Not long after Johannes Hendrikus Urbanus got back to The Netherlands last spring, a Dutch baseball official said sadly: "I wish Hannie had stayed home." The star pitcher of the Dutch Honkbal champions, Amsterdam's Op Volharding Volgt Overwinning (perseverance leads to victory) team, Hannie, 25, had just spent a month in the U.S. at the New York Giants' training camp (TIME, Feb. 25). He learned some tricky pitches, but Hannie and the things he had learned in America played hob with Honkbal.
When he got home, Hannie discovered that in gaining his fancy new repertory of curves and fireballs, he had...
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