(Story by Marco Stoovelaar)
    ELB confirms postponement of Amsterdam-games
Nederlands
 AMSTERDAM (Neth.) -
On Tuesday (May 10), Euro League Baseball officially confirmed that the two scheduled games of Amsterdam Baseball (or Team Amsterdam), to be played coming weekend on May 15 and 16, have been postponed.
The announcement comes after L&D Amsterdam Pirates issued a statement on Monday-evening (May 9) in which it announced that the club has informed ELB, as well as the Royal Netherlands Baseball and Softball Association (KNBSB) and the European Baseball Confederation (CEB) of its decision to withdraw its players and coaches from participating in the Euro League Baseball.
,,The management of Euro League Baseball and Team Amsterdam have decided to postpone the games of Team Amsterdam, which were scheduled for May 15 and 16'', is the first sentence of the ELB-press release on Tuesday.
Amsterdam Pirates decided to withdraw its players after it had learned that players who are on their roster for the European Champions Cup (May 31-June 5) might be declared invalid.
Dutch champion Curaçao Neptunus also participates in this event, which is held in Italy and San Marino.
The parent-organization European Association of Professional Baseball and the ELB, are not (yet) officially recognized by the European Baseball Confederation (CEB), which is the governing European baseball-body.
According to the competions-rules of the CEB, players who are listed on rosters for European Cup-competitions, which are organized by the CEB, are only allowed to play for that team and may not play for other teams in other competitions.
When those players play in CEB-competittions, this might result in protests from opponents and thus sanctions for the clubs they play for.
In the statement issued by Amsterdam Pirates, its Chairman Gerard van Tiggelen said: ,,The board of L&D Amsterdam doesn't want to jeopardize its participation in the European Champions Cup and with that, we informed the KNBSB and CEB today of our decision to withdraw players and coaches of L&D Amsterdam from participation in the Euro League Baseball.
The risk of a possible exclusion or other sanctions is too big.
The interests of our players, coaches, clubs and sponsors with the participation in the European Champions Cup have our absolute priority.''
In its release, Euro League Baseball states that the reason for the postponement is ''the odd move of CEB (European Federation) to inform L&D Amsterdam that its players may not be eligible to play European Cup (EC) games if they participate in the ELB.
The original reason for the introduction of the rule was to ban competition fraud, which is not the case in this particular situation''.
ELB continues: ,,Despite we're convinced that the rule is misused to put pressure on L&D Amsterdam to drop out, we can't ask the team's management to take the risk of losing players' eligibility.
This is a big disappointment since the KNBSB (Dutch Federation) recently informed all involved parties that it agreed on the participation of its members in Team Amsterdam.''
(May 9)
Related Articles:
 Amsterdam Pirates withdraws players from Euro League! (May 9, 2016)
Amsterdam Baseball unveils ELB-roster and staff. (April 3, 2016)
First season Euro League Baseball opens in 2016! (October 27, 2015)
Euro League Baseball unveils provisional schedule 2016. (September 22, 2015)
Amsterdam Pirates joins professional Euro League Baseball. (September 9, 2015)
Professional European Baseball League founded. (May 8, 2015)
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