.

2-seam fastball on the inside corner, 88 mph, induced a groundball to the shortstop.

Since our hats are at our hearts, we are saluting the Dutch national anthem, Wilhelmus.

Slider low and away, 74 MPH.

A few minutes after the skies opened during my start vs. Germany. Luckily we were up 1-0 already after 7 innings at this point. After 2 hours of field crew work we continues at won 3-0.

87 MPH fastball on the inside corner. I can tell by the mechanics... of course.

Guy swinging... and missing at a slider... and apparently being so fooled he lauched his bat at our dugout because he was so pissed...