(Story by Marco Stoovelaar)
 Former official scorer/administrator Kees Bol passed away
Nederlands
IN MEMORIAM 
...Kees Bol...
(1932 - 2016)
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 SCHIEDAM (Neth.) -
Former Official Scorer and regional administrator Kees Bol has passed away on Friday, May 27 at the age of 84.
For his longtime and many contributions to the Royal Netherlands Baseball and Softball Association (KNBSB), he was named Honorary Member in 2011.
The memorial and funeral service will take place on Wednesday, June 1, at 5:15 PM at Crematorium 'Beukenhof', located at the Burgemeester van Haarenlaan 1450 in Schiedam.
Kornelis Bol was born in Schiedam and it was there, that he became involved in baseball and softball at the local club, Honkbal- en Softbal Vereniging Schiedam.
Through the years Kees Bol always has been very active in several administrative positions.
He simply did it all in the former Raions of Rotterdam, Rotterdam-Zeeland and Zuidwest-Nederland.
But he also became a very familiar voice for many in Dutch baseball and softball.
For many club-representatives, they simply knew Kees Bol only by his voice, without having ever seen him.
In the past, it was custom to telephone a final score of a game to someone who recorded this.
Starting in 1993, it was Kees Bol, who took this national position and he kept doing it through 2010.
However, Internet and mailing services began taking over this recording duties and so, in the end, it wasn't necessary anymore for a club-representative to personally report a final score.
Kees Bol started his administrative duties in the late sixties, early seventies, when he became the competition commissioner for baseball juniors in the Rotterdam Raion.
This was expanded in the following years, as he went on to become the league commissioner for softball women in the Raions of Rotterdam-Zeeland and Zuidwest-Nederland, followed by the District South.
He held those positions through 2000.
In those years, he alse served as member and secretary of the Game Commission in both Zuidwest-Nederland and later District Zuid.
It didn't stopped there.
Kees Bol not only had the task of managing several regional competitions, he also controlled all games played in those years through 2002.
Game-reports of every game played in those regions had to be posted to Bol, who then had to control not only wether the final score or player registration numbers were filled in correctly, but also whether players were eligible to play.
A very extensive task!
More was to come, as he also became the person to whom a final score had to be reported from 1980 on in Rotterdam-Zeeland.
When the Raions were changed into Districts, Kees Bol did the same in the much bigger District Zuid in 1992-2000 for both baseball and softball.
That was followed by the new regional formats in 2001 and 2002.
...Part of a box score filled in by Kees Bol of a game played in 1986... |
In 1993, Kees Bol also became the one to whom national scores had to be reported.
In those years, there were far more national leagues in baseball, softball women and softball men than nowadays.
Bol handled the national scores through 2010.
After collecting all those scores, in the pre-Internet-era, Bol compiled the standings of all those different leagues, which were later published and distributed to the clubs.
Besides that, he also controlled whether the scores of the Dutch big leagues were published correctly on Teletekst, the text-service on television.
Oh, he also served a year a secretary of the board for District South in 1992.
In 1973, Kees Bol became an Official Scorer in the Dutch big league baseball.
He was a member of the scoring corps through 1988.
In 1991, he returned for one more season, but then only scored in the women softball big league.
Underscoring his administrative qualities, Kees Bol had a special way to fill in his scoring reports and box scores.
All scorers have filled in those papers with a pen or pencil.
But Kees Bol was and still is the only scorer to fill in his box scores with a type-writer.
As an Official Scorer, he also was active at some international events, including the Haarlem Baseball Week and the World Championship Baseball, when that even was held for the first time in the Netherlands in 1986.
In the seventies, Kees Bol was named Member of Merit of Raion Rotterdam-Zeeland.
He then received a decoration from the KNBSB in 1992.
After having being active for the KNBSB for more than forty years, he was named Honorary Member in 2011.
Kees Bol was one of those hardworking volunteers that always worked on the background.
He simply did what he had to do and never wanted to be on the foreground.
He was modest and for that reason, there are very few photos of him.
He always had a smile on his face, was never angry and it was a pleasure to work with Kees.
The webmaster of Grand Slam * Stats & News offers his condolences to Kees' wife Gré, his sons Kees and Ronald, grandchildren and other family-members and wishes them a lot of strength with this big loss.
(May 31)
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