By Joe Hudak
Winthrop Baseball Coach
As I sit and look out the window of our plane as we fly from Santo Domingo to Miami, I marvel at the beauty of the Lord’s creation. The scattered puffy white clouds above the beautiful blue water make a breathtaking scene. That seemed very fitting because we just had an amazing five days. Our historic trip to the Dominican Republic was tremendous in every way.
If you have been following our trip, you have already read the details about the three wins. I will not go into detail about those games. Overall, we played very well. From a coaching standpoint, it was a tremendous evaluation tool. We had a chance to see our players, especially the new guys, perform in game situations. It is one thing to do well in an intrasquad game. It is quite another to play well against somebody in another uniform. As usual, there were several players whose stock rose significantly, while some others went the other way. These performances will go a long way in determining who will be in our starting lineup on February 2 at UCLA.
As great as the trip was on the field, it was so much greater off of it. Our players were exposed to a whole other way of life. We have it so well here in the United States, and we are so spoiled in so many ways. Many of our players talked to me about how poor the people were, yet how happy they were. Here in America, so many have so much, yet are so unhappy.
There were many great experiences packed into these five days, but three stand out in my mind. The first was our visit to Hogar del Nino. Our players were in awe at this school for 1500 underprivileged children. It was our hope to be able to visit them, and possibly teach them something. As it turned out, we were the students being taught by the children. When it came time to leave, we had to almost drag our players to the bus. They didn’t want to go. Those children taught our players some of the games they play. Their smiles and their love taught us so much more.
The second was the clinic that we put on for the youth of La Romana. We had told them that we could probably handle about 150 kids in the limited space that was available. When we walked into the field, we were greeted by over 400! What an unbelievable sight to see our 33 players teaching over 400 kids the great game of baseball. Coach McGuire did a great job of organizing it. Once again, the smiles on those kids’ faces told us how much they appreciated our players.
The third, and final, experience that stands out was the game we played Saturday morning. In spite of playing a day-night doubleheader the day before, being on the go from 8:00AM until midnight, getting to bed at 1:00AM and getting up at 7:00AM, we had another tremendous day. We had played the first two games on relatively good fields, even by our standards. Saturday morning, we played a game on a field out in the sugar cane villages, called “bateys”. We played in the batey of Higueral. The field we played on was the best of all the fields in the bateys. However, it was terrible by our standards. The mound and the plate were horrible. The “dirt” portion of the infield was filled with grass and rocks. We did have one luxury. Instead of the customary pieces of paper being used for bases, we actually had some throw down bases. Just behind our dugout, if you could call it a dugout, was a small ramshackle house with little kids and a lot of chickens running around. This was Dominican baseball in its purest form. This was a field on which some of the Dominican greats like Sammy Sosa, Pedro Martinez, and David Ortiz played. It was easy to see why all of the Dominican shortstops that play in the big leagues have such good hands. They rarely got a true hop playing on those fields. Once again, it was very hard for our kids to leave. They had befriended many of the players on the other team. There were a lot of pictures and hugs taking place. I felt like the ultimate bad guy making our players get on the bus.
This was truly a “trip of a lifetime” for the Winthrop baseball family. My hope is that it will be a life-changing trip for all our players, as well as for me. The next time any of us want to complain about trivial things in life, I pray that we will remember the lesson we learned from the wide eyes and smiling faces of our new Dominican friends – true happiness has nothing to do with what you have or how much you make, but has everything to do with who you are and what is in your heart.
Finally, I would be remiss if I did not take the time to say thank you to two very special people. I will get a lot of credit for this trip, and I deserve none of it. The first is Dr. Bobby McBride. The idea for this trip originated in his heart. It was his dream, and would not have happened without him. The second is his son, Greg McBride. He served as our unofficial “tour director”. His tireless work planning the trip and handling all the details once we got there made this trip possible. All of us who made this trip will be forever indebted to both of them. From the bottom of our collective hearts, we say “Thank You”.
