Think of the American college kids beating Russia’s best hockey players in 1980. Equally remarkable are The Netherlands’ two victories over the Dominican Republic in the World Baseball Classic.

As a game, baseball -- or honkball, as it’s called in The Netherlands -- barely registers among the Dutch population. Soccer is the sport that matters. The story goes that baseball took root there during World War II, when Dutch kids took up the game in defiance of the country’s German occupiers.

Although honkball has never taken off, it has a core following that continues to grow ever so slowly. Dutch prospects, who often are quite raw due to the lack of coaching, are now making their way to North America. In fact, 10 of the 28 players on the WBC roster are affiliated with major league teams here, but the only Dutch-born player to appear in the big leagues last season was Marlins reliever Rick VandenHurk.

It’s stunning that a country that has yet to make its mark in professional baseball across the pond could upset a Dominican Republic team that was loaded with top major leaguers and a favorite to win the WBC. Not once, but twice.

Okay, the Dutch team was aided by the contributions of a now-autonomous New World colony, the Netherlands Antilles, but the likes of former major leaguers Sidney Ponson, Gene Kingsale and Randall Simon were never stars and clearly their best years are in the rearview mirror.

The Dutch held the Dominican team to just three runs over two games and 21 innings, calling on Ponson, a couple of veterans of The Netherlands’ own professional league and a few minor league prospects.

There’s 20-year-old Tom Stuifbergen, a Twins farmhand who has yet to advance beyond rookie ball. He held the Dominican Republic scoreless for four innings in Tuesday’s elimination game.

The Dutch bullpen allowed just one unearned run to the Dominican club over 13 innings. A pair of Class-A prospects -- left-hander Alexander Smit (Reds) and Dennis Neuman (Red Sox), a 19-year-old right-hander from Curacao -- worked four scoreless frames in the two games. They contributed 2.3 scoreless innings Tuesday, and Diego Markwell, a 28-year-old southpaw who stalled at the Double-A level six years ago, also didn’t allow a run in one inning of work.

Neither team got on the scoreboard until the 11th inning Tuesday, when the Dominican team broke through thanks to a fielding error by Kingsale, who dived for a ball and missed, allowing Mets star Jose Reyes to score from first base.

The run could have buried the Dutch team, which has had little international success. After all, The Netherlands went quietly in the 2006 WBC and managed just one win in seven games in Beijing last summer. The Dutch were shut out four times and outscored 50-9 at the Olympics, with the sole win a 6-4 decision over host China.

In this WBC, however, the Dutch dream lives on. Kingsale took the sting out of his fielding miscue by singling home The Netherlands’ first run in the bottom half of the inning. After Dominican reliever Carlos Marmol threw away a pickoff attempt at first, allowing Kingsale to streak around to third base, a sharply hit grounder off the bat of Yurrendell de Caster escaped the Dominican’s Willy Aybar at first. Kingsale came home with the game-winning run.

The 2-1 victory means The Netherlands will advance to the next round of play in Miami. First, though, is a second matchup with Puerto Rico this afternoon, a team that has beaten the Dutch in both the 2006 and this year’s WBC.