(Story & Photo by Marco Stoovelaar)
IN MEMORIAM 
...Karin Kort...
(1944 - 2015)
|
 Longtime Haarlem Baseball Week-announcer Karin Kort passed away
Nederlands
 HAARLEM (Neth.) -
Karin Kort-Dankmeijer, who was a longtime Public Address Announcer of the Haarlem Baseball Week, has passed away on Friday, September 11 at the age of 70.
Karin Kort played softball for Kinheim in Haarlem, where she was a pitcher.
With Kinheim, she played in the Dutch big league in the early seventies.
She also played some games in the Netherlands National Softball Team in the late sixties.
But Karin Kort became wellknown as one of the voices fo the Haarlem Baseball Week, the international baseball-tournament in Haarlem (Netherlands), which was first organized in 1961.
After five more editions in the following years, the event is held every two years since 1972.
Karin Kort, who always had a big smile on her face, has been active as announcer on fourteen editions of the event, spanning the period of 1963 through 1992.
In 1963, legendary sports journalists Bob Spaak and Dick van Rijn served as announcer during the games, as they also had done during the first tournament in 1961 at the site of Kinheim.
Both also were commentators, working for both radio and television of the NPS (later NOS), including Studio Sport.
In 1963, the tournament was held for the first time in the newly build Pim Mulier Stadium, which still is the current site.
Back then, Karin Kort originally was the assistant of Spaak and Van Rijn, but she also got the opportunity to do some announcements and with that, she made her debut behind the microphone of the international event.
In those years, Karin was the announcer at the home games of the baseball-team of HCK (Kinheim) when she was asked to join the the Haarlem Baseball Week.
During the third edition of the event in 1966, Karin Kort became a regular announcer and she remained a member of the announcing-staff through 1992.
Amongst her fellow announcers were Willem Ruis and Henk Bouwman, who both also worked for the radio.
Ruis was active in 1972 when he just started a radio-career and he later became famous as host of big showprograms on television.
Bouwman worked for KRO-radio.
He also joined the tournament in 1972 and became a longtime announcer during Haarlem Baseball Weeks.
Besides being announcer during fourteen Haarlem Baseball Weeks, Karin also was one of the announcers during the World Baseball Championship in 1986 when the global event was held in the Netherlands for the first time.
She also was announcer during four European Baseball Championships that were held in Haarlem and also during several Haarlem Softball Weeks in the eighties.
Karin Kort was married to Jacques Kort, who passed away on April 22 of this year.
He has been a member of the board of Kinheim and was the treasurer of the organizing committee of the Haarlem Baseball Week for many years.
The webmaster of Grand Slam * Stats & News offers his condolences to Karin's family and wishes them a lot of strength with this big loss.
(September 16)
| 
