On Saturday, the Netherlands shocked the baseball world by beating the Dominican Republic 3-2 in the opening game of Pool D at the World Baseball Classic. At that point, it may have been a fluke. The Dominicans were upset they didn’t just shut us out, but they had no reason to worry yet. The double elimination format ensured they’d get their chance for revenge.

Saturday’s win set us up for Monday’s game against Pool D’s other powerhouse: Puerto Rico. We nearly pulled another stunt as we long defended a 1-0 lead. It wasn’t until the eighth inning that Yadier Molina sealed our fate with a two-run double. Puerto Rico would score one more run to make it 3-1. They’d won, but by a much narrower margin than anyone had thought possible.

The rematch against the Dominican Republic took place yesterday. It was do-or-die for both sides: the winner would go to round two, while the loser would be eliminated. It seemed certain the Dominicans would beat us easily this time, taking their sweet revenge, but we managed to hold them off inning after inning. It looked like every Dominican player was trying for a homerun with every swing, instead of stringing together a couple of basehits and manufacture some runs the old-fashioned way. It proved to be their biggest mistake, as all their frantic efforts only resulted in outs. Meanwhile, Dominican starter Ubaldo Jimenez was nearly untouchable, striking out ten over four innings. The relievers that followed didn’t quite keep up that pace, but were still very effective at keeping us off the bases.

Contrary to every sane person’s expectations, the game was still tied at zero after nine innings. It came down to the eleventh inning for the first run to score. Dutch rightfielder Eugene Kingsale misjudged a shallow José Bautista fly ball, allowing Jose Reyes to score all the way from first. The Dominicans celebrated—surely, this would be sufficient for the win.

Not so fast. In the bottom of the eleventh, pinch hitter Sidney de Jong connected for a double off the left-centerfield wall. An infield ground-out by Curth Smith sent him on to third and brought Kingsale to the plate with a chance to redeem himself. And redeem he did, looping a single into rightfield to tie the game. The Dominicans were getting really nervous by now, as evidenced by a pick-off throw that sailed way past the first baseman. Kingsale got to third base on that error, leaving him only ninety feet shy of winning the game. Sharlon Schoop couldn’t get it done and struck out. Our number-three batter, Randal Simon, didn’t get a chance, because he was intentionally walked. Enter Yurendell de Caster, with a whopping two major-league career at-bats, both of which ended in a strike-out. He worked the count full before sending a sharp grounder just inside of the bag at first. First baseman Willy Aybar couldn’t glove it and suddenly, amazingly, we had won. The tiny Netherlands beat the mighty Dominican Republic—not once, but twice.

With a flair for the dramatic, the American commentators called it one of the biggest upsets of all time in any sport. That may be a bit of an exaggeration—but not by much.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 11th, 2009 at 14:03 and is filed under Baseball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.