Archive
Breaking News – Coaches to Join the National Team
2008 Cambodian National Baseball Team (CNBT)
Our 2008 Cambodian National Baseball Team (CNBT) is currently practice at Khoom Baseball Field in Baribo City, KompongChnang province just about 2.5 hours west of Phnom Penh.
We need your help with our national team;
Experience coaches and team staffs;
-
Pitching, Hitting and Fielding Coaches
-
First and Third basemen coaches
-
Team Scorekeeper’s
-
Team Doctor’s
-
Team Chaplain
Our team in-need of sponsorship and funds for:
-
Airfare for the team travel from Cambodia to Manila, Philippines on November 27 and return December 9.
-
Hotel (14 nights)
-
Food (We have total of 23 players and coaches in our national team)
We need baseball gears;
-
Cleats
-
Socks
-
Jerseys
-
Pants
-
Wooden bats
-
Fielding gloves
-
Batting gloves
-
Basseball caps
-
Baseballs
Since last week, I have heard a couple of volunteers are interest of joining our national team coaching staffs. Our main concern right now is sponsorship. We need funds for the traveling expenses. Without that, our team won’t be able to compete in the 2008 Asian Cup.
If you have any idea or advice, please help share with me. Thank you.
Something about Joe Cook
Struggling to put past horrors behind him and adjust to his new life, Joe found in baseball a way to feel connected to American culture. Baseball gave him hope in an unfamiliar country. He played into his high school years, but never stopped loving the game.
In 2002, Joe heard that one of his sisters, whom his family had presumed dead over twenty years ago, was still alive. During his visit to Cambodia, his niece and nephew took him to see their school and friends. Struck by the poverty and bleakness of their community, Joe decided to introduce the sport that had changed his life to Cambodia, where no one had ever heard of baseball. He went home to the United States to collect baseball equipment and school supplies, and he returned to Cambodia in November 2002 to help build a new field in the town of Baribo, about 60 miles outside the capital.
Baseball was born on November 26, 2002, and it has grown to include over 30 teams from all over the country. Many more would love to participate, but Joe’s organization is constrained by the costs of travel, shortages of equipment, and a lack of coaches. Joe himself lives in Alabama, where he spends his mornings coordinating baseball issues, works as a full-time chef (and yes, that’s how he adopted the last name Cook) from 3 to 10 pm, and stays up half the night corresponding with his volunteer staff in Cambodia over the internet.
Around the beginning of November, I found out about the Cambodia Baseball Association while reading a guide to Phnom Penh restaurants. A blurb mentioned Joe’s story and gave a link to his website. I was excited about getting involved and helping my favorite sport to grow in a new country. So I sent Joe a casual email asking if I might be able to help with coaching. Within minutes, Joe sent me a thousand-word reply detailing all the issues he was struggling with around advertising and sponsorships for a tournament that was coming up in a couple of weeks. He wasn’t trying to pressure me into helping, but just wanted me to know what was on his plate in case I could lend a hand. Given the length and tone of his reply, I could tell he was desperate and had limited help on the ground in Cambodia, so I offered to do my best.
I called up a handful of places, and my sales pitch was just about as bad anyone who knows me can imagine: “I don’t know if this is the sort of thing you’re interested in, or if they do banners in Cambodia like they do in the United States, and I know it’s really short notice, but I’m helping out with this Cambodia Baseball tournament that’s coming up in a couple weeks, and we’re looking for companies to sponsor the event.” Several places had never heard of baseball, and others were not familiar with the concept of sponsorship. But through the grace of God I did find one person, an American restaurant owner, who agreed to pay for three banners. I consider it a miracle because he originally told me no, there was not enough time, and he didn’t really see the value of a banner anyway. A couple days later, apparently unable to get my stumbling presentation out of his head, he called me and offered to sponsor one banner each for his restaurant, his parent company, and a foundation he works with.
