My friends on the British national baseball team are going to the European Championships in July. Unfortunately, they will not be among the favorites.The tournament is traditionally dominated by the Netherlands and Italy and Russia shocked everyone by reaching the finals last time. This year, the Dutch are unlikely to be uprooted as the defending champions, especially since they will have home field advantage.

To make matters worse, the Netherlands have hired a rather experienced manager: Davey Johnson. Yes, the same Davey Johnson who won the World Series managing the New York Mets and won the Manager of the Year award in 1997.

Now I know European baseball is a rather esoteric interest of mine, but I’m a bit surprised that this hasn’t been reported anywhere.

Update: OK, so the Lawrence Journal-World in Kansas did pick it up the other day. And ESPN. And a bunch of regional papers via AP. I guess Google is a bit slow cataloging them.