After four days of intense work restoring the Alberto Ortiz Aponte baseball complex, “More Than A Game” capped off its week in Coamo with a youth clinic and Home Run Derby at nearby Pedro Miguel Caratini Stadium. The clinic was hosted by MTAG, a group predominantly made up of professional baseball players and former college players. The boys and girls who participated ranged anywhere from eight to 18 years old, including kids from Puerto Rico Baseball Academy High School (PRBAHS), Pro Baseball Academy, local Coamo youth teams, and more. MTAG CFO Don Gieseke led the clinic and divided the kids into groups before sendings them to various drill stations around Caratini Stadium. Gieseke set up a station for every position on the diamond as well as a batting practice station in one of the batting cages and a base-running station in the outfield, with MTAG members at each spot. The clinic’s instructors featured current Puerto Rican Major Leaguers Jesmuel Valentin and Victor Caratini thanks to the efforts of Angela Christino Marcantonini, who has worked with Puerto Rican baseball personnel through various organizations over the past decade. Valentin, an infielder for the Philadelphia Phillies from Manati, and Caratini, a Chicago Cubs catcher and Coamo native, along with a few of Marcantonini’s other friends and colleagues, worked with the kids throughout the two-hour event. “I feel a very special connection to the Puerto Rican baseball community. They welcomed me as part of their family when I began bringing baseball equipment to underserved communities around the island 10 years ago,” said Marcantonini, who worked with MTAG to plan the day’s event. “I’ve watched these guys grow up in the game and it makes me really proud to see them giving back to the kids who dream of following in their footsteps.” The MTAG crew had the opportunity to practice with a local Coamo team the previous night, but the organized clinic with over 100 kids in action was bigger and more exciting than they could’ve imagined. “It was fun just being around the kids and just being able to experience baseball, share that experience with them,” said MTAG’s Jared Oliva, a Pittsburgh Pirates minor-league outfielder. Nick Ortiz, a manager in the New York Yankees minor league system and organizational scout in Puerto Rico, was impressed with the clinic’s turnout and MTAG’s work. “It’s been great for the kids that were able to participate, it’s been great for the fans that are out here seeing their kids being out there with people who really want to help,” Ortiz said. “I hope activities like this happen more often for people in Puerto Rico.” The Home Run Derby kicked off shortly after the clinic ended and featured two teams each with seven hitters. One team was made up of all MTAG members, and the other was a group of professional players and coaches from Puerto Rico. Gieseke, who found a second wind after leading the clinic, threw to the MTAG hitters, while a local Coamo coach threw to the Puerto Rico team. Each hitter had two minutes to hit in the first round, with the two teams alternating hitting, and the top three from each team advanced to the next round. Hitting time was cut down to one minute in the second round and the top hitter from each team advanced to finals. Boston Red Sox minor-league infielder Ryan Fitzgerald represented the MTAG team in the championship round while Philadelphia Phillies minor-league outfielder Danny Ortiz, who made his MLB debut with the Pirates in 2017, represented the Puerto Rico team. Fitzgerald and Ortiz tied with one home run in the finals, leading to a swing-off between the two. Each hitter got 10 swings and Ortiz edged Fitzgerald, two home runs to one, to win it all. There was no trophy for this derby, because it was all about putting on a show for the kids and delivering a fun event for the Puerto Rican community that lost so much in last September’s devastating hurricane. Valentin, a PRBAHS graduate, was the derby’s headliner and soaked in every moment of the day with his family and friends watching from the stands. After participating in the clinic earlier in the day, the switch-hitter stepped up to the plate from the right side and immediately cranked a long ball to left field to get the crowd going. “It’s amazing, not only to compete, just to have fun, be around kids, be around families who lost baseball, and just helping out,” said Valentin. “That’s one of my biggest goals and mentality, help as many kids as I can.” Valentin prioritizes having a positive impact on the younger generation and making a difference in his community. “I don’t care how much popularity I can get, how much money I can get, all I care is that people remember my name as a really good human being, a really humble person that always is around helping kids, helping families. That’s all that really matters,” Valentin said. The kids that stayed after the clinic to watch the derby saw some talented ball players swinging for the fences, and the hitters fed of the energy inside Caratini Stadium. “It’s awesome to be out here, be immersed in the different culture. Being with all these guys out here, the MLB dudes, dudes from Puerto Rico, it’s cool to be out in their backyard and just kind of hang with them, have fun, be with the crowd. It’s a good time,” Oliva said after his two rounds of swings in the derby. Nick Gruener, a Baltimore Orioles minor-league pitcher, made sure he took advantage of the opportunity to take some cuts, especially with a familiar arm in Gieseke throwing to the MTAG participants. “It was just like we were back in high school. He was one of my coaches in high school before I moved (from California) to Miami, so it was fun to be out there