Joe also told me that he was making me head coach for one of the three teams. Kampong Chhnang was the veteran home team, based in the province where baseball was first introduced. Kampong Cham had been playing for about a year, but against Kampong Chhnang, they were 0-4. Joe suggested that I take the most inexperienced team, and after reading his description, I knew the decision was clear:
“Team from BantymenChey is the weakest team’s of all. They just got started about a few months ago. I’m sure you help them prepare for this tournament. It’s upto you what team you would to coach. I’m offering you to be a coach for BantymenChey. They need to learn how play better fielding, catching, hitting, running, etc. Poor Bantymenchey team, I don’t know if they can play against other teams.”
With my soft spot for underdogs and extensive experience coaching losing teams, I knew it was my destiny to coach Banteay Meanchey. And so I left for Baribo on November 24, to spend two days practicing with my team before the tournament would start on November 26, the third anniversary of baseball’s introduction to Cambodia.
Day 1
The bus dropped me off at a well-known landmark, and I called Joe to tell him I had arrived. Sitting by the side of the road, I paid no attention to the pickup truck that pulled up, thinking it to be that of a local farming family. As I watched about ten boys, between the ages of ten and twenty, pile out of the truck’s bed, I heard someone call my name: “Rich, come meet your players. They wanted to come meet you and carry your bags.” Within seconds, I was surrounding by smiling faces, eager to welcome me.
Joe asked if I wanted to sit up front with him, but I thought I should ride with the players. I asked if anyone spoke English, and everyone pointed to a young man about my age named Von. He had played baseball before and would be one of my three assistant coaches. When I realized how little English he actually spoke, I knew that coaching was going to be a monumental challenge. The ride to the field was short but bumpy, and my backside was hurting after just a few minutes. Later, I learned that all my players had traveled from their province crammed onto similar open-bed trucks, enduring the eight-hour drive over poor roads with undiminished enthusiasm.
When I got there at 10 am, my players had already been practicing for three hours, so it was time for a food break. We walked back to the large house that Joe had built for his sister and that doubled as a headquarters for Cambodia Baseball. From the beginning, the players showed me hospitality that I was almost embarrassed to accept. Whenever I had been standing for a little while, someone would offer a chair. Whenever I sat down to a meal or took a break from practice, someone would rush over to offer a bottle of water. All the kids seemed to understand that Westerners had to drink from a bottle, even though they themselves were content to drink out of a communal bucket of collected rain water.
After a little time to rest, we walked back to the field to continue practicing. I stepped back to take in my surroundings for a moment. The field was certainly rudimentary. There was a backstop, but no outfield fences. When balls were overthrown to first base, someone would have to dive into a rice paddy to retrieve it. There were no baselines or really anything to demarcate the infield, but there were plenty of holes and ditches to create base-running hazards and nasty hops. There was something serene about the surroundings too, about playing on a field carved out of a remote farmland, with crops and cows grazing in the backdrop.
I wanted everyone to line up to play catch, and you would think that nothing could be simpler to explain. But then you realize that as a single person, you can’t really illustrate the formation of a line. I tried standing in one place, glancing for a moment at my players, then moving a few feet horizontally and glancing at them again. “Don’t you see? I’m forming a line!” Trying to get them to stand opposite one another was no easy task either. Eventually, through some vigorous finger pointing and enough miming to constitute a one-act play, I got them to play catch.
I walked down the line to observe each of the players. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I crouched down and furrowed my brow in an attempt to look studious. Uncertain how well Western gestures would translate, I thought a brief chin rub and head scratch were also in order. I noticed that several players were throwing from awkward arm angles, but after I spent a solid three minutes correcting them, they went back to their old habits as soon as I walked away.
Fortunately, I had a few pitchers with some experience. One thing I know about pitching mechanics is that you want to derive power from your back leg rather than rely too heavily on your throwing arm. As with everything else to this point, I demonstrated the advice with zero success. The only other thing I know about pitching is that you don’t want your front shoulder to fly open. When I say “know,” I mean that I’ve heard commentators say something along these lines, and I haven’t a clue what it really means. But even if I did understand the point, I would probably just as soon attempt to explain DIPS to my pitching staff as try to correct this flaw.
