#1 AC's recent post about people he met got me to thinking about baseball memories. So I figured I would share one...
When my son was 12 he played LL. Our local league had the "shadow" travel team that has become popular to get the All Star kids some extra playing time. One day I was reading a local article in our local paper about a LL team from Dubai who was in our area playing as a travel team to get ready for the LL tourney. They had a horrible experience in a tourney. Played a couple teams around here that are known for their bad sportsmanship. I figured I would take a shot and see if I could get in contact with their HC and see if they wanted to play our travel/All-Star team. <I know against the rules...> I found his email address online and sent him an email. I offered to host their team at our fields the next weekend. Play a "friendly" game under LL rules. He responded back pretty quickly and took me up on the offer. That next Saturday the team showed up. It was a mix of Ex-Pats, Australians, Indians and a German kid. We agreed to let our pitchers go a total of two innings tops. Other then that it was to be played by LL rules. We grabbed some of our older HS aged kids who ump to ump this game. Had a very good game against them. Both teams were evenly matched. We lost by a run, but no one seemed to care about that. At the end of the game one of their parents walked over to our umps and handed each one of them $100 for umping. Totally not necessarily as we had already paid them the normal ump pay for kids in our league ($20 plate, $15 field). They insisted and would not take the money back.
We invited the families to a picnic after the game. We figured it would be a quick grilling of some dogs and burgers and everyone would be on the way. The picnic lasted 5 hours. The kids were having a blast hanging with each other. They exchanged Facebook contact info with everyone so they could stay in touch. The parents got along very well. Got an earful about the couple of teams they had played so far.
They were so glad we did this "friendly" game as they and the kids were a little dismayed about what they experienced the week before. Found out a few weeks later from a friend who was at the tourney that one of the teams they played was kicked out of the tourney and their organization was banned from bringing teams to the tourney in the future.
The reason the team choose our area is one of the Ex-Pats grew up around there and suggested it would be a decent place to visit as well as get some games in. A few years after they brought the team here he moved back to our area. His kid attends a different HS then my kid but every time we play that HS you will see my kid and the kid who moved back out on the field before warmups talking to each other. They don't hang around outside of baseball but to this day have a little bond because of that game.
