by Pim van Nes
Frits Mulder, president of the tournament board, reminded critical journalists during a pre game press conference in Pim Mulier stadium, of the original intention of organizing an international baseball meeting was to enable Dutch players to improve their abilities in games versus stronger opponents. The first edition in Haarlem was in 1961 and indeed local players suffered in hard games and it lasted more than 40 years before the Netherlands managed to win the tournament in Haarlem. The first time was in 2004, next time was next edition 2006 and then the Dutch team won in 2010 and 2016.
Now that Dutch players have become strong to international standard, Mulder has a new problem, i.e. finding foreign teams which are available to spend 10 days in Haarlem and can compete at same or higher level than the selection of Dutch national league players. He was happy with the national delegations from Japan, Australia and Chinese Taipei. Three former US Major League players appeared on the Australian roster: Trent Oeltjen, Luke Hughes and Shane Lindsay, but Down Under was downed by the Netherlands twice, by Japan once and forced by Curacao to 10 and 12 innings. Despite of high MLB experience, Australia finished only third behind mainly local amateurs and Japanese students. Curacao was certainly number five in the tournament, but almost knocked out Australia.
Former MLB player Oeltjen was the only Australian winner: he was voted by Haarlemweek fans as most popular player. The objective awards went to other teams: MVP and best hitter was Ryoya Kaneko (Japan), best pitcher Takuyo Kato (Japan) and best defensive player was outfielder Yu-Ning Tsao (Chinese Taipei).
The press conference was attended by journalists from the Netherlands and one from Japan, but residing in the Netherlands. Frits Mulder was shouldered by his tournament director Roderick Balk and the two managers of Japan and the Netherlands: Tomonari Mizoguchi and Steve Janssen. According to Mulder the stadium seats occupation during the tournament averaged at about 70%, but he did not want to mention exact figures. However, earlier in the tournament Balk had estimated the stadium capacity at about 3.750 seats. So if multiplied with 17 games and then reduced to 70%, we end up with a total of 44.625 visitors during 10 days. Mulder wished all five teams to come back in 2018.
Also Japan manager Tomonari Mizoguchi took questions during the press conference and Japanese journalist Kotaro Nagata quoted him as follows: “We are happy to hear the Dutch audience cheering for us. The other teams are quite difficult to beat. Tokyo Big Six team is a top selection of the Japanese college system. But size, power, etcetera are much better than Japanese college. We are deeply thinking about how to win against the taller foreign guys. We do not know if the Tokyo Big Six will come back next time, but if we can, most of the players will be changed. They are college students and they will be graduated and leave university. Only three members of the present team also came to Haarlem two years ago. Seven or eight members of the team may be drafted. After we have come back in Japan, we will have Autumn League. For instance Kaneko will be picked in the draft, but it really depends on his performance in Autumn League.”