As we prepared to take the field, the next challenge was sorting the players. I had about thirty kids, twelve of them under the age of fourteen and the rest in the older group. Since we were playing the other teams in these two divisions, I tried to get them to separate themselves by age. I stared blankly as the kids divided themselves into two seemingly arbitrary groups, with each clearly including a few of the youngest and oldest kids. I gestured hopelessly to get them to divide properly, using what I thought was a pretty clear demonstration of little/big: a horizontal hand placed about waist high, followed by the same hand placed way over my head. Everyone just looked back at me with big smiles. Finally, I told Von to send one group out into the field (learning later that they had separated themselves by the schools they attended).
As we prepared to do some fielding practice, I was deeply conscious of the fact that Joe had made me out to be some American baseball hero. He told me that to these kids I was like Cal Ripken Jr. (Joe’s favorite player). I personally might have said Pedro Martinez or David Ortiz to make a more current analogy, but I could live with being Cal Ripken Jr. We spent about an hour on fielding practice, and considering that these kids had known about baseball only for a few months, I was impressed with their basic skills. Nevertheless, it was clear that there would be a lot of overthrows and balls through the legs.
The other team, Kampong Cham, arrived after they had lunch, and I had a chance to talk with their manager, Jay. Unlike me, Jay came all the way from the US just for this event. A few years ago, he had worked with a man from Cambodia who had fled the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, and Jay was so impressed with this man’s wisdom and personal history that he promised to visit Cambodia one day. He was surprised to find out that there was baseball in the country, and he decided to incorporate this tournament into his vacation. Jay and I agreed that we would practice separately for a little longer and then play a scrimmage.
When the first game started with the younger kids, I couldn’t help feeling a little competitive, even if the players were just there to have fun. I noticed that some of Kampong Cham’s players had the nerve to be wearing sneakers, while my team of dirt dogs had to play barefoot. Another unique facet of Cambodia baseball is the necessity of breaking three to five times per inning to wait for someone to cross through. A dirt path happened to cut straight through the infield, and timeouts had to be called for:
bikes…
motorcycles…
cars…
and of course, buffalo wagons.
As it was mid-afternoon, I was feeling pretty exhausted, but the enthusiasm of the players gave me a lift. While nine players were on the field at any given time, we had about 20 reserves on the sidelines cheering for every out made by our defense or for every runner to reach base safely on offense. I was extremely proud to watch both of my teams win. The older kids even came back from a 2-run deficit in the bottom of the final inning, giving me the thrill of a walk-off win that I had always dreamed of but never achieved in softball. I tried to capture the moment on video, but I’m not sure how many of the players realized they were about to win, so the celebration was no greater than what they had for every run.
After the scrimmage, we returned to the house. With all the kids crammed into a barracks-like shed, I felt spoiled to be sleeping in the house, even on the floor. Joe’s family insisted on treating Jay and me to a separate meal, and of course we had the privilege of using the indoor bathroom. I wouldn’t have minded the shower by bucket (which, incidentally, is not that inconvenient and would save an awful lot of water) so much except for the multiple near exposures I suffered as people started to walk in. Curtained doorways, after all, are not really lockable.
After dinner, I went to lie down, physically exhausted but unable to fall asleep. It didn’t help that the players were gathered in the living room watching kung-fu movies. As Jay noted the next morning, it seemed as if the volume kept increasing every few minutes. When the movie ended, it was time for the baby to cry. And after that, it only made sense that everyone would gather in the hallway to talk outside our room.
Day 2
I had heard that Cambodians rise early, but I figured people would at least wait until the first light of day. By 5 am, there were people talking outside my window and door, and by 5:30, an insomniac, blind, or otherwise confused rooster began to crow. When we got outside, Jay learned that his team was already at the field warming up. I felt like quite the lazy American.
