Dear Editor,
I read in the paper that there will be baseball clinics on November 13 and 15. And I said to myself, we have just had the world series in which two Antilleans played against each other and very little was written about it in the sport pages.
Since I was seven years old I have been running behind foul balls and picking up bats on the Lago Sports Park for the then Baby Ruth Baseball club. We have always had baseball players of major league caliber in those days both on Aruba as well as on Curaçao, but there were no scouts coming to the Netherlands Antilles during that time, so the majority of the players of caliber retired as AA players, making room for those coming up behind them.
As time went by the Netherlands Antilles became affiliated to the wider baseball world and Aruba and Curaçao combined players and traveled abroad, displayed their talent and in doing so Baseball of the Netherlands Antilles became known abroad. Since 1996 there have been names like Jones, Kingsale, Bogaerts (Brown) and Simmons playing Major League baseball and presently there are 9 Antilleans in the Majors of which all of them are tops in their collective teams.
If the names Jones , Kingsale, Brown and Simmons resemble well-known names in the Netherlands Windward Islands, all four of these players have their roots in Saba and Sint Maarten. Yes, their grandparents are from up here.
Andrew Jones played from 1996 till 2012 and won a gold glove in his first 10 years playing center field for the Atlanta Braves, He also holds the record for the most home runs hit in a season for the Atlanta Braves – 51.
Eugene Kingsale played with the Baltimore Orioles from 1996 till 2003 and is presently scouting players in the Caribbean region.
Xander BOGAERTS (Brown) joined the Boston Red Sox in 2013 and is already in possession of two world champion rings.
Andrelton Simmons, presently playing shortstop with the Los Angeles Angels, joined the Atlanta Braves in 2012 and has four gold gloves, one platinum glove, five consecutive awards as best defensive shortstop in both leagues, and several other fielding awards from his teams.
The other Antillean players are Albies (Atlanta), Girigorie (Yankees) Janssen (Dodgers), Profar (Texas) and Schoop (Brewers).
Because baseball is played in 30 states in the USA and these players are popular on their teams, the names Curaçao and Aruba are constantly mentioned all over the USA. The X-man and Simba, as Bogaerts and Simmons are popular known, are again the best this year, the X-man member of the world champion Boston Red Sox and Simba best defensive shortstop in both leagues and the gold glove winner for shortstop in the American league.
Collectively Andruw Jones, Xander Bogaerts and Andrelton Simmons have fourteen 14 gold gloves, one platinum glove and two world champion rings along with the other awards.
Russell A. Simmons
