Instant Classic

While most of the nation was tuned into Championship Week for college basketball, over on the MLB Network there was an instant classic going on in the World Baseball Classic. A Netherlands team consisting of mostly wanna be MLB players that have a total of 0.4 million dollars earned during the '08 season from Major League Baseball defeated and eliminated an All-Star line up from the Dominican Republic in 11 innings last night, in one of the better baseball games you will ever see in early March. When I say that the Dominican has an All-Star line up, I am not joking. When you have Hanley Ramirez and Jose Reyes swap positions every game from shortstop or DH, or Big Papa dropping bombs in the clean up spot, or Robinson Cano playing second. Not to mention Miguel Olivo behind the plate, Jose Guillen in right, Willie Taveras in center, Miguel Tejada playing 3rd, and having a pitcher on your staff with the a couple Cy Young's in Pedro Martinez. Those are just some of the names, overall the entire roster of the Dominican have a total of 23 current, I'll repeat current Major League players. While the Netherlands have a grand total of 2. The Netherlands got themselves out of numerous jams with the little things that don't show up in the boxscore, and inning by inning pitching performances by players with last names like : Stuifbergen, Smit, and Cordemans. After 10 scoreless innings, the Dominican got on the board first in the top of the 11th. When Eugene Kingsale misplayed Jose Bautista's two-out liner to right for an error that let the speedy Reyes score all the way from first base. It all seemed to be over at that point with the Dominican bringing in their stud closer and future MLB star Carlos Marmol. But Kingsale would get his revenge! Pinch-hitter Sidney de Jong doubled to start the bottom half, a ground out moved over the runner to third with one out (little things). Then Kingsale stepped up and hit the game-tying RBI single to right. He then moved all the way to third on a throwing error from the attempted pick off from Marmol. Marmol then got a strike out then intentionally walked a batter to get to Yurendell DeCaster, who had struck out 3 times during the game. On a 3-2 pitch DeCaster slapped a liner to 1st which Willie Aybar couldn't handle and DeCaster beat the play to first allowing Kingsale to score the game winner. It truly was an incredible game last night. Here's the final play...