Baseball
The rules
Wikipedia has a much better introduction to baseball than I could ever write, so I’ll refer you to that page if you want to know more about this great sport.
Me and my baseball
I started playing baseball when I was seven years old, at a local club called Raggers Thamen. Well… actually that wasn’t baseball, it was tee-ball (called peanutball here), a simpler variant to the real thing :-) After two years or so I moved to another club, De Vliegende Hollander (The Flying Dutchman), because my old team didn’t have enough players anymore. Another year later I moved on to real baseball (Little League equivalent) and I continued to play until the age of sixteen. I didn’t do any sport for about a year, at which point I started playing volleyball. I did that for two and a half years, but I didn’t like it enough to continue. And yes, you guessed right… I returned to baseball, back at Raggers Thamen.
That was in the early summer of 2003, and I played there for the rest of the season, as well as for the next two years. I started out playing shortstop and first base, but I also took up pitching in early 2004. The next year, I started as pitcher in most of our games; when I wasn’t pitching, I was mostly at shortstop or second base, and occasionally at first base.
With my move to Leiden in the fall of 2005, I switched clubs and as of 2006, I’m playing for the Keytown Hitters. I was an outfielder and relief pitcher the first year, as well as an occasional starting pitcher or first baseman. I spent most of 2007 as a third baseman, left fielder and relief pitcher. I’m playing in another team this year (at a slightly lower level), and I’ll go back to shortstop and relief pitching.
The Dutch baseball competition is divided into two semi-professional national leagues (called the top and first division, roughly comparable to single-A), plus five levels of amateur regional leagues (second through sixth division). I’m not all that good, so from 2003 to 2005 I was on a team in the sixth (lowest) division. I also played a few games in 2005 for Thamen’s other men’s team (they were a bit short on players), which plays two levels up. I didn’t contribute a whole lot, but it was definitely a good learning experience, playing at a higher level. I played my first two Keytown Hitters season in the fifth division, winning the championship and earning a promotion to the fourth division in 2007. However, I moved to the sixth division for 2008 (we don’t have a team in the fifth this year), because I think I’ll have more fun there than in the fourth division.
Statistics
As any professional or semi-professional baseball player or fan can tell you, statistics are an intricate part of the game. From batting average to number of homeruns to fielding errors, everything that can be kept track of, is kept track of. I cannot stay behind, so here are my stats for this year’s games and for the last couple of seasons as a whole. Click on a term to see a description.
| Game | PA | AB | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | SB | CS | OBP | SLG | AVG |
| 4/13 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 | .750 | .500 | .500 |
| 4/20 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 1.000 | - | - |
| 4/27 | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | .000 | .000 | .000 |
| 5/4 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .000 | .000 | .000 |
| 5/11 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | .500 | .333 | .333 |
| 5/18 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | .667 | .500 | .500 |
| 6/1 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1.000 | 1.500 | 1.000 |
| 6/8 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1.000 | 2.000 | 1.000 |
| 6/22 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .667 | .500 | .500 |
| 6/29 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1 | .667 | .000 | .000 |
| 7/6 | ||||||||||||||
| 7/13 | ||||||||||||||
| 8/10 | ||||||||||||||
| 8/24 | ||||||||||||||
| 8/31 | ||||||||||||||
| 2008 | 31 | 18 | 7 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 10 | 6 | 10 | 1 | .645 | .500 | .389 |
| 2007 | 42 | 29 | 9 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 8 | 12 | 12 | 7 | 0 | .524 | .552 | .310 |
| 2006 | 43 | 28 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 14 | 14 | 4 | 0 | .419 | .107 | .107 |
| 2005 | 42 | 27 | 8 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 9 | 13 | 5 | 18 | 0 | .548 | .407 | .296 |
| 2004 | 45 | 29 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 15 | 9 | 10 | 3 | .444 | .207 | .138 |
| Game | PO | A | E | FPCT | IP | SO | SO/9 | ER¹ | ERA¹ |
| 4/13 | 1 | 2 | 1 | .750 | 0 | - | - | - | - |
| 4/20 | 1 | 5 | 1 | .857 | 2 | 3 | 13.5 | ? | ? |
| 4/27 | 1 | 2 | 1 | .750 | 1 | 1 | 9.0 | ? | ? |
| 5/4 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1.000 | 3 | 1 | 3.0 | ? | ? |
| 5/11 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 1.000 | 0 | - | - | - | - |
| 5/18 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 1.000 | 0 | - | - | - | - |
| 6/1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | .500 | 1 | 1 | 9.0 | ? | ? |
| 6/8 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1.000 | 0 | - | - | - | - |
| 6/22 | 0 | 0 | 2 | .000 | 1.2 | 2 | 10.8 | ? | ? |
| 6/29 | 4 | 2 | 1 | .857 | 1 | 0 | 0.0 | ? | ? |
| 7/6 | |||||||||
| 7/13 | |||||||||
| 8/10 | |||||||||
| 8/24 | |||||||||
| 8/31 | |||||||||
| 2008 | 13 | 16 | 7 | .806 | 9.2 | 8 | 7.4 | ? | ? |
| 2007 | 4 | 17 | 5 | .808 | 11.2 | 3 | 2.3 | 5 | 3.86 |
| 2006 | 24 | 7 | 4 | .886 | 24.1 | 7 | 2.6 | 34 | 12.58 |
| 2005 | 18 | 25 | 2 | .956 | 34 | 31 | 8.2 | ? | ? |
| 2004 | 16 | 23 | 13 | .790 | 29 | 25 | 7.8 | 25 | 7.76 |
¹ I don’t have data on earned runs for the 2005 and 2008 seasons.