with him again, it’s been a while,” Gruener said. Former University of Arizona infielder Kyle Lewis was a fan of the veteran BP pitcher as well. “I had Don, the man, throwing BP and it’s a lot of fun out there,” Lewis said on the sidelines following his two derby rounds. Every participant had a story to tell about their experience, but Fitzgerald, who led the MTAG team in homers, had the best of the bunch. Fitzgerald built a strong relationship with the kids of Coamo throughout the week, becoming a fan favorite on and off the field, and felt a personal connection with his new friends during the derby. “I think the coolest part of it all was my catcher. I had met him the night before and we kind of got to know each other, and he caught my first two rounds. He was cheering me on, ‘C’mon, c’mon, you can do it, you can do it!’ because I kept hitting a home run on like my last swing to make it to the next round, and I didn’t have him for my third round so I was like, ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute, I gotta get my catcher out here,” so he came out and he was all excited to catch me again for my last round. He was cheering for me because I hit my only home run of my last round on my last swing. He was loving it and there’s a picture of him giving me a big hug at the end of it. It was just really cool for him to experience that and for me to experience it, really. Having that kind of support is just really cool from people that I had just met. It was fun,” Fitzgerald said.
After the derby, the MTAG crew and the rest of the clinic instructors and derby participants spent time talking with the kids, taking pictures, signing autographs and making the most of the day. Baseball brings people together, connecting them through generations and all aspects of life. You never know when an instant bond between two strangers can lead to a chance reunion years down the road and a life-long friendship. The kids at Caratini Stadium that day witnessed it first-hand, and they’ll carry that experience wherever the game takes them. “It’s definitely motivation for these kids,” Nick Ortiz said. “They see how much these guys are having fun and they ask about who’s out here, and you tell them, ‘This player is in the big leagues and he started just like you are right now.’ It’s great motivation for them.” Story by Michael Marcantonini
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It was last Thursday night in Coamo, Puerto Rico, and some members of the “More Than A Game” group were practicing with a local team at the Alberto Ortiz Aponte youth baseball complex. David Lopez, Kyle Lewis and John Jones were working with the infielders on ground balls and footwork, when they decided it was time to switch to another drill. “Let’s do slow rollers next. How do you say ‘slow rollers’ in Spanish?” Lopez asked Lewis. They didn’t know a direct translation for a baseball term like that. “Mas despacio,” Lewis said around the infield--meaning ‘slower’ or ‘more slowly’ in English--while making a forward underhand motion with his right hand to get the point of the slow rollers across. The team featured some bilingual coaches and players that could translate to the players who only spoke Spanish, so the situation wasn’t a problem for the MTAG guys. But that minor inconvenience in switching the drill highlighted an inevitable encounter with the language barrier. A significant amount of Puerto Rico natives speak at least a little bit of English and many are fluent given that the island is a United States territory, but Spanish is still the predominant language, proving that the flow of communication wouldn’t always be easy. If you ask the MTAG crew what the biggest non-physical challenge of the week was, the most common answer would be trying to speak Spanish. “I never really used the language,” said Lopez, who is of Mexican descent but from Tucson, Arizona. “I’ve heard it at my grandparents’ house and family visits and things like that, but I’ve never really had to use it. It almost felt like public speaking again, you know, when you’re in middle school and high school.” It was Lopez’ first time on a service trip like this, and he wasn’t alone. Jared Oliva was making his first MTAG trip as well and was another member of the group who had to dip into his limited Spanish vocabulary. “(There was) definitely the culture shock, being around a language that I’m not really comfortable with and trying to be able to communicate with kids, people at a restaurant, whoever it might be. That’s been the biggest thing,” Oliva said. Both Lopez and Oliva found ways around the Spanish-English barrier, even if it meant making an extra effort to work through an interaction. “That’s definitely (getting out of) the comfort zone, having to try to communicate in my second language,” Lopez said. “But it was good, it’s been fun.” Just being with the kids, being able to talk to them, the parts of Spanish that I do know, it’s kind of cool to see what they do and kind of pick their brains a little bit, and they do the same with me, just talking baseball, so it’s fun,” Oliva added. Xavier Borde felt the effects of the language barrier during the MTAG youth baseball clinic at the Pedro Miguel Caratini stadium at the end of the week. But like the rest of the MTAG team, he powered through the setback. “I was instructing the group on some outfield things and I don’t speak much Spanish, but one of the kids was doing the drill very well and another kid wasn’t, so it was getting hard for me to explain how to do it properly. So the kid that was doing it well, I had him instruct the kid that didn’t really understand, and I let them work on it together,” Borde said following the clinic.
