If ya ain't Dutch, ya ain't, well...
Major League Baseball and various other organizations are holding the World Baseball Classic in March, inviting teams from places like Korea, Japan, China, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Puerto Rico, Australia, South Africa, the U.S., Venezuela - you know, warm places. There's a team from the Netherlands! I had no idea that baseball was so popular in the Netherlands (granted, some players are coming from Curacao and other warm Dutch lands, but not all). But that's besides the point.
I was looking at the rosters, seeing names that I encounter on a daily basis - Aardsma, VanHekken - and there are some that I can't wait to hear the announcers butcher. Forstine Coenraad? Mark Duursma? They won't know what to do with all of the vowels! On the roster, they've even printed all of the "prefixes" after the last name - Robin Doornspeek van, Sidney Jong de, Dirk Klooster van't, Jurjen Zijl van...it will surely be interesting to see what comes out of their mouths at the games.
Anyway, as a person who has (distant) ties to the Netherlands, I found the whole thing to be quite amusing - not only the names thing, but also the fact that the Netherlands even is fielding a team!
(Bethany, this is for you, now that you have moved out of the Dutch enclaves of Holland and Grand Rapids, just in case you missed long, confusing Dutch names.)
And, thanks to Bethany, the best internet blonde joke I've ever seen.
posted by KBush @ 9:29 PM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
thanks Kristin. I can still pronounce dutch names with the best of 'em, even when I don't get much practice.
I think the funniest thing about this is the players listed on rosters who are probably a good 4 or 5 generations removed from that country.
Example: Mark Mulder. He's listed on hhe Netherland's preliminary roster. But wait, he grew up in South Holland, went to the same high school (Thornwood) as one of my uncles, and his dad, who grew up in the same neighborhood as my dad, played little league with my dad's older brother. My dad knew who Mark's dad's parents were, and he says it was quite clear that they had not recently come over from the motherland as first generation immigrants.
Another funny one: Andruw Jones is on the Netherland's roster because Curacao, where he's from, is part of the Netherlands Antilles. Pretty weird stuff.
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