A DUTCH TREAT : U.S. Baseball Team Will Swing Along With Mitch Miller to Europe Again

Mitch Miller’s teams apparently are trying to hit to all fields.

For the second consecutive year, Miller and a team that includes several Valley-area high school and college players are venturing to Europe to tutor and compete against would-be adopters of America’s national pastime.

Last summer Miller took a contingent to France to help prepare the French national team for the European championships.

Today, a Miller-led team, sponsored in part by the West Coast Baseball School in Agoura, will leave on a 10-day trip to the Netherlands where it will compete against the Dutch junior national team that is preparing for the junior world championships later this month in Havana.

The Americans will play six or seven games in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Haarlem and also conduct clinics for youngsters.

“We’re going to approach the games trying to win, but we’re going over there to prepare the Dutch,” said Miller, a junior high school teacher and scout for the Kansas City Royals who has coached several teams in the Valley. “They don’t have the luxury of turning on a TV and getting a baseball game every night like we can here. Their only instructional aids are videos and tapes of games.

“They like teams to come over and demonstrate how to play in person.”

Eighteen players, drawn primarily from the Valley and the West Side, were recruited by Miller and co-coach Bryan Maloney for the tour.

Valley-area players making the trip include former Chatsworth High infielder Nick Simpson, pitcher John Levine of Oakwood, infielder Eric Berger of Crescenta Valley, catcher Mike Wisenberg and outfielder Kevin Egan of Glendale College, and catcher Mike Sims of Cal State Northridge.

Sims, who started for Northridge last season as a freshman, had planned to relax this summer after helping lead the Matadors to a second-place finish at the NCAA Division II World Series in Montgomery, Ala.

But he jumped at the opportunity to travel overseas and is hoping to use the tour as preparation for Northridge’s step up to Division I next season.

“I hear it’s a beautiful country,” said Sims, who graduated from Alemany High. “I’ve been looking up things about it and I’m anxious to go out and see how they play baseball there.”

One thing is certain: The Dutch team and facilities figure to be far better than those offered by the French, who did not compete in the 1984 or 1988 Olympic baseball exhibitions but are shooting for the 1992 Games in Barcelona.

The U. S. team took seven of eight games against its inexperienced opponents during a two-week stay in and around Paris last August.

Denny Vigo, a junior-to-be third baseman at Northridge, was among the contingent that visited France.

“It was a good experience just to see the way other people live,” said Vigo, who is recovering from a torn hamstring suffered in the Division II national championship game at the end of May.

“Baseballwise, I think the team that is going this year will see better competition than we experienced.”

Unlike the French, the Dutch are not novices when it comes to baseball. Several Americans play in professional leagues on teams sponsored by private corporations such as Philips Electronics, and at least one Dutchman has signed a contract with a major league organization in the U. S.

Although the Americans practiced only informally a few times before departing, Vigo said unfamiliar teammates become close once they take the field in Europe.

“The best thing about it is all the guys on the team got along,” Vigo recalled of last year’s squad. “We didn’t know each other before we left, but being over there for two weeks, we became a team pretty quick.”

Both on and off the field.

In addition to touring the cathedral of Notre Dame and the Louvre Museum as a group, the Americans displayed their unity by rallying together during a row with surly restaurant workers in a cafe along the Left Bank.

Miller said he hopes to avoid a repeat of that kind of incident, but added that his players will have free time to explore the sights of the cities they visit. Among the attractions: the van Gogh and Rembrandt museums, Anne Frank’s house, and the Heineken Brewery.

“It’s an educational experience. For a lot of these kids it will be their first long trip away from home,” said Miller, who has coached at Mission College and also was an assistant for the Valley Dodgers, who finished seventh at the National Baseball Congress World Series in 1988.

“But we’re also going over there to work on some skills and prepare these players for their seasons next year.”