Dutchmen Flying High After Dominican Upset

The Netherlands’ upset of a squad full of big-league Dominican talent still seems pretty far-fetched, Jeff Passan writes for Yahoo Sports the day after the stunning Dutch victory in the World Baseball Classic. “They beat a team paid more than $80 million this year by melding kids trying to scratch out major-league careers, elders trying to rekindle theirs, and a bunch of weekend warriors,” Passan marvels.

“It’s the best. It’s the best day,” Randall Simon, one of the Dutch players with some major league experience said of beating a Dominican team stocked with stars like Boston’s David Ortiz and New York Mets shortstop Jose Reyes. “It will never get better than that. Nobody ever thought about this, that it would happen one day. And we did it.”
(More World Baseball Classic stories.)