Play Ball!!!

Baseball is ninety percent mental and the other half is physical. - Yogi Berra

I think Mr. Berra was right--baseball takes 140% effort, particularly when you are teaching the sport to 25 complete novices ranging in age from 8 to 18. Last Saturday, the American Sports Club put on a 4-hour baseball extravaganza, starting with the basics and working our way up to a full-fledged game and man, it was really, really fun.

Pulling off this event could only be done with the help of many parties that I want to give a shout-out to. First, the American kids who donated equipment and the organization Pitch In For Baseball for collecting it and sending it to us (and my wonderful parents for covering the shipping). Second, the American Corner Bitola staff for finding a playing field, buying snacks and T-shirts, and the Corner's interns for covering everything from translating instructions to playing catcher. Third, to the American Sports Club founders who applied for the equipment and helped teach the younger kids on Saturday. And last but far from least, my fantastic regional sitemates from Peace Corps who got up early on their Saturday, who didn't complain when we ran out of snacks, and who know WAY more about baseball than me so the kids actually learned how to play properly.

All week I had been dreading that the forecasts for rain would be true and cause the game to be canceled but miraculously, we got an ideal sunny spring day. We played on a field outside the soccer stadium and I guess the magnetism of baseball is undeniable--several kids defected from soccer practice and joined us instead. I must say, the youth impressed me with their ability to pick up the game even if it took us awhile to get everyone to understand that if you don't run over the base, it doesn't count. I think when we have real bases instead of egg cartons this will be clearer because, after all, why would you stomp egg cartons? Also memorable was when one kid hit a homer and proceeded to run the bases carrying his batting helmet tucked under his arm.

One of my favorite parts was Kaylee and Lauren's solution for putting the kids in a memorable batting order--they just lined them up in height order, shortest to tallest. I'm sure the major leagues will be switching to this approach soon, it's so logical. And the night before the game, we had a baseball talk at the American Corner where I gave them cracker jacks made by yours truly and we sang "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," a requirement for earning a taste of said cracker jacks.

There are photos and even some video of all the baseball revelry up on Picasa. Some of the pictures are taken by me, but most are from Helene, my sitemate, and Stefan, an American Sports Club founder who is an amazing photographer. To close, I'd like to use another Yogi-ism:
I just want to thank everyone who made this day necessary.

Doubleheader

Saturday was my monthly American Corner doubleheader--American Sports Club followed by Readers' Club. Only 6 kids came to sports club but they were happy to break in our new (to us) donated baseball equipment from a U.S. organization called Pitch In For Baseball. It's still very much winter here, evidenced by the snow flurries that Lauren and I walked through pulling my suitcases filled with baseball gloves and balls, so we did Baseball 101 inside.

Lauren and I make pretty interesting coaches with only a couple years of little league between us, but thanks to the power of You Tube and its tutorials on such helpful topics like coaching youth baseball catching drills and how to catch a baseball, we did a respectable job (in my opinion).

As suggested in one of the videos, we started by tossing around a bean bag (OK, lentil-filled sweat sock) that Helene nicely whipped up at 10:30 on Friday night. Pros at throwing and catching, we moved on to catching grounders. Then everyone broke off into pairs and did that most American of pastimes, playing catch. With the exception of one kid, everyone was playing baseball for the first time ever and they were shockingly good. The kids were very enthusiastic and are eager to have an actual game outside in the spring.

After rolling the equipment home, I hustled over to the American Corner for the Readers' Club discussion of The Aspern Papers by Henry James. I'll be honest--I wasn't crazy about this book and although some of the other book club members liked it better, I wouldn't say anyone gave it a ringing endorsement. Next month's book is O Pioneers! by Willa Cather and I've been a bit ashamed that I went to University of Nebraska but never read anything by this fellow Husker and venerated author who set many of her stories in the state, so I look forward to finally reading one of her tales.

It was a very American Corner/You Tube week for me--I also gave a presentation there on Wednesday about Presidential Monuments (Mt. Rushmore, FDR Memorial, etc) where I used some You Tube videos to give people a virtual visit experience. Maybe I needed a spicier presentation title though--only 5 people came. I'm blaming the cold weather, even if it wasn't all that bad out. Besides learning to make my title zippier next time, I also discovered an amazing dance (watch this video from about 3:10 minutes) and did you know Eleanor Roosevelt was born a Roosevelt?

K-k-k-kickball!

Explaining a baseball-like sport to people who have never played the game--this was the task before Ashley and me as we participated in the Bitola American Sports Club's second event, kickball. For the uninitiated, kickball is essentially baseball but you kick a bouncy ball instead of batting. However, as I said, none of the kids had ever played baseball so we needed to explain everything--what is a base, what are the bases called, which order do you run them, what's a foul, what's an out, etc--and do it before we lost everyone's attention.

The game actually started well although we did realize in the course of our play that we forgot a few key points, such as you can't actually pass the person in front of you as you run the bases, even if you are faster than him or her. Also the batting order is not to be renegotiated every inning, and players on the bench cannot kick the ball away from the catcher in an attempt to help their runner reach home plate. We had to move the second base, aka egg carton, about halfway through because it was getting lost in a mud pit. A few shoes (and one pair of glasses) came off in early innings until everyone got their kicking techniques perfected. All-in-all though, the match-up between Ashley's Wild Dogs and my Wildcats was a rousing success.


More pics are up on Picasa and I think you'll agree, we have one of the most scenic fields in all of sports. Our baseball equipment donation was approved and everything is in the mail, so next time we play kickball the kids will get to really run the bases and not egg cartons!