The third-division game I was umpiring had some weird managing antics and a very dramatic ninth inning. The visiting team manager surprised everyone–including his own players–with his substitutions. In the second inning, their first batter drew a walk and was replaced at first by a pinch runner. They sent up another pinch runner in the sixth inning, replacing a guy who had only come into the game the inning before. That guy was not amused.

Down a couple of runs in the seventh inning, the manager pulled a new rabbit out of his hat. He put himself into the line-up, batting for his catcher. He took two pitches before asking a time-out to give signs to his runners at first and second. They attempted a double steal on the next pitch–not quite surprising, but they made it nonetheless. The player-manager then hit an RBI single and allowed the other runner to score by getting himself in a rundown.

The eight inning finished with the home team up 6-4. They kept their starting pitcher on the mound to close out the game. They got two outs, but also allowed runners on second and third. The next batter got two strikes. Down to the visitors’ final strike, the batter swung at the next pitch–one down and away–and slapped it into right field for a game-tying triple. The visitors rallied for six (!) more runs before the home team finally retired them.

Of course, the home team wasn’t just going to give up, despite the unexpected six-run gap. A couple of hits and errors brought the score up to 12-10. That was the cue for the visiting manager to pull off his final stunt. Apparently having lost all confidence in his players, he put himself on the mound and let loose with a series of curve balls to try and close out the game. He might have succeeded if he’d hit the strike zone some more. A lot of his pitches sailed wide; indeed, another run scored on a wild pitch. That set the stage for the home team to cap their dramatic come-back with a two-out, game-tying single. The pitcher-manager then finally struck out the next batter to send the game into extra innings…

… except that it was 10:53pm at that time, and no new inning may be started anymore after 10:50pm. Dutch rules allow for a tie game in such cases, so that’s exactly what we got: a 12-12 tie. Who would have thought that 34 minutes earlier, when we started the ninth inning at 6-4?

That’s what my left side looks like right now, courtesy of today’s starting pitcher for the Maassluis Gophers. His 1-2 pitch in my first at-bat went way inside and hit me square above the hip. It’s one of the more painful hit-by-pitches I’ve had in my baseball life.

The same pitcher proceeded to hit our right fielder in his thigh in the second inning. In the third, he hit our left fielder (a new guy, in his first ever at-bat) on his wrist, deflecting against his cheek. The pitcher got pulled after that frame, only to have the reliever hit our catcher in his foot in the fourth.

It got us a couple of base runners, but we couldn’t really come through at the plate otherwise. (In fact, we might have had more hit batsmen than base hits.) We had a lousy day on defense as well, resulting in a 21-2 loss. The good news: we had fun. We’ve had a couple of big losses this year, but we’re having fun each time. We’re not playing to win this year, but to have a good time.

In between the having fun, I’m also swinging the bat quite well. I have a five-game hitting streak going, getting my average up to .412. Thanks to eight walks and three HBPs in 28 plate appearances, my on-base percentage is .643.

I was back to the second spot in the line-up today, after hitting lead-off for the previous two games. I was 3-for-3 in those games (a double to start each game and a single in the first game) with three walks, so I kind of wonder why our coach put me back in my old spot. I still got a hit today: a roller that only got halfway to third base. Not a chance for either the third baseman or the pitcher to throw me out on that one. My third at-bat almost resulted in a sacrifice fly. I hit a one-out fly ball to right field deep enough for the runner from third to score, but the runner from first went too far from his base and he was put out before the other guy crossed the plate. Instead of a sac fly, it was an inning-ending double play.

After starting as short stop, I got to pitch the final 1.2 innings. We were already far behind when I took the mount, so I treated it pretty much as a practice session. My best pitch was the one that ended the last inning. I was throwing fastballs all the time, because I didn’t really have control on my change-up. With the bases empty and two out, I got the batter on one ball and two strikes. I thought I’d try another change-up and this one worked beautifully. It went through the middle of the zone, but the batter swung way too early. Strike three.

Meanwhile, my old team continues to play well. After winning the championship in the 5th Division last year, they’ve led the standing in the 4th Division all year so far. (The lower the number of a Division, the higher the level of play.) I don’t have any numbers on this, but I’m sure it doesn’t happen often that a team wins one Division one year and a higher Division the next year. With nine out of sixteen games played, my old team has an 8-1 win-loss record. The number two team is 5-3, followed by two 5-4 teams and two 4-4 teams. My old team won’t play the number two team until late August. If they win that game, the championship is pretty much theirs.