None of the best English speakers on my team knew the word “coach,” so one of them, Sopaea, started calling me “teacher,” and to my embarrassment it caught on. “Teacher, please sit,” or “Teacher, please eat first.” Their Asian accents and excessive courtesy made me feel like a martial arts sensei who should be responding in aphorisms and a bow.
To start the morning, I decided that I would separate my players into infielders and outfielders, so we could run some drills while Jay’s team used the field. After we had spent quite a bit of time communicating this to the players and getting them properly organized, I looked over to see that Jay’s team was doing a regimen of warm-up stretches. I pointed sheepishly and asked Von if he could lead our team in whatever it was that Kampong Cham was doing. To my relief, this was something they were prepared to do and the team was accustomed to. I sat lazily on the ground and watched as my assistant coaches led a prearranged set of exercises like army drill sergeants.
Then it was time to get back into the infield/outfield groups, and I proposed the sophisticated drill of hitting grounders to the infielders and throwing fly balls to the outfielders. We did this for almost an hour. As I had little idea of what else to do while the field was in use, I introduced such enhancements as hitting the ground ball in different directions and throwing the ball over the players’ heads. Finally, I remembered Jay mentioning that he had done a pickle/rundown drill.
The pickle drill was quite a mess, but I succeeded in imparting one clear bit of knowledge that proved useful in our subsequent games. I taught them to hold the ball and chase the runner as far as possible before throwing to the opposite base. This decreases the likelihood of bad throws and also forces the runner to commit toward one side rather than dance and hedge in the middle until you drop the ball. On the day of the tournament, I was proud that we caught the runner in something like three of five rundown situations.
At lunchtime, I sat pondering the recurring problem of my players throwing to the wrong base — for example, going to first when there was a force at second, or going to third when there was no force and a surer out at first. I thought that I might have more luck explaining this to them off the field, but I did not have access to the essential coaching tool of a whiteboard. So instead, I walked over to the patio area and began creating a diamond out of rocks. Several of the players walked over and probably would have concluded that I was crazy if Joe had not come over to help translate. When Joe was available, he was immensely helpful, but he spent most of the first two days in Phnom Penh meeting with people about future events and opportunities. I believe this visual illustration helped clarify some things for the players, but I feared that it didn’t all sink in, and they would not necessarily have the right instincts to act immediately in a game situation.
After lunch, I sat with the kids as they talked and laughed. Other than my nervous smiling, I could think of no way to engage them, until I remembered that children in poor countries are often really excited to be photographed. I brought out my digital camera and showed them some pictures I had taken while we were practicing. I then took some video of them, and after one playback they understood the power of my little machine. After that, they insisted on being photographed or recorded time after time, with the younger kids especially eager to force themselves into the shot every time I took my camera out. Whenever I finished recording, I would have to play the video back five or six times as impatient groups crowded around me for a peak. Here’s a video of the kids saying hello, and another of them singing and dancing.
In the afternoon, we took over the field and had some batting practice. I was itching to swing the bat, but I decided I could not take the risk of humiliating myself in front of my players. It wasn’t just a question of my own pride; it was an issue of losing their respect and thus my effectiveness as a coach. After all, would Cal Ripken Jr. show up at a Little League field and whiff at a twelve-year-old pitcher’s stuff? I would have liked to have had Joe explain that I wasn’t a baseball hero so much because of my feats on the field as because I was a very knowledgeable fan with a fantasy baseball title to my credit. But I feared that my accomplishments, however significant in their own right, would have been lost on them in translation.
The rest of the afternoon consisted of scrimmages, with Kampong Chhnang having arrived as well. They would be coached by Tim, who I later learned was, incidentally, Harvard ’92. While my team was waiting for a scrimmage between Kampong Chhnang and Kampong Cham to end, I decided to buy a 24-pack of Cokes from a vendor who had set up a table by the field. The players were elated, and I took a picture that I’m embarrassed to say would make a great advertisement for Coca-Cola.
