“Down Goes the Dominican!” – a Baseball Miracle
Since I’m one of the most passionate baseball fans in the Netherlands, I can’t help but spend some attention to the surprising, shocking victory of our national team over the All-Star team of the Dominican Republic during this year’s WBC.
The Dutch team consists out of what Americans would call ‘amateurs’ (even though they’re quite high quality players indeed). The top earner among them makes $400,000 a year, the rest far, far less than that. Most have regular jobs next to their baseball careers.
The Dominican Republic’s team, on the other hand, consists out of multimillionaires, absolute All-Stars. The value of the team is more than $80 million. So when the two met earlier this week, many (like Fox) were reminded of the battle between David and Goliath.
Like David, the Netherlands pulled off an upset. It defeated the Dominicans.
But then, yesterday, the two sides met again. Most expected the Dominican Republic to take revenge for their defeat earlier this week. The Netherlands, however, know they are the best baseball team in Europe and have improved themselves considerably during the last five years on a global stage. They knew they had a shot.
And they pulled it off. Here’s a video of MLB.TV. The passion of the commentators is thrilling; “Down goes the Dominican!”
The Wall Street Journal calls it a “Honkbal Miracle” (‘honkbal’ means baseball in Dutch). Fox calls it one of the biggest upsets in history. Whatever the case, it was a great victory.
The Dutch team is now heading to Miami.
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Fantastic finish!
I had my doubts about the World Classic but this is shaping up to be a very fun tournament much better than last time.