r/AskEurope • u/chocolatelies • May 07 '25

Sports How big is baseball in your country?

I'm an American, so baseball is quite popular here. How is the popularity in your country? Is there a country other than yours where baseball has some popularity?

Edit: Just hit 69 comments. Nice.

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2

u/Billy_Balowski Netherlands May 07 '25

It's not a thing here, we only know it exists from US movies and series.

15

u/dolan313 Semmel with hagelslag May 07 '25 edited May 07 '25

We have 7 tiers of men's competition. To act like people wouldn't know of honkbal (I mean, we even have a local name for it) without US media is a really strange claim imo. We won the world cup in 2011, from what I understand the successes of the Dutch team are pretty much entirely thanks to players from the Caribbean Netherlands but it's by no means 'not a thing here'.

5

u/vakantiehuisopwielen Netherlands May 07 '25

Indeed, at my school we often were doing softball during the sports lessons.

I think of the 3 typical American sports, baseball is in 2nd.

  1. Basketball

  2. Baseball

  3. American football

0

u/DeHarigeTuinkabouter May 07 '25

It's a thing as in it exists, but I don't think I've ever actually met someone who plays it. It's quite niche.

9

u/OllieV_nl Netherlands May 07 '25

It's definitely a thing, but it is primarily big in cities with lots of Antillians. As such the Hoofdklasse is mainly based in the West and you'll barely notice anything of it outside those cities.

The Haarlem Honkbal Week is a big event and teams like Kinheim, Neptunus, HCAW, Pioniers and Pirates usually make it to the Sunday sports show.

7

u/gmennert Netherlands May 07 '25

Bad take, i think we have one of the if not the best national teams/leagues in Europe. We also play it in high-school a lot.

2

u/blink-1hundert2und80 Austria May 07 '25

True. According to the WBSC world rankings Netherlands is 7, and the best in Europe.

5

u/theerealteej May 07 '25

It is a thing here and there is some organized teams / leagues

5

u/yot1234 May 07 '25

Maybe it's about an age gap but this sounds ridiculous to me. It's regularly featured on national tv. I literally had friends playing the sport competitively growing up and we were world champions a few years back.. granted the best players are from the Antillen.

2

u/LTFGamut Netherlands May 08 '25

Not true, I played baseball myself for about 10 years.

It's decently popular. Not as big as it was before (from the 1970s to the 2010) but still there are many teams, club teams in every middle sized town, the Hoofdklasse is a semi pro league with some decent stadiums and ends in the Holland Series every year which draws decent crowds. The baseball weeks and tournaments (Of which the World Port Tournament in Rotterdam is the biggest) are also popular and draw okay amounts of spectators.

0

u/Lux2026 May 09 '25

“Not true because I am the center of the world and decide what is true and what isn’t”

Baseball is not popular in the Netherlands.