We retired at around 4:30 again. One of the highlights of my trip was watching my players that evening create a makeshift baseball game in a small patch of grass, using a real baseball but a giant leaf as a bat. A base runner would take literally five steps to steal a base, while the pitcher dove after him from the mound each time. I imagined that this was how these kids played baseball in their home province, where they didn’t have a field or much equipment. (Video.)
After dinner, everyone brought chairs out to the patio area and a couple of the older kids began entertaining us. I had no idea what they were doing, but it seemed to involve one boy calling out some actions and the other acting them out. I found their ability to keep themselves entertained to be endearing. It was a kind of simple recreation I think most of us outgrow quickly in the United States, and even children nowadays seem to have a harder time playing without technology or fancy toys. With my ethnocentric perspective, I could think of no better analogy for the scene I was witnessing than the Shire life of the hobbits in Lord of the Rings.
Jay and I spent some time talking about the extreme poverty in which these kids lived. He had brought some very simple gifts, like action figures and matchbox cars, and he was shocked at how excited the kids were to receive them. They were even thrilled to accept a spare toothbrush he had, simply because it was a novelty. For me, seeing only their lively and enthusiastic behavior made it easy to forget that they lived without electricity and running water, and that a bad farming season could mean starvation for their families. One of my players had recently lost a brother to a land mine, one of four to six million planted by the Khmer Rouge and still hidden in the countryside. But it’s a testament to the character of these recovering people that my prevailing feeling was not one of pity but of admiration.
A typical house in this village
Day 3
The first task on the morning of the tournament was to put the kids in the appropriate attire. Joe asked Jay and me to find cleats for as many players as possible, and sneakers for the rest. 
It was clear from watching the kids that most had never owned sneakers before, as many of them chose shoes that were several sizes too big. Joe then brought out several big boxes of donated uniforms. As we sorted through the piles of clothes, ranging from MLB licensed apparel to tattered old t-shirts, Jay and I made the decision to color coordinate as best as we could. His team would wear dark colors, and mine white. I was excited to see that some disgruntled young Red Sox fan no longer wanted his Nomar jersey. Jay, a Yankees fan, was able to find enough New York apparel to make his team look like the Yankees.
The variety of baseball caps was just as great. On display were the logos of college sports teams, random companies, and the perennial fan favorite, US Customs. My team managed to find enough white clothing to look somewhat coordinated, even though several players appeared to be dressed for the wrong sport.
The program began with speeches from various international baseball executives and Cambodian government officials. One of the speakers was Jim Small, a Vice President of Marketing and Development for MLB who is based in Japan. He brought his young son, who in this video gives a nice speech about how he considers baseball to be the greatest game in the world and was proud to be able to collect equipment to donate to the Cambodian players.
It was decided that my team would first play Kampong Cham, and the winner would play the home team, Kampong Chhnang. Only if Kampong Chhnang lost would there be a second-place playoff between Kampong Chhnang and the loser of the first game. The process seemed unfairly to favor the home team, given that the winner of the first game would have to play a second game immediately afterward, but there wasn’t enough time to do it otherwise.
We started with the younger division, and Banteay Meanchey batted first. The opposing pitcher was short but threw surprisingly hard. My team scored just one run in the first inning. Since we were to play only two innings, I was concerned about this lack of offensive output. Kampong Cham put up three runs in their half of the inning, but the third out came on a controversial call at third base. A runner stealing third was beaten by the throw, but the tag seemed to be late. It wasn’t clear whether the umpire understood that the runner even had to be tagged, and given the difficulty of communicating with him and the fact that my team had already run off the field, Jay didn’t protest much. We were very fortunate to have what could have been a much bigger inning put to a premature end.
