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.
In Belgian French, there are many words for rain. On Saturday, a grisaille – foggy, misty rain – covered Stade Fallon as the Deurne Spartans rolled in for battle. The steam-like texture of the precipitation fooled me into dismissing the condition as “not raining.” I stood confidently jacketless near the mound, chatting with teammates. Two hours later, the game had been called. I peeled off a soggy uniform. It had definitely been raining, and I felt sick.
The Sunday was a crisp, blue-sky fall special. We played two: A 12:30 p.m. U29 contest against the Borgerhout Squirrels before our away 3:30 p.m. matchup against the Spartans. Both clubs play on fields adjacent to Antwerp airport. The hitter’s sightline at Borgerhout includes an endless series 2-seater planes landing in the background. At Deurne, foul balls land on the runway. A third team, the Mortsel Stars, operates on the other side of the airport.
I made my 2008 pitching debut in the opener. I hurled BP fastballs down the lane with all my might. I have no stuff, but I thrive against inexperienced hitters wielding wood. They hit buckets of flyballs into the wind. We won handily.
I was reminded how different the pitcher’s view is, stuck in the centre of action. In team sports, only the quarterback initiates, and conditions, every flow of play the way the pitcher does. The responsibility is a heavy mental burden. Even on this meaningless Sunday, I felt some jitters. Thus the existence of the Pitching Coach, and the occasional weirdness of pitchers.
On Sunday afternoon, Deurne’s professional Venezuelan flamethrower burned us good. He struck out 23. The 7-2 loss, coupled with an Antwerp-Merchtem split, means we must play the rescheduled Deurne game next Saturday. The winner gets the last 2009 first division spot.
Sam played his last game Sunday. He’s now off to the Australian leagues. The Belgium-Down Under circuit is becoming increasingly common. Sam performed excellently all summer, batting .450 and nursing a generation of our young pitchers into maturity. His cultural gift – the hip-hop tone of the 23-year-old New Yorker – compliments previous American archetypes of our import players: the Ohio redneck, the Washington intellectual, the Boston smartass.
Meanwhile, there was some good news from North Carolina. Raphael Steege, an 18-year-old Brussels kid, who’s played on and off in our program for the last five years, walked on to the Wake Forest team. He spent the summer working out at training camps. He alone among eight walk-ons made the 30-man roster.
Raphael deserves all the credit, but it’s not insignificant for us. We’ve struggled some this year, and our program is young, but graduating a ballplayer into a princely division one athletic conference is one big A+.
Would you read this column during the winter? I like feedback at oldworldpastime@gmail.com
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