Those Dominican Baseball Players!
One of our goals while traveling is to get involved in the communities where we stay. In Luperon, we
have found that easy. The people are lovely and kind. Relative to our “old normal”, they have little, but they share everything they have with anyone who needs it. They greet each other with “Mi Amor!” or “Mi Corazon!” and an embrace and a kiss. It’s a beautiful culture.
One tradition in the community is playing a weekly game or two of softball – Dominicans vs. Gringos. If you know anything about baseball, you know the Dominicans are serious about it, and seriously good at it. However, they make all the calls in favor of the Gringos, and generally go easy on them, so that they have a chance to win. There are kids playing and they
are also willing to be runners for the Gringos who prefer not to run, for whatever reason. Maybe they’ve been sailing too long and lost their “land legs”! These kids are so cute and some of them are really good.
It didn’t take much time to notice that these kids were playing barefoot, sharing ancient and ill-fitting equipment, and still having the time of their lives. Seeing this, one of the other Cruisers (Marci on s/v Tanda Malaika) fired off an email to her home neighborhood full of families with kids asking for second hand equipment. Her husband was flying in the next week and could bring it. The result was two very large bags of cleats, gloves, balls, bats, and a couple of helmets. These items were put under the care of the coaches who work with the kids, for safekeeping, and are distributed at games. Have a look at these kids and their beaming smiles. Those smiles say it all.
Needless to say, we’re trying to get more equipment together to bring back in November.
