I was pleasantly surprised to see that ESPN named Andruw Jones as the best centerfielder in Major League Baseball during the past decade. Jones was definitely the best centerfielder for most of this decade but I was just happy to see that his last three seasons did not ruin his entire body of work.

To say that I have followed Jones’ career up close is an understatement. My grandparents (the same that converted me to Dutch football at a young age) were Atlanta Braves fans since the mid 80’s and the Braves were the only team that you could regularly see on TV during that time (TBS). And even though the team was horrible, they watched and they followed and eventually I watched and I followed.

In 1991, the Braves went from “worst to first” and started a streak of 14 straight division championships to go along with 5 World Series appearances and 1 World Series win. And as if that wasn’t enough, in 1996, a local kid from Curacao called Andruw Jones made his way onto the team and famously hit 2 homeruns in one World Series game (he became the youngest to ever do so).

Jones would go on to become one of the best players in all of baseball and arguably the best defensive centerfielder of all time. Not only did I have the privilege of following someone from Curacao on my favorite baseball team, but this guy was doing things that were never seen before and being hailed as one of the best ever. I still can’t wrap my mind around it….

The past three seasons have been a struggle for Jones as he has gone from “greatest ever” to “grossly overpaid” but his accomplishments on the field rank as the high point of Curacao sports during this decade. I’m not forgetting about our Little League teams either, as their championships made everyone on Curacao proud beyond belief.

But I can’t think of these accolades and moments without thinking about another athletic achievement that would have immediately become the greatest all time in my opinion. I’m talking about Churandy Martina’s silver medal win (and subsequent disqualification) at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

It’s been almost a year and a half but it still hurts when I think back on it. We all knew that Martina had the talent and potential to turn heads in Beijing and as he made his way through the qualifying rounds, we dared to dream about a possible medal win. A medal win that would have been only the second ever for the Antilles in the Olympic Games and it would be in one of the “premier” track events. (Jan Boersma won a silver medal while sailing at the Summer Olypmics in Seoul, South Korea).

When Martina made the 200 meter finals, the entire island stood still. One of our local athletes had made it to the biggest possible stage and an Olympic medal was suddenly a possibility. For any other country, this would not be a very big deal. They have hundreds and thousands of athletes and many professionals that compete on the highest possible levels. Medals and championships are expected. They are demanded. For a small island like Curacao however, it might happen only once in a lifetime.

When the gun sounded and the runners took off, everyone just froze. While the fastest men on earth were running at record breaking speeds, everything else went in slow motion. Suddenly he made a charge and he was in second place. Was this actually happening? Was our anthem going to be played and our flag raised?

As Martina crossed the finish line in second place, everyone basically lost their minds. Companies gave employees the days off, radio and television personalities lost their voice and something was happening here in Curacao that never happened before. Seeing Andruw Jones win a Gold Glove is one thing, but winning a medal at the Olympics and being crowned one of the fastest people in the world is something on another level.

We didn’t care that the medal was silver and not gold. Usain Bolt could have not been beaten anyway. Not by a mere human. To beat Bolt, you’ll need to be in a racecar and even then you’ll need to give the car a head start.

But I don’t need to explain what happened next. The Americans protested, Churandy was robbed and an island was stunned. We went from an all-time high to a feeling of disgust in just a matter of seconds. It seemed too good to be true and in the end it was.

I remember picking my mom up from her work and she was crying. Everyone else just had this blank look on their faces. A deflating expression where it looks like you lost the will to live. “We” finally had our moment as one of “our” athletes had reached the top, and it was taken away by the muscle flexing, self-proclaimed leaders of the free world.

That could have been our moment of the decade and Churandy’s moment of his life. But the country that had finished with 110 total medals during those Olympics just needed to make sure that they had one more. Sadly, we still only have one.