Willemstad, Curaçao — The dream is still alive on a steamy Saturday afternoon at Cirilo Chirino Ballpark. Never mind that the game is softball and some of the players are pushing 60.

The pitcher sweats with concentration, shaking off signs from the catcher, but gives up a hit anyway. A collision at first base prompts chest bumps between runner and fielder, drawing Bronx cheers from the crowd, only these come in a cascade of Dutch, English, Spanish and the local patois called Papiamentu.

Mike Williams/AJC (ENLARGE)

Carl Jurrjens, Jair's father, stands at the field behind Marchena Hardware, the sponsor of the team Jair played for at 6 years old.

Mike Williams/AJC (ENLARGE)

Junters Dossett takes batting practice. Young players like Dossett are inspired by the example of Curaçao natives in the majors.

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As Atlanta Braves fans have learned, they take their baseball seriously on Curaçao, no matter the language.

The tiny island of 140,000 people just north of Venezuela leaped into the spotlight with the stellar career of Andruw Jones, a hero of the Braves' 1996 World Series run.

Now, with Jones gone to the L.A. Dodgers, young Jair Jurrjens, a fellow native of Curaçao, is rapidly pitching his way to stardom and into the hearts of the Braves faithful.

Jurrjens, 22, isn't a household name like Andruw yet, but nobody on this windswept island has any doubts his day will come.

'It's beautiful for us'

"He's one of our best," said Germaine Brunken, 36, whose family runs the Strak-Strak Barbershop in the island's old colonial city.

When he's home, Jurrjens is a regular at Strak-Strak, and his photo seems destined to grace the wall next to calendars featuring girls in bikinis and a mug of Jones.

"It's beautiful for us," Brunken said. "We're this tiny island in the Caribbean, and now people all over the world know about us. It's advertising you could never pay for."

Not that Curaçao seems to need it. The economy is built on pristine beaches and fabulous scuba diving that draw hordes of tourists, many from the United States but more from the Netherlands.

Once a Dutch colony, Curacao is now a part of the independent Netherlands Antilles, a string of five islands including nearby Bonaire.

But unlike most Caribbean destinations, there's more here than just sunburned tourists. A sprawling oil refinery dating back to World War I lines half the Willemstad harbor, with towering stacks belching smoke and hulking tankers lining up offshore.

The islanders enjoy prosperity based on the 1,500 refinery jobs, at least compared to many of their Caribbean neighbors, but they work hard for what they earn.

Nobody believes in hard work more than Thomas "Boy" Martina, who grew up in the hardscrabble neighborhood of Marchena, just downwind from the refinery. In 1975 he opened a hardware store that now employs 120 people.

Along the way he built a ball field out back for the local kids, and now sponsors eight teams in the local youth leagues.

Jurrjens first took up bat and ball for the Marchena Hardware team in the Vruminga League for 6-year-olds. Vruminga means "ant" in Papiamentu.

"I'm so proud of Jair," Martina said. "I know because of his character he will be a big success. But what's most important is that he's a good example for the other kids here on Curaçao."

"Character" is big on Curaçao, which is a pretty conservative place.

The telephone book's simple white cover carries this admonition: "Sports doesn't build character. It reveals it." It is just the kind of thing you might have seen on an American phone book in, say, 1950.

Jurrjens' first coach was Aguiles "Shonki" Nicasia, 66, who has become something of a legend on the island, a disciplinarian who stresses "character." He drills his boys relentlessly on the basics of fielding, hitting, base running.

"Jair was a fighter from the start," said Nicasia, who has had eight other players drafted by American teams, but only Jurrjens make it to the majors, at least so far.

"Even at six you could see he would be a good player. The first thing was his courage, not afraid to stand in against a pitcher. And he was always ready to practice, doing his best, trying to get better."

Nicasia would pick up Jurrjens after school for practice when the boy's father, Carl, couldn't get away from his job as a manager at the telephone company.

"I've been coaching 30 years," Nicasia said. "It makes my heart content to see Jair in the big leagues. He's a good kid."

At home, Jurrjens was inspired by his brother, Carl Jr., a decade older, who was an outstanding youth player in his own right. Some on Curaçao believe Carl Jurrjens Jr. could've had a shot at the majors, too, but was overlooked by scouts because of a hearing impairment.

"That was part of the motivation for Jair," said Luigi Sille, 39, Jurrjens' cousin, who also helps coach youth leagues. "He wanted to do it for his brother."

'He was always throwing'

Jurrjens grew up a few miles from the Marchena ball field in a neat, modest home with his dad, older brother, sister Charlotte and his mother, Esther.

"He always was playing with anything that resembled a ball," said Esther Jurrjens, laughing. "He was always throwing it."

Sille says Jurrjens used to get scolded for pelting his father's car with stones, but his accuracy was so good he never hit the windows.

His father remembers Jair playing pretend baseball in the backyard, narrating his own action as he stood at the plate, belted a hit, tore around the bases and slid into home.

"He loves the game," Carl Jurrjens said. "This was always his dream, and now he's living it."

Jurrjens was a standout in every youth league, earning the nickname "Campeon," or "Champion," in the Vruminga League. The name dropped away as he grew older, and most folks on Curaçao call him Jair, although some use "JJ."

By the time he reached the Senior League at 15, Jurrjens' future was bright and many believed he could make the majors. Like most kids on Curaçao, he had played all over the field, often second or third base.

"When he went to Senior League, he told the manager he wanted to pitch because he wanted to win," Sille said. "He always wanted to win."

The debut was a success, and soon Jurrjens was attracting attention beyond Curaçao.

His Senior League team won a world championship in 2002, and a major league scout who watched the game told Carl Jurrjens his son should forget about everything but pitching.

The message found fertile ground. Jurrjens played only a couple of games in Curaçao's top league for older kids, then was drafted by the Detroit Tigers at 17.

By 2007 he had worked his way to the majors, pitching impressively in a handful of games after he was called up.

Over the winter he was traded to the Braves, the fulfillment of his father's dreams.

"When I was a kid, a friend gave me a bat signed by Hank Aaron, and I was a Braves fan forever," Carl Jurrjens recalled. "I was for them even before they left Milwaukee."

Jurrjens' strong start for the Braves is all the talk of Curaçao this year, stoking dreams for other young kids sweating out practice on dusty fields like the one behind Marchena Hardware.

"When we were kids, we all took names of major leaguers," recalled Ringemar Raap, 24, who played with Jurrjens in the Senior League. "Jair would say he was Chipper Jones. It's like a dream to see him playing with those guys now."