(Story by Marco Stoovelaar)
IN MEMORIAM
...Ton Benningshof...
(1941 - 2017) |
 Former player, coach, initiator Ton Benningshof passed away
Nederlands
 ROTTERDAM (Neth.) -
Former player and coach Ton Benningshof has passed away on Friday, November 17, at the age of 75.
He would have turned 76 on December 22.
The memorial and funeral ceremony will be held on Friday, November 24 at Begraafplaats Laurentius at the Crooswijkseweg 123 in Driehuis.
The service begins at 12:30 PM.
Afterwards, there is an opportunity to offer condolences to the family.
Ton Benningshof had been involved in basebal for some sixty years.
He was very active in the Rotterdam-area, where he not only only played, but also coached for many years.
Besides that, he took several initiatives to promote the sports of baseball and softball and was very active in coaching youth-players.
Ton Benningshof's sons Tony and Marcel both played for different teams in the Dutch big league for many seasons.
Tony, like his father a pitcher, played for Neptunus, Sparta, De Spartaan, Quick Amersfoort and Twins.
Marcel, who was a catcher, played for Sparta, De Spartaan, Quick Amersfoort and Neptunus.
The two brothers followed in the footsteps of their father, as both also went on to coach during and after they concluded their playing career.
Ton Benningshof was a competitive and talented pitcher, who started his career with Rotterdam-based club HOV, which discontinued two years later.
Benningshof then founded a baseball-section at (soccer-club) SCR in 1964 and pitched for the team through the early seventies.
There, he became closely involved in all kinds of activities.
He not only played for SCR, he also was its coach and was a member of the board.
The club became very successful, grew in total of members and promoted to the Second Division in 1971.
It was also in the early seventies, that Benningshof had to retire as a player due to a back-injury for which he needed surgery.
In the late sixties, Benningshof added another activity, as he became a baseball-umpire in the then District Rotterdam, which he did for some seven years.
He even was the chairman of Rotterdam's Umpiring Commission in 1971.
In the seventies, Ton Benningshof became very active in youth baseball in the Rotterdam District, which later was renamed in Rotterdam/Zeeland and Zuidwest-Nederland.
He became a member of its Youth Committee in 1973 and continued to do so through 1985.
Halfway the seventies, he also headed the regional Peanutball-Committee in Rotterdam.
Benningshof also was a member of the Board of the Rotterdam District in 1975-1976.
After concluding his career as an active player, Ton Benningshof focused entirely on coaching and went on leading several teams.
He coached at Gouda, Sparta, Neptunus, Vlaardingen-Holy and Zwijndrecht.
...Coach Ton Benningshof addresses the players of the Rotterdam-team...
...that traveled to the USA to play a series of games in 1982...
...Standing at left on the back row is Team Manager Wiebe Pannekoek...
(© Photo courtesy of Wiebe Pannekoek) |
In these years, Benningshof was easily recognizable because of his characteristic big moustache, which he wore for many years.
After coaching one season for Gouda in 1973, Benningshof became the Assistant Coach of Sparta in the Dutch big league where assisted Cees Herkemij for two seasons.
In their first season (1974), Herkemij and Benningshof led Sparta to the Dutch Championship-title.
In the next year, the Rotterdam-squad finished in a tie for second place.
In the same period, he was the baseball-coach of the representative youth teams of Rotterdam.
During his stay with Sparta, Benningshof also was active coaching youth players within the club and helped creating a teeball-team.
In 1975, Benningshof also was the Head Coach of Team Rotterdam in the City Competition.
Rotterdam finished in a tie for first place with Haarlem, but was awarded first place, based on the head-to-head result.
Early October 1975, he initially was named the new Head Coach of Feyenoord for the 1976 season.
However, as this also was the transfer-period, several players already had left Feyenoord and some more followed.
As a result, not much players were left over.
In the same period, Benningshof was contacted by First Divisionist Neptunus, where he the became Head Coach at the end of the month.
Ton Benningshof led Neptunus in 1976 and 1977 when the team finished in fifth and seventh place respectively in the First Division.
After the 1977 season, Benningshof and Neptunus separated.
He then became the Head Coach of Vlaardingen-Holy, which was the new name of the club that was formed after a merger at the end of 1977 between Holy and Benningshof's former club SCR.
By the way, both HOV and SCR continued as soccer-clubs.
SCR merged in 1992 with DJS, then the new club DJSCR merged in 2009 with HOV to become the current soccer-club HOV/DJSCR.
After not being active in 1979, Benningshof was the Head Coach of Sparta in 1980 when it played in the First Division.
Under his guidance, the team closed the season in second place.
Benningshof stepped down after the season and was succeeded by Hamilton Richardson, while he himself became the Technical Manager of the team, which he continued to do for several seasons.
Sparta returned to the big league in 1981.
Later, Benningshof also was the chairman of the club for some years.
...Ton Benningshof throws out the ceremonial first pitch...
...before the start of the 2016 baseball-season at Zwijndrecht...
(© Photo courtesy of HSV Zwijndrecht) |
In August 1982, Ton Benningshof and Ad Verheul were the coaches of a youth-team (BRL) from Rotterdam that traveled to the USA to play a series of five games in New York State.
Piet van Ruitenburg and Wiebe Pannekoek did the team management.
Amongst the players in that team were future Dutch big league-players and Netherlands Team-players, such as Bob van Aalen, Tony Benningshof, Eric de Bruin, Rob Hendriks, Dave Kohl and Marcel Kruyt.
As a coach, Benningshof was not always the most easy one.
He liked intensive practice sessions and could be tough.
Not only for his players, but also for himself, as he always wanted to stimulate the players to play harder in order to get better results.
He approach was effective, as he led several of his teams to championship-titles.
Benningshof returned as Head Coach one more time in 2010 when he led the baseball-squad of Zwijndrecht.
That was a successful final season, as he led the team to the Championship-title in the Second Division, resulting in promotion to the First Division.
Besides playing and coaching, Ton Benningshof always has been a pioneer in the Rotterdam-area for the development of youth players.
He took the initiative for the Baseball School Rijnmond in order to familiarize pupils of elementary schools in the Rotterdam-borough Delfshaven with baseball and softball.
In 2001, that led to the creation of baseball- and softball-club Sparta Delfshaven of which he was one of the co-founders.
Shortly thereafter, the clubname was changed to S. Rotterdam and started playing in local competitions.
Through the years, Ton Benningshof always showed his love for the game of baseball.
He could tell enthousiastically about the sport and tell anecdotes, but also sounded his personal opinions when needed.
The sympathetic Benningshof, who always had a broad smile on his face, remained a frequent visitor of baseball-games.
In April 2016, to celebrate his almost 60 years in baseball, Ton Benningshof threw out the ceremonial first pitch to open the new baseball-season of Zwijndrecht, the club where he had been active in the most recent years.
With the passing of Ton Benningshof, the Rotterdam-area lost another colorful personality in a short period after former player and coach Leen Staub passed away on September 28.
Both were icons in the history of baseball in Rotterdam.
The webmaster of Grand Slam * Stats & News offers his condolences to Ton's sons Tony and Marcel and other family and wishes them a lot of strength with this big loss.
(November 19)
(private photo of Ton Benningshof published with permission) |
