Kong Yen rubbed the dirt off his nose with his thumb and put the edge of his glove right under his eyes, staring directly into the meatiest part of the catcher’s mitt waiting more than 18 meters away.
A row of children perched themselves against a nearby fence watching intently as Yen picked up his right leg high, wound up his arm and fired his pitch.
A tall Malaysian batter waiting at the other end didn’t flinch and crushed the ball with the thickest part of his bat before sprinting to first base.
Yen scooped up a new ball from the catcher, firmly adjusted his cap and waited as the next batter readied himself.
In most Major League Baseball (MLB) stadiums during a regular season night, a base hit would elicit boos from the home crowd, maybe even a thrown cup or two, depending on the pitcher.
But on this field, in this province, in this country, there were only cheers and whoops. That the game was being played at all, much less on a mint green field in the middle of Kampong Thom province, was cause for celebration.
The Kingdom has hosted Thailand’s national baseball team before, but this event – with the Malaysian National Baseball team and a university team from Hanoi in attendance – was billed as the first international baseball tournament held in Cambodia.
While the tournament was the main focus of the event, there was a larger effort to show how legitimized the sport has, and can, become in Cambodia. Thanks to the solid foundation set up by Joe Cook, the Cambodian-American who brought baseball to Cambodia in 2002, there are Cambodians – like Yen – with serious baseball talent.
The problems that players like Yen face are organizational. The team succeeded in getting together and entering the 2007 SEA Games in Thailand only to suffer a series of brutal defeats.
Most players on the team had no experience against outside competition and, more importantly, there were pitches they had never seen before because none of the pitchers in Cambodia were good enough to throw them yet, particularly the breaking ball – an especially deadly pitch.
In total, their opponents scored 113 runs to their 13.
The embarrassing losses, coupled with a 2009 bombshell article from ESPN detailing Cook’s mismanagement of the national baseball team’s funds, left the team in disarray.
A member of the national baseball team dusts himself off after sliding home. (Photo: Jonathan Greig)
Nhem Thavy, the CPP parliamentarian for Kampong Thom province, managed to pick up the pieces, eventually building his own regulation baseball field next to his resort on Bronze Lake and taking the reins as president of the Cambodia Baseball Federation in 2010.
Thavy can trace his love of baseball back to two traditional Khmer games he remembers playing as a kid – “Swar Dandoeum Tee” and “He-ing” – that when combined bear an eerie resemblance to America’s national pastime.
“But I remember when we first went to the ministry [of education, youth and sport] and they looked at us and said, ‘Baseball? What is that?’” he said.
Since Prime Minister Hun Sen took a renewed interest in the country’s sporting achievements, the government has tried to be more proactive in supporting a variety of grassroots efforts to teach sports like baseball.
Thavy says the federation was asked by the government to teach physical education (PE) classes using baseball in four high schools and two primary schools in Phnom Penh. In addition to the schools in the capital, schools near the field in Kampong Thom province get regular visits from national baseball team members, who teach techniques and basic ball skills to younger students.
The goal, Thavy says, is to start from the bottom by teaching kids the game at a young age and expanding it to cities and provinces across the country. Schools in Battambang and Siem Reap provinces have already expressed interest in starting their own regional teams and receiving training from national team members.
Catcher Kan Sokhon waits for the pitch. (Photo: Jonathan Greig)
All of these efforts are in anticipation of the 32nd SEA Games, which will be hosted by Cambodia in 2023. Thavy is hoping to have a full-fledged team ready to compete by then, and few people are more instrumental to this effort than Tony Nishimura, vice-president of the federation and head coach of the national team.
Nishimura was hired in 2011 to handle the baseball end of the operation while Thavy dealt with the funding, and he has eagerly latched on to their idea of starting the sport early with primary school students.
“[Previously], they just tried to pull out a military guy, a soccer guy, whoever had the best physicals. Put them in a dormitory, hire a Japanese or Korean coach to teach them for like six months or a year. Like they are instant noodles,” Nishimura said.
