Major League Baseball took steps to expand America's national pastime into the jungles of Southeast Asia on Friday, bearing baseball equipment and a coaching clinic into Cambodia's heartland.
MLB representatives handed over several boxes of baseball gear to children and young adults in Kraing Khmer, a village 130km northwest of the capital Phnom Penh.
The initiative, part of MLB's foreign outreach program, also featured two visiting coaches from American universities who schooled dozens of the young players in how to field a ground ball, catch a pop fly and swing.
PHOTO: AP
The local youngsters tossed baseballs around the diamond, a former rice field they cleared themselves, ringed by other fluorescent green rice paddies.
A bush serves as the home run marker.
MLB International is going into countries ranging from Cambodia to China "to develop the game and get baseball to be played ... and try to get it to be relevant in the country," said Jim Small, vice president of market development for MLB International.
The would-be ballplayers assembled for the event in mismatched jerseys, caps, and pants donated by American high schools and universities, as well as T-shirts, pants and flip-flops.
MLB International is currently promoting baseball in more than 60 countries, and can claim some credit for today's existence of organized national baseball federations in more than 100 countries, up from just 54 in 1987.
Even so, Cambodia might not have been on their map if it weren't for Joe Cook, a Cambodian-American who landed in the US state of Tennessee at the age of 12 after surviving the genocidal rule of Cambodia's communist Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s.
Cook, a 35-year-old father of two and chef at a Japanese restaurant in Dothan, Alabama, took up baseball as a way to learn English, make friends and to fit into his new American setting.
When he returned to Cambodia on a visit a few years ago, Cook wanted to give local children -- usually burdened with jobs like tending the family water buffalo -- a chance to play a sport that had motivated him and given him confidence.
"We probably wouldn't be here if it wasn't for him, because the world's so big and there's only so many things that you can do to get baseball started," Small said of Cook.
"We had no choice, we had to get involved," he said. "When you hear about what he's done and the fact that he's made such a commitment because he loves baseball, you can't turn your back on someone like that."
Cook, whose Cambodian name is Joeurt Puk, said he has spent at least US$37,000 to bring baseball to the youth of Kraing Khmer, which like many Cambodian villages has neither electricity nor running water.
"You can see the kids, so inspired with the game of baseball. Without that, they have no hope," said Cook, who speaks with the distinctive drawl of America's deep south.
On the Net: http://www.cambodiabaseball.com
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