Playin’ honkbal

Thursday, 17 July 2003, 17:54

I got back from Amsterdam late last night. I had been watching a couple of games of the European Baseball Championships.

On Tuesday afternoon, I watched Great Britain — a team that includes six of my Brighton teammates — beat Germany, 5-3. That evening, we all went over to Haarlem to watch the Netherlands clobber Sweden before a crowd of about 4,500.

The International Herald Tribune published a lengthy story about the tournament. John Vinocur’s piece is the best journalism about European baseball I have seen. His name-dropping of two top European clubs — Germany’s Paderborn and France’s Savigny-sur-Orge — proves that he’s done his homework.

After the Holland-Sweden game, we bumped into Netherlands manager Davey Johnson outside the stadium, and took some pictures of him with my teammates. I’m still don’t have a digital camera, so it will be a while before they get posted here. The IHT story had a sidebar about Johnson. An AP reporter also filed a story about Johnson, which the New York Times, among others, picked up.

Entry Filed under: Baseball