A HISTORY OF UK BASEBALL
A brief history of UK baseball Early bat and ball games
THE SABR UK EXAMINER
Archive of articles and pictures
ABOUT SABR UK
About SABR UK About Bobby Thomson Planned meetings Contact us
LINKS
MLB news and scores Baseball history Statistics UK baseball SABR Other baseball sites
The European Connection
Guus Mater, a Dutch friend of SABR UK, brings a continental perspective to the Examiner with a brief discussion of major leaguer Rikkert Faneyte.
August 29, 1993 was an important day in the history of Dutch baseball. At Joe Robbie Stadium, Miami, a young Dutch baseball player stepped up to the plate for the San Francisco Giants. A crowd of 45,278 saw Rikkert Faneyte become only the second born-and-bred Dutchman ever to make the Majors. In his first major league game he went one for five, but he earned his place on the roster a few weeks later when first baseman Will Clark was sidelined by an injury.
Faneyte, in a telephone interview with the Dutch press agency ANP, said that he was a little nervous to roam the outfield between big money makers Barry Bonds and Willie McGee. Although he had been judged as a prospect, the quick center fielder played only a few games with the Giants before he was sent down. That's the way it goes.
Faneyte, 24, had a good season with the Phoenix Firebirds, the AAA affiliate of the Giants in the Pacific Coast League. In 120 games he batted .312 with 11 HR and 71 RBI. A Dutch TV crew was there when he made his first steps in the Majors. Faneyte, always a happy go lucky guy, is now a serious ball player.
His Major League debut wasn't his first visit to Miami. Four years ago, he was a student at Miami Dade Community College. 'I tried to show the scouts that I could play.' He succeeded. Faneyte, son of a baseball player from the Dutch Antilles and an Amsterdam softball player, has been seen as a gifted player since he was a teenager. At sixteen, he was chosen in the Dutch National Squad. In 1987, at eighteen, Faneyte was MVP during the European championship in Barcelona. Pat Murphy, an American who then was the national team coach, is now a coach at Notre Dame. He was impressed by his fast wrists 'given by nature. No coach can teach you that'.
A few days after Faneyte's debut, Dutch baseball fans were surprised to see their National League standings printed in USA Today. A few days later, the paper printed the standings from the Italian League. Finally the world is being told that there is baseball on the continent - of course, you in Britain already know.
The first born-and-bred Dutchman to play Major League Baseball was Wilhelmus 'Win' Remmerswaal. In 1979 he pitched 55 innings for the Boston Red Sox. In the early days of baseball, players nicknamed 'Dutchman', such as Honus Wagner, were invariably German.
Baseball has been played in the Netherlands since 1910. The KNBSB (Royal Dutch Baseball and Softball Association) has about 30,000 members. JCG Grasse, a businessman who learned the game in the United States, founded the association in Amsterdam on March 16, 1912.
For more than three decades the Netherlands and Italy (where baseball was only founded after World War II) dominated European baseball. Netherlands grabbed the continental title fourteen times, and Italy seven times. The British National side had its best showing in 1967 in Antwerp, when the British finished second after Belgium.
Home - News and Articles - A history of UK baseball - The SABR UK Examiner - About SABR UK - Research Requests - Links