In a moment of vanity, I just googled myself. I’m pleased to see my website still appears as the top result for “Ruud Visser” on google.com and google.nl, ahead of the curtain specialist at ruudvisser.net.

The 10th .com result is titled “Everything about Ruud Visser” and the description goes like this:

Do you want to know more about “Ruud Visser”? Find all the information you need about “Ruud Visser” on Exalead Wikipedia.

I’m all for learning more about people with my name, especially if they appear this high on a Google search. The Exalead page contains links to two articles on the French Wikipedia. The first one immediately caught my attention:

Atoms in Molecules
En chimie guil, la proximité immédiate de deux atomes non liés … Why Kinked is More Stable than Straight Jordi Poater, Ruud Visser, Miquel Sola, F. Matthias …
fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atoms_in_Molecules

Loyal readers will recognize “Why Kinked is More Stable than Straight” as the (partial) title of a scientific paper based on work that I did in Girona, Spain in 2005. The Wikipedia article cites that paper as one of the criticisms against the theory of Atoms in Molecules. One click away, the English Wikipedia article on AIM does the same thing.

The citations in the English article was put in by user V8rik on June 9th of last year, and user Grimlock copied it to the French version on July 22nd.

It’s been said that you aren’t somebody in today’s world until you have an article on Wikipedia. I’m not quite there yet, but this is a good start.

… and math is just applied philosophy.

I don’t like soccer.

It’s a boring game. After watching twenty-two men chasing a ball for ninety minutes, you’d be lucky if they scored thrice. In 306 games in the Dutch Eredivisie this year, the average was 3.12 goals per game. That’s roughly one goal every half hour, or less if you include the half-time break. Major League Baseball teams managed 9.60 runs per game in the 2007 regular season. Granted, baseball games take longer, but not more than three times as long.

Normally, it’s quite possible to avoid soccer, but every other summer there’s a European Championship or a World Championship. During those three or four weeks, it’s as if there’s nothing but soccer. It’s on every tv channel, in every newspaper, on every website. Homes and bars and stores turn orange. Even people turn orange, and Planet Earth might as well be a giant soccer ball.

Most annoyingly, nobody seems to be allowed not to like soccer for the duration of the tournament. The soccer craze is forced upon you, whether you like it or not. You have to watch the games and talk about them the next day. That’s society’s fault, though, not the game’s.

Indeed, it’s no different this time. The European Championship started last week and it’s everywhere. Just two more weeks, and I’ll be free again until June 11th, 2010.

Still…

I watched the Netherlands’ first game on Monday, against reigning World Champs Italy, and I have to confess I enjoyed it. The score was certainly pleasing enough: 3-0 in our favour. Beforehand, a draw was considered an optimistic prediction. Our squad played their best game in years, Italy their worst. And yes, I watched it in its entirety, and I wasn’t bored. (Well, perhaps a little bit at some point during the second half. I continued to watch with one eye, while reading a magazine with the other.)

Of course, I didn’t have much else to do that night. I was visiting my thesis advisor in Garching this week. That’s a nice little German town. Nice, and very quiet. I thought I might as well watch the game for a while.

Yesterday, during supper, Croatia were beating Germany. That was fun as well, if for a different reason. The German commentator was so terribly desperate that I almost felt sorry for him. It’s only a game!

The Netherlands’ second game is on right now, against France. It’s two thirds through the first half and, much to my surprise, we’ve got a 1-0 lead. Perhaps I should turn on my television. I might enjoy it
again…

[Update: We beat France 4-1 to secure first place in Group C, the "Group of Death" with World Champions Italy and WC runners-up France, and we haven't even played the third and final game yet. Group of Death indeed! It'll be the death of Italy or France, or both if we let Romania win on Tuesday.]

The New York Times had a nice piece yesterday on baseball in the Netherlands, talking about how the sport gained popularity here during and after World War II, the recent influx of Dutch pitchers in the US, the dominance of soccer, and more.

Asked what Dutch youngsters like about baseball, Mr. Eenhoorn [the coach of the Dutch national baseball team] said: “It’s American; it’s a summer sport, filling the gap left by soccer in spring and early summer. You know, we did research and found that kids like baseball, they like hitting the ball with the bat, they like the clothing. I don’t think it’s peaked.”