For one MTAG member, language wasn’t a barrier; it was a path to a unique relationship with the kids in Coamo. Rio Gomez, who is Cuban and Colombian, is a native English speaker but grew up learning Spanish as well. He was the only member of the MTAG group who could rely on his second language more than his first during the week. “My Spanish isn’t perfect, but it’s more than enough for me to get by on and to communicate and understand them, and have them understand me,” Gomez said. “It’s nice having that special connection with them through language.” As the week went by, one thing held true for the MTAG group, even the ones who didn’t speak any Spanish at all: They were there to make a difference through baseball, and a difference in language wasn’t going to prevent that. Baseball is baseball, everyone kind of rallies around it,” said Oliva. “It doesn’t matter what language you speak, you know, if baseball is in common you can kind of relate.” Story by Michael Marcantonini When Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico in September of 2017, the entire island felt the devastating impact. Families were torn apart, homes were destroyed, there was no power or clean water, and hope became a struggle to find. Natural disasters bring on unthinkable physical, mental and emotional effects. When they occur, people turn to something that can help them momentarily forget about all the negatives: a short-term relief from reality. For many, that outlet is sports, and for many Puerto Ricans, that sport is baseball. But what do you do when that outlet from the real world is also taken away from you? You see, baseball isn’t just baseball in Puerto Rico… It’s life. For the city of Coamo in the southern part of the island, baseball was lost. It was taken away by the hurricane that ripped through the Alberto Ortiz Aponte youth complex, a contingent of three fields that were regularly used for huge local and international tournaments before the hurricane. Safety was the biggest concern; baseball was an afterthought. Non-profit organization “More Than A Game” was ready to lend a helping hand to revitalize the complex and get those fields back up and running. With help from Coamo youth baseball leaders Jerry Santiago and Jose Martell, funding from New Balance, Turface Athletics and other outlets, and support from the Coamo community, the MTAG crew got to work. The positive impact that followed was unthinkable almost 13 months ago when the hurricane ran its course. But it didn’t come easy. The MTAG crew arrived in Coamo around 10 a.m. on Monday, October 15th, and witnessed the hurricane’s sobering effects. The storm left the infields blanketed with a layer of weeds, fences down, nets torn apart, a damaged roof, and unplayable conditions. “Those fields were a mess before we got here,” said Baltimore Orioles minor league pitcher Nick Gruener. “Day 1 I was like, ‘man, I don’t know if I can do this for another four days, this is hard work,'” said Ryan Fitzgerald, an infielder in the Boston Red Sox minor league system. No one expected it to be easy. After seeing the challenge in front of them, the MTAG guys got to work. For a project of this magnitude, thinking outside the box was a necessity. That meant digging up what seemed like an endless amount of weeds, using a rental van to pull a homemade nail drag across the infield, bringing in a backhoe to move countless bags of turface, and finding a working power-washer to clean the stands in the complex, which MTAG member Clayton Brown did wonders with. You name it, they did it, and they did it efficiently. “The challenge is stop looking around and going, ‘I need someone to tell me what to do,’ instead just making your own decisions and I think the guys picked up on that quick,” said MTAG Director of Marketing, Sawyer Gieseke. Breakthroughs often occur when a group comes together, when an entire unit works as one, when the team comes before the individual. Despite most of the group being unfamiliar with each other before the trip, everyone became a leader, and that’s why things got done. “I didn’t know any of them and I didn’t know what I was getting into," Fitzgerald said. “The people I met were just unbelievable. The people that I worked with, I don’t even know how to describe it, they’re just such high-character people and good people overall, every