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Mike · Site Admin Joined: 07 Sep 2004 Posts: 4512 Location:

KRAING KHMER, Cambodia - A bush serves as a marker for home runs. Motorcycles laden with goods cruise by second base, and rice planters and water buffalo look on as a ragtag collection of players embrace America's pastime.

What was once a rice paddy in steamy, rural Cambodia has been cleared to make a ballpark where children and young adults compete each day in the impoverished nation's first foray into baseball.

The spectacle of young villagers wearing a hodgepodge of uniforms donated by Americans, tossing balls and practicing swings is the brainchild of Joe Cook, a Cambodian-American living in Dothan, Ala. The chef, 35, introduced baseball to his homeland two years ago.

The World Bank estimates that 42 percent of Cambodia's nearly 15 million people live on $1 a day or less. Baseball followers would be hard-pressed to find a glove or bat available for sale in the country, much less be able to afford it.
Cook has spent about $37,000 of his money to bring baseball to the Kraing Khmer youth. His efforts include building a local house for visiting baseball coaches and orphans who want to learn the sport, sending videos of baseball games to the players and collecting donated equipment from many Southern states for the northwest Cambodia village, which has no running water or electricity.

Cook landed in Tennessee at age 12 as a refugee fleeing the Khmer Rouge, blamed for the deaths of nearly 2 million Cambodians during the late 1970s. He took up baseball as a way to learn English and make friends.

When he returned to Cambodia a few years ago to unite with a sister he thought had perished under the Khmer Rouge, he saw children who had to work on rice farms or tend to the family livestock. Cook wanted to share with them a sport that had given him motivation and confidence.

"I see in their eyes. I look around and they need hope and they need opportunity," Cook said. "They need to understand about other cultures, other countries, what is offered to them, what they can become."

Last week, big-league baseball officials and U.S. coaches visited the village as part of their foreign outreach program, handing out gloves, bats and other gear. The equipment is welcome, Cook said, but the game is the main attraction.

"You can see the kids, so inspired," he said. "They just wear flip-flops or go barefoot . . . but baseball is baseball, it doesn't matter if you're barefoot or flip-flopped."
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