Dutch head to San Francisco for date with destiny

It’s a very relevant question, now that The Kingdom of the Netherlands is a mere two victories away from being crowned champions of a World Baseball Classic on which nobody expected them to have much of an impact.

This is a team with only three players — Nats backup outfielder Roger Bernadina, Braves shortstop Andrelton Simmons and newly added Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen — who are expected to play in the Major Leagues in 2013.

“You look over all these years and the extra talent we have this time, we just know that we can play with everybody and play this game,” said bench coach Robert Eenhoorn, the former big league infielder who serves as technical director for The Netherlands’ national baseball team.

For this year’s event, taking place two years after The Netherlands became the first European team to win the IBAF Baseball World Cup, they saw winning it all as a realistic goal.

Team Netherlands has a gluttony of talented young shortstops, like Simmons, who Meulens called “the most exciting player in this tournament;” Profar, the No.

“We have a really good, young group, and we’ve managed to stick together and play the right way,” said Jones, who will spend the 2013 season playing in Japan.

After outscoring the Padres and Mariners, 17-4, at Peoria Sports Complex on back-to-back days, Team Netherlands boarded their two-hour flight to the Bay Area, site of the four-team, single-elimination championship round — and the last leg of a journey that has taken them from Arizona to Taiwan to Japan to Arizona again.

Then, as the Pool 1 runner-up to two-time champion Japan, Team Netherlands will play the Pool 2 winner — either the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico — at 6 p.m.

in The Netherlands when their team’s semifinal game begins.

But winning the Classic, an incomparable baseball stage for a nation that doesn’t really have a professional league, can change everything in the Netherlands.