single one of them.” Gieseke, who led the trip to Coamo along with MTAG Founder and CEO, Marshall Murray, knew he was bringing some dependable people on the trip, but he also knew he had some wild cards. He wasn’t sure how the entire group would mesh, but that potential concern vanished pretty early in the week. “I was really impressed with the group of guys, Gieseke said. “I had so much pride in this group and every guy is really special to me, and to see them just put their head down and work hard for a week, I mean 15 guys putting 10 hours in a day can get a lot done, and we saw what we were able to accomplish.” In just four days, the MTAG team got the entire Alberto Ortiz Aponte complex up and running and all three fields in safe playing condition. The progress made in such a short amount of time was inspiring. Not only did the MTAG team get to see their progress from Day 1 through Day 4, they witnessed all of their hard work actually making a difference. Just after 6 p.m. on Thursday, October 18th, the fourth and final day of work, two youth teams from Coamo--the Mets and Orioles--suited up for the first baseball game at the complex in just over a year. It was a real game, but it almost didn’t feel real. The game’s first pitch was one of those magical moments that doesn’t sink in right away. Kids on the field. Fans in the stands. Lights on. “It’s literally like the ‘Field of Dreams’ movie, that’s what it felt like this week. All the first three days no one was here, a couple people coming to practice and today it got completed, and all of a sudden families, parents, all these teams, all these kids out here, it’s crazy, such a good feeling. I love it,” said David Lopez, former University of Arizona infielder and national champion, during the action that unfolded Thursday night in Coamo. While the first game at the complex since the hurricane took place on one of the three fields, a local 13-to-14-year-old team--the Astros--practiced on another field with MTAG members. Rio Gomez, a minor league pitcher in the Red Sox organization and University of Arizona graduate, worked with the team’s pitchers during the practice. “It was a long week. Very long week, but very rewarding at the very end. It was a lot of work Monday through Thursday logging in the hours transforming a field from nothing into something. It all paid off being able to watch all the kids be able to play and practice, the smiles and watching them enjoy themselves on a baseball field,” Gomez said. Jared Oliva, one of Gomez’ teammates at Arizona and current Pittsburgh Pirates minor league outfielder, felt the impact right away from practicing with the kids. “When we first came up here obviously there was a lot of work to be done. Now that we’re here, four days of work being put into it, the field looks really nice,” Oliva said during the practice. “It’s cool to see all the kids out here playing on it, so you can tell they definitely appreciate what we’ve done, so that’s a cool part.” Koa Marzo, who previously worked with Gieseke and Murray on an MTAG trip in his native Hawaii, was the group’s biggest leader in Puerto Rico according to Gieseke. He got straight to the point when asked about his favorite part of the week.
“Really getting my hands dirty, putting in the work to get the complex back to where the kids can have practices, games, just get the families back out there and give them hope,” Marzo said. Seeing a smile on a kid’s face is special. Being the reason for that smile is overwhelmingly special. All the dirty shoes, sweat-soaked shirts, paint-splattered shorts, sweat-drenched faces, calloused hands and tiring days served a purpose. It all became worth it when the fields were filled with kids and not weeds, the stands filled with proud families and not hurricane debris, and the parking lot filled with cars and not construction equipment. Faith was never lost, and hope was restored. Baseball is back in Coamo, and it’s there to stay. “I just hope the fields get used and they get maintained. It’s nice to have somewhere as a kid to spend time and to play and to hang out and have a place like that,” said Gomez. “Before, that field was in no condition to be that kind of place, and now, I feel like we’ve given this town of Coamo that place.” Story by Michael Marcantonini |
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