OSLOPRETENDERS

Krokhol, May 26th 2020

By Mullah.

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The Legendary Leif P Sandvik officially announces his retirement at Krokhol today - his new home away from home. 

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Veteran slugger Leif P Sandvk, who enjoyed a 24-year Norwegian big league career announced -after a round of disc golf at Krokhol - that he’s officially retired from baseball.

“I’ve retired. … I got inspired by Michael Jordan and its time for me to move on.  I’m really enjoying time with my family, and it’s time for me to focus more on my disc golf career.”

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The 44-year-old Sandvik can look back at an amazing baseball career with the great Pretenders that started way back in the summer of 1996. As an already known star from Japan Sandvik became an instant hit with the champions from Oslo by going .483 with a homer and 12 RBIs in his rookie season. The two-way-phenomena went 7-0 the same year from the mound with 47 Ks and a 4.29 Era.

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When asked about his proudest moment in his career Sandvik says "...without a doubt it will be my 2-run-homer vs the Slovenian team in the E-cup of 2004 in Bulgaria. I had made an error earlier in the game and I was focused on helping the team take back the lead. We where up by one run in the bottom of the 8th and Glenn Wells said that we needed to give Leif Petter one more at bat. With two outs Glenn got a walk and I really felt the pressure to perform. So I hit a home-run to take a 3-run lead followed by a rain and thunder delay. And the rest is history " (the Pretenders won 11-9).

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The club-President, Terje Hoaas, points out three other great moments in Sandvik's career: "besides the legendary homer in Bulgaria, he was also an amazing pitcher. As far as I know he is the only Norwegian pitcher to ever pitch a complete-game shut-out in an international game as he did vs the Austrian team in the e-cup in 2006 in Slovenia. We won that game 6-0 because of Leif's great pitching performance. In 2015 he became the 2nd Pretender to ever hit for the cycle. And lets not forget that he is by far the best clutch-hitter we've ever had and he basically ended his career in the NM last year with a grand-slam in the finals. I think maybe that was his only hit all year." (note: he actually had two more hits but who cares....).

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Hitting:

It's hard to point out one great season as Sandvik had so many, but maybe his greatest accomplishment as a hitter was that he hit at least one home-run in every season except for two. With a total of 38 homers in Norway (ESB and NM combined) and 8 in the e-cup - his 46 home-runs stands way above anyone else. Not only within the club but also in Norway. He also has the most doubles (125), triples (22) and total bases (815) for the Pretenders. In other words: the greatest power-hitter of all time.

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Pitching:

The two-way-phenomena had an equally impressive career from the mound as he was know for his command, but most of all that we never lost any games. In his first 17 seasons he went 48-2. Five of those seasons with an era under 2.00. His command was always on target and not surprisingly he holds the best lifetime stats in lowest walks per 9 innings with 2.32 and WHIP on 1.16. In the 2010 season he pitched the whole season without walking a single batter.

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Moved on:

Sandvik has now hit his last homer, and stroke out the last batter, but luckily for us he is not done withe the Pretenders as he recently said yes to take over as the new team-leader for our disc golf team. DG is his new passion and we wish him nothing but the best in the future. 

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Thank you Leif for all the great memories!

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