Netherlands are world champions!

[JP_Frost]

Obviously this has nothing to do with the Indians, but my being Dutch, I just had to share with you the fact that the Dutch squad won the baseball world cup in Panama.

For the first time in 73 years, the finals featured a team from Europe and it shouldn't come as a surprise that the Netherlands made it -- out of 28 European championships, we've won it 20 times and placed 2nd the other 8 times. On the way to the finals, we beat Cuba, Japan, South-Korea (winner in the olympics), US, Venezuela, Puerto Rico and only lost to Canada in extra innings. Obviously none of those teams featured major leaguers, but they do have better national competitions and Cuba especially is the ruler of international baseball tournaments (they've been crowned world champions 25 times). So this is an amazing feat and after a thrilling 2-1 win last night over Cuba, this very small and seemingly "insignificant" baseball country is on top of the world.

There have been rumors about mlb wanting to host a game here in 2014, and I think this would surely tip the odds in our favor. So hopefully people will treat us with a little more respect in the next WBC and it's not too late for any of you to jump on the bandwagon

[TonyIBI]

Congrats JP! Wow, what a great run by the Netherlands team!