John Miller, player/coach of the Brussels Kangaroos and a reporter for a major American newspaper, is back chronicling his team’s 2009 season in his weekly column that will appear every Monday on mister-baseball.com.
In 2000, in the Kangaroos’ inaugural first division Opening Day, we faced the Hoboken Pioneers — as in the Antwerp suburb, not a place in New Jersey.
It is Belgium’s oldest club – hence the name — born in the 1930 in a proud working-class neighborhood. Kids ride their bikes to games. Sometimes, men in black leather ride their bikes to games. There’s nothing like playing on the road on a sunny Sunday in front of 150 screaming Hell’s Angels quaffing Jupilers.
We lost that opener in a tin bat slugfest I’d rather forget. We’ve played the Pioneers a dozen times since then, developing a grudging admiration and respect.
In 2001, their 300-pound first baseman hit the biggest, baddest bomb I’ve ever seen. Hammering a 28-33 Easton, he mashed a chest-high fastball with all his might. At the time, the ball travelled 500 feet. After a rum and coke, I’ll swear it was 700.
The same year, we upset them 6-4. At the time, their toughest out was an unassuming righty slugger named Mark Roef. The man looked, and still looks, like an insurance executive playing softball. Until he uncoils a picture-pretty hardball Tony Gwynn swing.
Mark is now a devoted dad and coach. Last month, he wrote me a thoughtful email that deserves to be quoted for its buckets of common sense.
He loves to coach, he wrote, because, when kids “catch a fly ball or hit a line drive, my heart skips a beat of joy to see that they have fun in the game we love.”
A big challenge is “thriving to create a better baseball atmosphere.” That’s “not easy in a country were soccer and cycling rule.” The Belgian season is too long, he wrote. “We can’t motivate young players anymore to play seven months on every Saturday and Sunday. Giving up all their free time to baseball is asking too much from these kids.”
What the romantic waxing hides, however, is a man who used to own Belgian pitching like Elvis owned rock. Didn’t you used to mash? I wrote back. Mark admitted to hitting .400 with a ton of dingers, “but I always knew there were thousands and thousands of players in the world better than myself.”
This weekend, we split with the Pioneers, losing 10-0 Saturday, then coming back with a 3-2 triumph, behind a gem by our big teenage righty Cedric De Smedt.
Sunday afternoon, with the game on the line, Mark pinch-hit. We threw him a 3-2 changeup. He lined into a diving catch.
These days, wrote Mark, “a kid hits a 210-feet homerun and they think they’re Albert Pujols, or am I getting old and grumpy?”
The answer: No, Mark, you’re a baseball hero.
Who are the Europeans making baseball happen on your ballfield? Tell me about crazy coaches or volunteers at oldworldpastime@gmail.com