A championship and numbers...

WE WON!!!!!

An unbelievable season was capped off by an amazing championship game. Diego Markwell threw a 1-hit gem to take the best of 7 Holland Series 4-2 over the Amsterdam Pirates.

Back in Holland for my 1st year after dabbling in in the minor leagues for a year with the Blue Jays, I came back, determined to make this a positive move back here. With a very solid team at my back, I was able to put together the best season of my life.

I learned so much about pitching, how to attack hitters, and about pitches to make in certain counts and situations. All of this helped my team (Door Neptunus (Rotterdam, NL)) to a 39-3 record during the season, 7-2 in the playoffs, including a staff that compiled 17 shutouts in 51 games. Personally I finished with a 9-0 record, 0.39 ERA, 36hits and 83 k's in 69 innings. You can find the league stats here.

We had a rough time scratching out the first few games of the Holland Series as the Amsterdam Pirates played great baseball, and we played shaky baseball. Either way, we provailed and got stronger throughout the series. This was my third year playing in the Dutch Headclass, and my third playoff appearance, finally winning a Championship.

The celebrations were great, our bus ride home was MC'd by our outspoken Australian pitcher (and finals MVP) Dushan Ruzic. He had players one by one come up and sing anything, say anything... it was for the most part hilarious, including such songs as "We are the Champions", and several dutch chants that I couldn't follow... just sang along like I knew what I was saying.

It was great to be there with veteran players like Jeroen Sluijter making his last bus ride as a player, and being able to experice a championship with other players maybe playing their last games also (including myself).

Time for a few weeks of National team practices, then a trip to the Intercontinental Cup in Taiwan for 2 1/2 weeks at the end of October.... Then Finally back to Canada!!

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...

Online interview...

Check it out on the European Baseball website mister-baseball.com and you can find a recent interview I had. Or just click here.

Hahahaha... this guy is so funny, and serious as anything. Watch out west coast!!!

Release Story + Baseball Update...

We're stacked.

I've been back in Rotterdam, NL for the past 6 weeks getting back into the swing of things with my club Door Neptunus. For those of you who don't know about European baseball, every country has a league, all have different names, and Holland and Italy are the top 2 baseball caliber wise. This is my 3rd season playing for Door Neptunus in the Dutch 'Hoofdklasse' out of the past 4 years.

This year, like I said, we are stacked. Tons of talent, and so far, we're putting it to use. 3 of our 4 outfielders are on the national team, 4 of our 6 infielders are, and 3 of 4 starting pitchers are (the other is on the Australian national team). Oh, and our main catcher had to retire from the Oranje (national team) because of work issues. So, yeah... we have kicked off this season at a 16-1 mark so far. We have played well, played hard, had to battle for a few wins, but most of all have played good, fun baseball.

I don't think I've bloged about my release, but it wasn't anything special. Here's the story in a nutshell. There were a couple reasons why the Jays came to their decision to release me. First off, something I didn't see coming even though I knew it was going happen, happened. When the Jays traded Roy Halladay, their ace for the past 10 years, they didn't get a big league pitcher in return, only a couple minor league hitters and a minor league pitcher. Because he left, the starting rotation for the Jays was very weak, so they ended up signing about 20 triple-A caliber pitchers, and a few big league guys too, which is the part I didn't see coming. When those guys don't make the big league team out of spring training, they get shuffled down the system, as do all the pitchers below them because of that. I was in the unfortunate spot in double-A where there were 3-4 higher end bullpen prospects coming up from single-A, forming a bit of a pinch of the non-prospect double-A guys. It's kind of hard to explain, but teams take care of guys they have money invested in, and I wasn't one of those guys, after signing for 0$ just to get my shot. They have released all the guys that I was in the bullpen with last year now, except a couple of the prospects who came up later in the season. On the other hand, my walk total hurt me too. Throwing submarine wasn't my cup of tea, I could do it, but struggled mightily to hit the zone every time. My ERA wasn't bad for the minors, but again, my walk total hurt that. I gave up an average of 1 hit per inning which is, decent, and my strikeout total was decent, but I was in there to get groundballs, and I knew that. Well I guess that wasn't really in a nutshell, but it's a bit of a intricate story I guess.



It's all good though, I am happy to be where I'm at now, having fun with the boys back here, and I get the opportunity to play in 3 tournaments this summer and fall with the national team which is important to me.

this weekend we play Ado, a team from Den Haag, or 'the Hague', and I have the start on Sunday. Should be a good weekend, but we gotta come out ready!