Posted on 09/19/2004 10:24:27 AM PDT by yonif
ALTUN KUPRI, Iraq - Gray-shirted Brusiks filled the bases in the final inning when the potential winning run strode to the plate - Kamaran Sabir, the team's 14-year-old slugger.
Kamaran clenched his teeth. The Nawruz pitcher, Diller Fakhraddin, stared back. Parents in the stands wrung their hands and shouted. Diller's fastball whizzed in, and Kamaran hacked.
Strike one. Strike two. Then, "Strike three!" yelled the umpire, U.S. Army Capt. Deron Haught. "You're out!"
And what may have been Iraq's first organized baseball game was over, with the red-shirted Nawruz - the Kurdish word for New Year's Day - beating Brusik, or Team Lightning, 10-7.
The teams of 13- to 17-year-old boys are the only two in Altun Kupri's new league, and Wednesday was opening day in this northern Iraqi village, a clutch of blocky buildings named for a 16th century Ottoman bridge that once spanned the Little Zab River here.
It was a perfect evening for baseball. Parents crunched pistachios to the ding of aluminum bats. Soldiers from the Hawaii-based 25th Infantry Division's 2nd Brigade stood guard at the soccer field-turned-ball diamond, with a Humvee parked at each outfield foul pole and another sitting just beyond the center field fence.
The youngsters - Kurds, Turkomen and one Arab - belted line drives, scooped up grounders - and booted a few, too. Parents cheered as their boys chased down fly balls and hurled them home, where overzealous runners were tagged out.
In most of Iraq, U.S. soldiers would stand little chance of organizing a baseball league, let alone setting up a public adress system and staging a game on a town's soccer field. But Altun Kupri, just south of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, lies in a friendly region. U.S. troops have never been attacked here and consider the town safe enough to trade in their helmets and body armor for T-shirts and ball caps.
The game provided close calls, hot arguments and tough breaks. One boy racing home from third base collided with the catcher, who tagged him out. Coaches and players stood the boy up, brushed him off and sent him to the bench with a few encouraging words, a red welt marking his chin.
One batter, 13-year-old Ferman Fredun, was hit in the ribs by a fastball.
"Ow," he yelled.
"Take your base," Haught shouted, and the boy trotted to first, managing a smile.
Haught, commander of a platoon that occupies a small base in this town 205 miles north of Baghdad, said the soldiers hope America's favorite pastime catches on in Iraq.
"I'd like to see one of them get a scholarship at West Virginia University and then go and play for the Pirates," said Haught, 37, a Pittsburgh fan who hails from Harrisville, W.Va.
It's not an impossible dream. Baseball has thrived in some countries where U.S. troops have deployed, including Cuba, Panama and the Dominican Republic.
"We'd like to welcome you to the first Iraqi baseball game," Haught told the curious crowd just before the town's mayor tossed out the first pitch. "This game has been played in America for over a hundred years and we want to share it with Altun Kupri and with this country."
The game proved a mystery to most.
"We've never seen this before, except on TV," said Ahso Abu Bakr, 50, watching his two sons - one on each team. "Hopefully we'll get used to this game and start learning it."
The idea for the league arose after Haught's soldiers began playing baseball among themselves. They made a ball from wadded paper wrapped in duct tape. An aluminum cot leg was the bat.
Haught said he mentioned the games to his sister back in West Virginia. "She felt bad. We were over here serving our country and we were playing baseball with a tape ball and a cot leg," he said. "So she started Operation Home Run."
Packages began arriving filled with baseballs, bats and gloves.
At the same time, the platoon was trying - and failing - to unify Altun Kupri's sports clubs, which are grouped, like the town, into Turkomen and Kurdish camps. So the soldiers started their own sports club and made it a baseball league. In July, Haught persuaded the city council to send over a few dozen kids.
He wasn't sure it would work. Iraqis play soccer and volleyball, sports that don't involve catching or throwing. But the kids picked up the basics.
The soldiers trained the best athletes as pitchers and catchers. Teaching hitting and fielding was easy. Baseball's rules proved tougher.
"Like, when you're on first, you have to run - but you can't outrun the guy ahead of you," Haught said.
With the final out on opening day, Diller, the winning 16-year-old pitcher, and his teammates poured off the field, their arms in the air, shouting "Nawruz, Nawruz!"
"I like this game. It's better than soccer," the lanky boy said.
Then the window of baseball-inspired magic closed. The soldiers strapped on their body armor, and humvee engines roared to life. Soccer balls appeared, and players began preparing the field for the evening match.
Lets hope noone tells them about players unions.
Cool!
...or owners who take tax money from the public for ballparks when they have plenty of money to finance them themselves.
Baseball breeds freedom. Except in Cuba, but, the best players manage to get into the US.
And as a courtesy: Go Braves!
Ping - great minds think alike.
""I like this game. It's better than soccer," the lanky boy said."
Well, there is hope for Iraq, after all.
Beats whacking a bloody sheep's head around...on a donkey besides.
Damn right.
Soccer.....The hearts and minds of the world!
The boy's a genius.
It's amazing to me how much these people hate us. /sarcasm off/
Ha,ha!
Oh yeah!!
"All your base are belong to us!"(I couldn't resist)
Great stadium idea but I doubt the Saudi's would like a big old "Hebrew National" hotdog sign on the field.
We should introduce it to Palestinians as well; those rock-throwers need a healthy outlet.
Baseball has also spread to countries that the U.S. never occupied, like Venezuela and Taiwan, and I think baseball caught on in Japan long before 1945.
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