Fearless Nicaraguan Baseball

Fearless Nicaraguan Baseball

By Louisa Kay Reyes

When I was little and we lived in Mexico City, my mother decided it was high time my brother and I learned how to play baseball. When she grew up in the college town of Carbondale, Illinois, her childhood dream had been to be the first female pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals. So during my first pitch and catch lesson, I looked at what seemed like a giant ball rather timidly. But my mother was not to be allayed by my early childhood reticence. The first thing she told me during my inaugural baseball lesson was, “Don’t be afraid of the ball. Remember, you are the boss. You tell the ball where to go.”
 
Of course, it was easy to be the boss of the ball at the beginning. We started off by standing right in front of each other, our big baseball gloves touching while gently practicing placing the ball in the glove of my mother. However, each time my mother would take a step further back. But with our initial hesitations thus quelled, my brother and I soon mastered the art of throwing with aim and catching with ease, discovering that it was all quite pleasant. So much so, that before long, we didn’t mind standing in the wide median of the street in Mexico City with everybody wondering what we were doing. In Mexico City, baseball was considered strictly a quirk from north of the border. Sure, several Major League players have hailed from Mexico, like Fernando Valenzuela, but in Mexico City, soccer was king, queen, prince, and princess.
 
Many years later, after we moved back to the United States and we lived in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, I signed up to be a translator for a medical mission trip my brother’s friend was leading to Nicaragua where I would be translating for the doctor and his patients. Several people I knew were on the trip and I had never been to Nicaragua before, so I looked forward to our spring break journey.
 
After driving to Louisiana and catching our flight there, we landed in Managua, Nicaragua. During one of our first trips around the city, I found myself sitting in the car with one of the local boys. He pointed out a sizable stadium while we drove past it and his eyes suddenly lit up. He pointed towards it and said to me, “That’s where they play baseball!” I was stunned. Growing up in Mexico City, I thought baseball would be practically unheard of in Nicaragua. But, here I was, being told excitedly that some of the people who play in that stadium even go on to play béisbol in the United States. And sure enough, I later learned that Nicaragua has had fifteen players go on to the majors including, Dennis Martinez and even David Green, who played for my mother’s childhood team, the St. Louis Cardinals. To my astonishment, while soccer was still very popular, the Nicaraguan locals held baseball in the highest of esteems.
 
A couple of days later, we joined one of the local American missionaries to deliver items to one of the places where they provided food for the needy. We intended this to be a courier trip where we dropped off the food and left. But our brief stop providing the locals with a few necessaries turned into an impromptu afternoon of play once the local kids saw us coming. I was trying to help the ladies organize the bags of rice and beans, but the kids worked quickly to do some organizing of their own—a game of baseball.
 
There was no yard with green grass, only the small grey cement courtyard in which we were setting up the food. But the eager little kids were undeterred and soon recruited me to join them in playing baseball. Since we were on a mission trip, we were advised to dress in an old-fashioned style. And with my long sleeve blouse and a skirt that nearly touched the floor, I felt more like I could be an extra in a rerun of the late 1950s era The Donna Reed Show rather than a participant in an impromptu game of ball. But after making sure that the ladies had all the extra hands that they needed first, I decided it wouldn’t hurt to join the youth in their sandlot baseball game. Their genuine happiness when I agreed to play let me know that I had made the right decision.
 
My delight in joining the Nicaraguan kids in this all-American game soon gave way to an element of fear. My mother’s words of “Don’t be afraid of the ball” echoed in my head from my very first baseball lesson, but the white balls with red seams were nowhere to be found. My mom said nothing to me about being scared of rocks and stones. In this neighborhood, things like baseball gloves, bats, and cleats were unheard of luxuries. After all, baseballs weren’t really needed. But what they did have in plenty was a dream-like desire to play, coupled with rocks and stones about the size of baseballs, and the will to make it work.
 
The youngsters formed a fist with their hand to use as a bat, which they then used to hit the rock. And, yes, to get the players out sometimes, they’d throw the rocks right at them. As fate would have it, the kids wanted me to go up to bat. Since our trip had a higher calling component to it, I felt it would be decidedly rude to decline. So with more than a little trepidation, I stepped up to the makeshift home plate and prepared my fist. Yielding to the fact that they were playing with rocks, the pitcher lobbed it gently and I hit it with the soft part on the bottom of my fist that comprises part of the muscles that control the thumb. It definitely tingled some. However, I had no time to nurse my wounds, for the kids were cheering and immediately springing into action to try to catch the ball and then throw me out.
 
I started running towards where I thought the first base might be. And because I knew I hadn’t hit the ball very far, I prepared myself emotionally to be thrown out. Sure enough, they threw the solid grey stone right at me. And to my chagrin, they didn’t miss, hitting me on my side. Inwardly, I winced. And while under different sandlot baseball circumstances I would never willingly subject myself to that kind of stinging pain, outwardly, I laughed with the Nicaraguan locals.
 
The rest of the game proceeded with the Nicaraguan kids squealing with delight, not once giving any indication that they were distressed by the rocks being thrown at them. And through them, I had discovered the very essence of the game—conquering one’s fears and having fun.

Luisa Kay Reyes has had pieces featured in The Raven Chronicles, The Windmill, The Foliate Oak, The Eastern Iowa Review, and other literary magazines. Her essay, “Thank You,” was the winner of the April 2017 memoir contest of The Dead Mule School Of Southern Literature. And her Christmas poem was a first-place winner in the 16th Annual Stark County District Library Poetry Contest. Additionally, her essay “My Border Crossing” received a Pushcart Prize nomination from the Port Yonder Press. And two of her essays have been nominated for the Best of the Net anthology, with one of her essays recently being featured on “The Dirty Spoon” radio hour.