Throughout the day, the home-plate umpire appeared to lack confidence in his calls. Whenever there was a close play at the plate, he would look around uncomfortably for half a minute while Jay screamed, “What’s the call? Safe or out? What’s the call?!” Eventually he would make a signal, probably based on what he was hearing more loudly from the crowd, since a split-second observation can’t really get more accurate with protracted reflection. On balls or strikes, I sometimes felt that I could control his decision with my body language. He often gave late strike calls, and these seemed to come whenever I had silently made a motion with my arm. And my motion was of course based entirely on what I hoped to hear after a couple of passed balls and the fact that this pitch didn’t get away from the catcher. Eventually, I decided that I should keep my desires to myself and not unintentionally skew the umpire’s call. Jay and I also brought an interpreter (Tim’s driver, on loan from his hotel) over to explain the importance of making decisive, prompt calls at the plate. To demonstrate the problem, Jay gave a good-natured imitation of the umpire’s hesitation, much to the delight of the Cambodian onlookers behind the backstop.
We capitalized the following inning by putting eight runs on the board. In this game, getting a runner on first base meant a near-certain run scored. The base runner would steal second base on the first pitch and take third on an overthrow. Absent an overthrow at second, the runner would simply steal third on the following pitch, scoring in the event of an overthrow at third that had a 50/50 chance of occurring. The real question was whether or not to attempt to steal home on a passed ball. To do so successfully, you had to get a sizeable secondary lead and then break immediately once the ball got past the catcher. There was no time to gauge how quickly the catcher would recover the ball. If I could have explained strategy, I might have told my team not to run when there were fewer than two outs and thus a chance for them to score on contact. But they liked running, and everyone loved the excitement of a close play at the plate. My favorite moments of the inning came when the smallest players would score and be picked up triumphantly by their teammates.
We went into the final half-inning with a sizeable 9-3 lead, but I had witnessed too many collapses as a coach to feel comfortable. The other team put up three more runs, but we held on. There was much celebration as Banteay Meanchey managed to win in its first ever tournament game, but our attention soon turned to the next opponent. My team played admirably, but could not summon enough offense to win. We lost 5-2. I’m convinced that we could very well have won if we hadn’t had to play back-to-back games. But no one was complaining. Everyone was happy and grateful just to be there.
During this game, the highlight of the tournament for me came on a rundown in which a Kampong Chhnang player was caught between third and home after venturing too far on a passed ball. I felt proud watching my players execute the rundown flawlessly, chasing the runner back and forth and minimizing the distances of their throws. Still, the runner managed to draw several throws, repeatedly changing directions to the crowd’s amusement. Finally, the third baseman chased him almost the whole length of the path, and upon finding himself within arm’s length of his target, he raised both arms with the ball in his glove and whacked the runner on the top of his helmet. Everyone roared with delight, and although my first thought was that this was showing up the opposition, I saw that such intentions were not really possible among these kids, and no one interpreted the move in that way.
After a short break, the older players got ready to play Kampong Cham. One of my favorite things to watch was the way players celebrated getting the third out, even if it took place in the middle of the game and they were still trailing. In this video, the players complete a 1-2-3 inning and celebrate as they prepare to go into the top of the fourth and final inning trailing 8-5. Take note of the player doing the cartwheel across the screen.
In our final chance at bat, we got only one base runner on. I felt especially bad for Sri Peou (shown on the mound in the fourth and fifth pictures from the top), the ace pitcher and de facto captain who looked downcast after having played his heart out. He had also done an especially admirable job as my enforcer. He spoke no English, so I couldn’t ask him to interpret. But any time someone made an obvious mistake, like throwing to the wrong base or trying to steal a base that was already occupied, I would look at Sri Peou and motion toward that player. He would immediately start screaming his head off at the player, making wild arm gestures and stomping his feet. I can only hope that he was giving a substantive explanation of their error and not putting a curse on their families. But either way, his overbearing leadership style provided a good balance to my calm authority, and his ability to communicate in their language complemented my ability to convey absolutely no meaning through my crude sign language.
