Beisbol

As I was telling my class what their homework would be for the night, the head of the Parent's Association gave me papers to be sent home to the parents. I quickly scanned the papers to see what was so important that they hand-delivered these messages to me before the school day ended. The bold letters at the bottom of the page caught my eye: Classes Canceled Tomorrow. There were to be strikes near the school so the school was closing for safety reasons. Those welcome words gave me an immediate boost in my step. I happily sent the children on their way and sat through an hour long meeting knowing that I had a long weekend ahead of me.

The bus dropping people off was filled with a buzz that is lacking on most afternoons. People all spoke of their weekend plans. Everyone kept mentioning a baseball game that was going on that evening. It was part of a Mini World Series for teams of boys 13-15 years old and there were several students from our school playing on the national team. Caught up with the excitement of no school for the next day, we agreed to go to this game.

We arrived at the stadium thinking we might be a little late but discovered that they weren't even close to being ready to play. The first thing that we noticed was the section of the Dominican "pep band". It looked more like a group of angry villagers each carrying their makeshift instrument. One instrument looked almost like a mailbox with no post, another looked like a water pitcher, and the main instrument looked like a metal pipe that flared out at the end. Surprisingly out of this strange collection of fans and instruments, came a catchy tune. They played the same 8 second segment non-stop throughout the night but somehow it never got old to hear them play with such enthusiasm. Thursday night happened to be the opening ceremony of this event. There were teams from Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Panama, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic. Finally, the Catholic priest gave his prayer and led the stadium in signing the cross and the beisbol could begin. Carried by the pep band and the home field advantage the Dominican team stormed out to an early 3-0 lead. The Mexican team took advantage of several errors to cut the lead to 1. We left with the Dominican team up 4-2. For one night, we could forget about all the stresses of lesson planning and grading papers and enjoy the environment around us.