🇳🇱 Rotterdam, Netherlands
⚾ Curaçao Neptunus

Outside of North America, baseball has found very few footholds. The sport has become increasingly popular in east Asia, but Europe is one place where it has remained mostly in the shadows. Countries such as the Netherlands, however, have still excelled at the sport on the national and global levels, fielding high-quality competitors like the Rotterdam-based team known as Curaçao Neptunus.

Neptunus was originally founded as a football side in 1900, but after the addition of baseball to the repertoire in 1943, it quickly became the dominant team for the club. A partner softball squad debuted seventeen years later, a joint side that still lives on to this day. Since 2015, the baseball team has been sponsored by the Fundashon Bon Intenshon, a group from Curaçao that advocates for and promotes their Dutch Caribbean island, the largest constituent country of the Netherlands.

The team competes in Honkbal Hoofdklasse, the major league circuit in the Netherlands, and plays out of Neptunus Familiestadion – Dutch for “family stadium” – a minor-league caliber venue that was built in 1999. The ballpark has a capacity of close to 2,800, though it does seem a bit larger than that.

While it would find itself amongst the smallest Class A venues in the United States, the stadium stands proud as the largest baseball-specific facility in the Low Countries. Naturally, it was therefore utilized as a primary venue when the the Baseball World Cup was hosted by the Netherlands in 2005.

Neptunus has absolutely dominated their circuit, winning the Holland Series a record 21 times as of the 2025 season. They’ve also captured the crown of the Baseball European Champions Cup – an annual tournament contested by the top clubs on the continent – on 10 occasions, the second-most of any team.

Despite this, the crowds don’t exactly turn out in droves for Neptunus, but the laid-back atmosphere and free admission that comes along with it sure does prove tempting. Many European visitors tend to pass over Rotterdam entirely, but for traveling sports fans, soaking in a game at this little park should be on their South Holland shortlist.