Play Ball!

The New England little league team heading to Havana this summer to play ball against Cubanito players is still about $30,000 short of what’s needed to make the August trip, the head coach says.
The 14 members of the Twin State Peregrines and six chaperones, all from Vermont and New Hampshire, are heading to Cuba Aug. 8 for 10 days. The team is named after the northern peregrine falcon that migrates to Cuba each winter.

The trip dreamed up by head coach Tim Levin, a nature writer who fell in love with Cuba on a 1993 assignment for Audubon magazine. His son and about a dozen other 11 and 12-year-olds will play at least 10 games against the Santos and the Mangoes, teams formed by  Florida cattle rancher John Parke Wright.

“They’ll get to play baseball with kids who love baseball as much as they do,” Levin said. “This is between children -- child to child -- nothing to do with whether you support one thing or another.’’

Levin said it took 20 months and four tries to get the required license from the U.S. Department of the Treasury. First the application was rejected because it lacked an itinerary. Then the application came in too far in advance. The next versions were ditched, because the Peregrines had offered to hold baseball clinics and build baseball bleachers. (NOT!)

“We applied under the amateur athletic competition category, so that’s all they wanted to see: a game every single day,” Levin said. “Once we dotted our i’s and crossed our t’s, we got the license.”

The trip – including new uniforms for both sides – is expected to cost about $45,000. The team has raised roughly $15,000 through donations and raffles and is holding fundraisers to come up with the rest, Levin said.

“This is a historic first step,” Parke Wright said.

- Frances Robles

Comments

[hoopdreamz]

Thank God the team isn't hanging around Miami, where Posada, Bosch or one of the idiotos locales, err, exilios would attempt to: (choose one) pipe bomb, bazooka, egg, or otherwise provoke mayhem, in order to express their displeasure.

Of course, they've still got to be wary of loca de rescate, err, basulto, who may try to leaflet them, or drop water balloons on 'em.