baseball's march madness

The 1980 Miracle on Ice, Appalachian State beats the University of Michigan, The New York Giants win Super Bowl XLII, now the Netherlands is moving on to the second round of the World Baseball Classic. After beating the Dominican Republic for the second time in pool play, the Sidney Ponson led dutch ball club are still alive.

The WBC has been waiting for a story like this since its inception in 2006. The Netherlands have suddenly brought a little bit of March Madness to Baseball's international tournament. A group of wily veterans like Sir Sidney and Eugene Kingsale and young A ball players like LA Dodgers catcher Kenley Jansen and Seattle Mariners outfielder Greg Halman have shocked the baseball world by downing a Dominican Republic team making nearly $83 million more dollars in the major leagues in 2008 than their dutch counterparts. That didn't stop the dutch team sporting only one major leaguer, Florida pitcher Rick Vandenhurk.

In the team's first meeting the Netherlands won what was widely considered a fluke in a 3-2 victory in the tournament's opening game. It was a brilliantly pitched game by Ponson and dutch professional Rob Cordemans, who together held the vaunted Dominican lineup to only two runs. Then Tuesday night it all came crashing down around the favored Dominican team as reliever Leon Boyd and Washington Nationals second basemen Yurendell DeCaster, who last played in the major leagues in 2006, led the dutch to an unexpected victory.

This is exactly the kind of buzz that can bring the World Baseball Classic to the sports strata it aspires to be. Baseball people had hoped when the WBC began that it would bring the kind of global involvement to baseball that the World Cup brings to football. It is victories and stories like this that can make those ambitions a reality.

We will see how long the Netherlands can wear the glass slipper when the take on Venezuela tomorrow at 1 PM. Maybe the the World Baseball Classic has finally found its Cinderella. But dutch pitching coach and major league legend Bert Blyleven likens it to a different classic tale, "Now we look at this round, and hopefully, the same David-and-Goliath theory will continue, and good things will happen for us."