John Miller, head coach of the Brussels Kangaroos and a reporter for a major American newspaper, is chronicling his team’s 2008 season in a column that will appear every Monday on mister-baseball.com. It is the first of several Mister-Baseball Blogs this year.
There was no baseball in Brussels today. A game was planned against our biggest rivals, the Angels of Namur, a pleasant town of 110,000 in southern Belgium. It was to be another pre-season affair. Call it the Mussels-N-Fries League.
Baseball in this country grew up in Antwerp, a fast-moving, hard-working city that is one of the world’s top ports. It was popular during Europe’s go-go-America post-war boom in the 1950s and 1960s. The sport has ebbed and flowed. Right now, it’s definitely ebbing. In 1995, Belgium reached the semi-finals of the European championships. The team was an out from beating Italy and getting a ticket to the Atlanta Olympics. An outfielder dropped a flyball. In the telling of the wise old grey beards, it’s been all downhill since. Membership has dropped in half, youth programs have collapsed, the national team is no longer a continental threat. On summer afternoons, you can still find Antwerp neighborhoods crowded behind the backstop, men, women and children cheering on the home team. But it ain’t what it used to be.
The decline of Antwerp baseball has coincided with the rise of the Brussels Kangaroos and the Namur Angels. So we were looking forward to today. Unfortunately, the rains came early last night and lasted late into the morning. By the time the air dried, we had told everybody to stay home and I was housecleaning with my wife. The field had soaked up too much water to play. Too bad; it is a nice field.
The club, like so many baseball outfits on this continent, started out on a soccer rectangle. Right field was 200 feet from home. A ball hit fair off the field was a double if it landed to the right of a 80-foot-tall red lamp post in right-centre. The dugouts were rows of cinder blocks stuck into the grassy knolls behind first and third. In 1998, the local government poneyed up the dough for a proper ballfield. The project went over budget. Something had to go. A local councillor made the call. He took away the backstop. It took a few phone calls to explain that a backstop was almost as important as the goals on a soccer pitch.
That field, avec backstop, is a fine baseball tabletop. Its most distinctive characteristic is a left field fence that cuts from 300 feet down the line to 275 in the left-field power alley. Back in 2001, the club’s second year in first division, I spent most of that season crouched in the catcher’s box, watching big strong Antwerp dockworkers flip meatballs – PING! DING! CHING! – into the briar patch with 33-inch 28-ounce Easton TRIPLE 7′s or whatever was in style at the time. We now use wood bats and our pitchers are much better, but that 4-30 season is hard to forget.
Scrubbing floors today, the mind wandered. I think I’d trade some 20-0 drubbings for some good weather. I’d signal number one and tell my guy to lob it. No breaking stuff. Swing the Easton. Whatever. But please, please, Sun, bring some heat.
The grey skies can sure get a fellow down.
Previous Columns:
Old World Pastime: Playing and Coaching in Europe
Pingback by Who do the Angels root for? - a Baseball-Blog by John Miller - Old World Pastime - Mister Baseball
April 28, 2008 | 8:05 am
[...] Columns: Playing and Coaching in Europe My Country, Delayed by Rain Wanted: Pitcher-Shortstop-Catcher With Homerun Power Wanna play catch? Can I see your license? All [...]