Teaching Ticos Baseball
A group of Costa Rican teenagers played a sport other than soccer today at El Jardin.
This is big news.
I decided to start the weekend early (don’t tell Amber). So I was swimming at the camp pool this afternoon with a bunch of youngsters – playing kill the man with the ball (I repeat, don’t tell Amber). After the boys got tired of that, they asked of they could play baseball.
Baseball? What’s wrong, are all the soccer balls flat?
No, they just wanted to try something different. Imagine that. So I agreed to be their full-time pitcher. It became obvious pretty quickly that they had never played baseball before. It was fun trying to explain force outs, double plays, when foul balls count as strikes and when they don’t. In Spanish! Heck, it was fun trying to explain how to hit, throw and catch the ball!
I’m sure the boys will go back to soccer next time. But it was nice — if even for an afternoon — to be participating in America’s past-time with a bunch of Ticos.