As we were gathering our equipment, Sopaea told me to come back to the house with him for lunch. I told him I would catch up with him after I talked with Joe. When I was ready to go, I didn’t see him or anyone from my team around, so I prepared to walk back alone. But as I turned a corner, I found that all my players were waiting for me. They gave me a warm round of applause, and again everyone rushed over to help me carry my belongings back to the house. I was moved and a little embarrassed by their gratitude, but I enjoyed the victory march we took back to the house. (Video.)
Joe’s family insisted that I have a special meal apart from the players, and Sri Peou joined me. I had a hard time understanding the tremendous warmth and appreciation everyone was showing me. I had done very little except show up. And around these kids I was the same quiet guy that I am around people in the United States. I did my best to offer some basic instruction, but off the field, I could only smile and watch silently, behaving exactly as I do in group settings where I can’t blame language barriers for my awkwardness. Meanwhile, I watched Jay bond more actively with his players, joking with them and communicating with rudimentary phrases and exaggerated movements. So I had a hard time understanding why the players treated me with such devotion.
I gradually came to understand that it had little to do with what I did or who I was, and almost everything to do with who these kids are. They lead simple lives with few possessions. In watching the players interact, I saw few traces of jealousy, greed, or competitiveness. They were always willing to share, help, and support each other, even across teams. To their Western visitors and other adults, they were always deferential and obedient. I’m sure that in their home settings, these kids have many of the same flaws and problems that everyone in the world has. But I couldn’t help appreciating the relative lack of complication in their happiness and the sincerity of their relationships.
So in their eyes, I wasn’t a spoiled, rich Westerner who had a fancy digital camera and drank only high-tech bottled water. It didn’t matter to them that I was unnaturally quiet and displayed questionable arm strength for a supposed baseball star. To them, I was a small part of what would be the highlight of their year — an opportunity to travel outside their home village, to be free of all their home responsibilities and allowed to play baseball from sunrise to sunset on a real field. And so for that, in their generous natures, they embraced me wholeheartedly.
I write all of this not because I want to prove the superiority and moral righteousness of their lifestyles, but because I hope to demonstrate the tremendous reward that can come from such encounters. In service, it is rare to be able to give so little and receive so much. Much of the most important work being done in the world requires specialized skills and significant sacrifice; it might involve grueling conditions or a hostile local population. The people who do that work deserve the highest praise and are a model for all of us. But even those of us who lack their extraordinary dedication can have an impact, because in many service opportunities all that is needed is our mere presence. So I write all this as someone who has seen how powerful such experiences can be, for everyone involved, and can testify to how little is required of those who are willing to give.
Later that afternoon, we watched Kampong Chhnang come back from a three-run deficit to beat Kampong Cham in the final at-bat, so there would be no second-place playoff. Joe gave a speech, and afterward my team surrounded me to do one final group cheer. Instead of saying “Banteay Meanchey,” however, they said “Rich, I love you” –- in English –- and gave me a big group hug. As I was getting a ride back to Phnom Penh from Tim, I had to pack up my things and leave shortly afterward. All the players surrounded me at the car to say goodbye, and as I looked at their grateful, sincere faces, I could think only of how much more I could have done and would do if I came back. And so it became clear to me then that the greatest reward that comes from giving a little is the way it expands your heart and capacity to give more.
**********
To see more of my pictures, visit
http://cambodiabaseball.shutterfly.com
Joe Cook has two sites of his own:
http://www.cambodiabaseball.org
There’s information on those sites on making a donation. Cambodia Baseball is always in need of sponsors, baseball equipment, and volunteers to coach. If you know of companies that might want to sponsor an event or build a field, grant funds that Cambodia Baseball might be eligible for, or people who want to visit Cambodia and coach for a few days, you can email joe at joecook_@hotmail.com to discuss these and other possibilities.
Finally, please forward the link to this blog to baseball fans that you know, to spread the word to people who might be interested in helping out. Thanks for your support!
Joe Cook - Baseball Ambassador of Cambodia 