The Tournament!

Baseball 4 Africa 2010 has come to an end. And what an end! We brought 8 different schools together for a tournament this past Saturday. Mukaa secondary school was hospitable enough to host of the tournament and they did a fine job having two baseball fields lined and ready to play on. Jim and I were anxious to see how our hard work preparing the baseball teams would pay off.

We split the 8 teams into two pools. Jim took one and I took the other. We had each team play every other team in their pool. The games were 3 innings and usually lasted around an hour. After umpiring for 12 round robin games we had Kiong Wani leading one pool while Kilungu led the other. With daylight fading fast we decided to have those two play for the championship trophy and the two second place teams, Mukaa and Mulumini play for 3rd place. After some big hits and a couple of nice defensive plays Kiong Wani took the title for the 3rd consecutive year. There was some pretty incredible celebrating which ended in the team carrying the trophy away from the school running thru the street thru the village until we could no longer see them.

The tournament was a huge success. National media came and covered the event and Nairobi connections were made to help spread baseball in Kenya even more. The land rover was loaded down with 10 cases of bottled soda and 75 loafs of bread to feed all the boys and coaches. And in amongst the bad hops, bad throws, missed catches, and overrun bases there were moments of real, quality baseball. It was truly amazing to see.