by Pim van Nes
Netherlands federation KNBSB yesterday wrote a letter to Netherlands Olympic Committee reminding their Sports Awards Gala jury of the recent performances by three baseball players in three professional top leagues around the Pacific Ocean: Rick van den Hurk in Japan, Roger Bernadina in South Korea and Kenley Jansen in California, USA. In december NOC*NSF will host their 2017 Sports Gala and their jury has to nominate candidates for the new awards to the nation’s best sport man, best sport woman and best sport team of the year.
In the open letter to NOC, which was also released on KNBSB’s Facebook, the geographic distance and local time difference between the Netherlands and subject foreign leagues are mentioned as hindering frequent publicity in Dutch all sports media. Consequently KNBSB wanted to draw Olympic attention for MLB finalist Jansen as best relief pitcher, Bernadina as first time KBO champion in South Korea and Van den Hurk as second time NPO champion in Japan.
Their key roles with Los Angeles Dodgers, KIA Tigers and Softbank Hawks deserve serious consideration for the upcoming nominations for the prestigious awards gala, to be televised live by national broadcaster NOS in the Netherlands. All three players appeared in their national team during one or more editions of World Baseball Classic at both sides of Pacific Ocean, making it to the final round twice: San Francisco 2014 and Los Angeles 2017.