Most Dutch baseball teams were in fact started by soccer clubs in search of a sport for the months between soccer seasons. Johan Cruyff, the king of Dutch soccer, began his career as a catcher for Amsterdam Ajax’s nine, before he ever kicked a soccer ball.

The article comes back to the topic of soccer a bit further on:

Still, for the Dutch, Mr. Eenhoorn said, soccer remains the principal sport.

Tim Roodenburg, a 19-year-old pitcher with Sparta Feyenoord who got a tryout with the Yankees last year at a camp in the Dominican Republic, tends to agree. A former basketball player, he gave it up to focus on baseball, and now teaches city kids to play baseball and softball.

“I’ve seen it on the street,” he said. “Kids will take a softball, drop it on the ground, then kick it.”

The entire piece is available for free here.

We won our first competition game this year, but that result has been scratched from the books. The opposing team in question pulled out of the competition, so all games they played so far had to be nullified. That left us with two losses and one tie.

Today, we put the ‘1′ back in our win column by defeating Red Lions from The Hague by 12 to 8. Red Lions is in the unfortunate situation that they do not have a baseball field of their own. The club does have a softball field, but they have to play their baseball games at the field of the nearby Celeritas club. Oddly enough, Celeritas only has a softball field, too. Its outfield is much bigger, though, so the league deems it suitable for baseball games. I disagree, because the bases are somewhere out on the grass, there’s no pitcher’s mound and the backstop is way too close. You can play a baseball game there, but it’s not a baseball field.

Anyway, we played, and we played pretty well. The Red Lions team consists of a bunch of guys of at most 23 years old, plus one playing coach of 30-something. They have the potential to be a good team in a few years, but right now they’re not going to win a lot of games. We took an early lead and didn’t have too much trouble keeping that safe.

I got to play shortstop again for the entire game and had my share in an overall pretty solid defensive game on our part. We were hitting quite well, too, and I was happy to get my second hit of the season and my first two RBIs. Meanwhile, we were getting spoiled by all kinds of snacks and thingies brought along to celebrate Mother’s Day. A clear sky and a temperature of 25 °C (77 °F) were further contributing to a very enjoyable game.

A rare Dutch-only post here… This one’s too much work to explain in English.

De Volkskrant meldde vandaag dat de koningin het naar haar zin had in Makkum en Franeker: “Uitbundig pakken de Friezen uit terwijl de koninklijke familie zich vermaakt met overwegend oud-Hollandse activiteiten.” Waarom die oud-Hollandse activiteiten? Zijn oud-Frieze activiteiten minder leuk? Of worden er oud-Nederlandse activiteiten bedoeld? Friesland is toch echt geen onderdeel van Holland, is dat nooit geweest, en zal dat vermoedelijk ook nooit worden.

We were supposed to play today’s game in Delft against Machos. However, a miscommunication somewhere had led to the Machos field being double-booked. Our own field was available, so we played this road game at home. (Too bad we only learned of the double booking when we got to the field. It would have saved us the drive there and back.)

The lead changed hands several times and the game remained exciting until the final out. We started with a 3-0 lead after two innings, but Machos started hitting the ball better and pulled even. We soon came back on top, 4-3, but Machos struck another blow and took a 6-4 lead. With the two-hour mark approaching, we went to bat and took the score to 6-6.

Machos was still the home team, so the final at-bat was theirs. I took over pitching from our starter with the task of keeping the 6-6 tie. I walked the first batter (number eight in their line-up) on five pitches and started with three balls to the next guy. The next two pitches were strikes. The next one would have been ball four, except that the batter swung through it for the first out. The third batter (number one in their line-up) took two strikes before ripping one hard to third. Our third baseman was right on it and threw to first for the second out. With the runner on third by now, the next batter swung at the second pitch and hit a slow roller back at me. My throw to first was a bit low, but still good for the third out and a save of the 6-6 tie. Mission accomplished!

As solid as my performance was on the mound, so poor was it at the plate today. Apart from one very long foul ball (had the distance to hit the left-field wall, but it sailed foul by a large distance), I didn’t really hit anything. I grounded out to third in the first inning and struck out three times throughout the rest of the game. That’s four plate appearances to forget as soon as possible.