Word: honkballer
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...long after Johannes Hendrikus Urbanus got back to The Netherlands last spring, a Dutch baseball official said sadly: "I wish Hannie had stayed home." The star pitcher of the Dutch Honkbal champions, Amsterdam's Op Volharding Volgt Overwinning (perseverance leads to victory) team, Hannie, 25, had just spent a month in the U.S. at the New York Giants' training camp (TIME, Feb. 25). He learned some tricky pitches, but Hannie and the things he had learned in America played hob with Honkbal...
When he got home, Hannie discovered that in gaining his fancy new repertory of curves and fireballs, he had lost all control. To offset his disadvantage, he soon taught rival pitchers how they, too, could throw American style. By the time the Honkbal season opened, the mound performances endangered not only batters, catchers and fans, but ballpark passers-by as well. There were so many walks that runs often outnumbered hits...
...Like Feller, 24-year-old Urbanus is a pitcher. He plays on Amsterdam's Op Volharding Volgt Overwinning (Perseverance Leads to Victory) team. The O.V.V.O. nine, behind Urbanus' consistent pitching, has won three straight Dutch championships. Last week "Hannie" was the envy of some 5,000 Dutch Honkbal players. At the invitation of the Knickerbocker, a Dutch-American magazine, Hannie flew to the U.S. to spend a month of spring training with the New York Giants, National League champions...
Baseball was made popular in The Netherlands by U.S. soldiers after World War I, and has been getting more popular ever since. The Honkbal Federation now has 165 senior teams, made up of players over 16. Crowds of more than 3,000 at a game are nothing unusual. Though the Dutch are careful to follow all the American rules, the game is strictly amateur and considerably more gentlemanly than the sometimes rowdy U.S. variety. The Dutch have no equivalent for the Bronx cheer; no one ever boos; no one would dream of suggesting that the umpire be killed. No player...
...resort to such strategy, because ordinarily he simply strikes out half the opposing batters. He has no change-of-pace pitch or slow ball, only a curve ("which I invented myself") and a fast ball ("which I hope some day to be as good as Feller"). Because Honkbal is played on soccer fields, Hannie has never had the advantage of pitching from the raised (15 in.) mound, but since equipment is scarce in The Netherlands, he has usually had the advantage of pitching with a grimy, hard-to-see ball...
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