“We want to do this completely different. We want to make this country famous for baseball. That’s why we’re starting from the elementary, primary and high school level. If we can build that infrastructure, then every year we can have tryouts and selections.”
Despite his belief that the process will be slow and may take years, the PE courses are already paying dividends.
“We started PE classes eight months ago at Boeung Trabek Primary/High School,” Nishimura said.
“They are playing real baseball now. They know the rules, they know how to play it. They are quick learners, and rumors are spreading to other schools who now want baseball for their PE classes.”
Ultimately, Nishimura wants to create an under-15 team, an under-18 team and a fully-manned national team. He also said he was considering a women’s team.
The baseball federation is now faced with a good problem: there are too many schools and groups who want to play baseball and not enough coaches, volunteers, equipment or fields where they can play.
Thavy said most of the national team players either run PE classes or teach baseball after school twice a week and on Sundays they hold open practices for anyone who wants to join. To deal with the lack of volunteer coaches, Thavy has looked outward to the MLB and other professional leagues around the world for help.
Baseball coaches have been coming to Cambodia to teach players the game since 2002 and Todd Bess, a well-traveled baseball aficionado, is helping Thavy ramp up the federation’s efforts to attract foreign coaches, equipment and expertise on how to build upward.
“Every time I’m on an airplane in the US, I can look down and see 20 baseball fields in a major city. In Cambodia, you can count the number of fields on one hand. Anything big starts small,” he said.
“The biggest thing behind what we’re doing here with baseball is with schools at the center of it. Any sport only lasts for a short time, but the education that people can acquire, that can never leave.”
Thavy is already making plans to take the sport to between 15 and 20 schools in Phnom Penh by 2017, as well as to create two teams in Preah Vihear – one in Poipet and another in Battambang. Building baseball fields in Phnom Penh seemed impossible, he said, so his hope is that soccer fields can be partially converted into baseball diamonds if there was enough demand.
The baseball federation was officially recognized by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport as well as the National Olympic Committee of Cambodia earlier this year and an NGO is now working on translating an official book of baseball rules into Khmer, which would allow the federation to certify baseball coaches and teachers.
The sport will be added to the national budget next year and will receive some government funding, according to Thavy.
But baseball in Cambodia is expensive. All the equipment has to be imported – usually through large donations from professional teams in Japan and the US – and once it gets here, it can be costly to transport the gear to schools that need it.
Just the cost of renting or buying land for baseball fields is prohibitive for many schools. The 70-year-old federation president said he is looking into attracting corporate sponsors, but is holding out hope for more participation from the Cambodian-American community, both financially and with baseball.
Those most affected by the baseball cash shortage, however, are the current members of the national baseball team. Many of the players spoke of walking a tightrope between staying involved in an activity they love and providing for their families in the most real
sense.
The federation gives them housing – next to the baseball field in Kampong Thom – and provides them with a stipend. But Kan Sokhon, the 29-year-old catcher, and pitcher Yen said it was not enough to support their families.
Both men are fathers of young children and work as farmers throughout the week, shuffling between their fieldwork and their baseball PE classes at the local elementary school.
Many of the current national team players will be too old for the squad participating in the 2023 SEA Games and some have decided to hone their skills for the next generation.
“I have been playing for 12 years and I picked up playing the infield quickly. Now they are starting younger. They already throw like we do,” Sokhon said.
Yen, a lanky 24-year-old from Preah Vihear province, said he was immediately tossed on to the pitcher’s mound when the coach saw how fast he could throw four years ago, but yearned for more instruction now that he is progressing.
“I really want to learn more, but our living situation is hard because we get some money from the federation but we have to keep our side business as farmers,” he said.
“I dream of being a pitching coach. I want the federation to teach me how to play and coach so I can do this.”
Back on the mound, Yen fixed his hat, eyeing the new batter stepping to the plate. He wound up and fired off a pitch that was just a bit too high above the plate.
As the Cambodian announcer, in his best American accent, yelled, “BALL,” Yen brushed off the dirt staining the blue “Cambodia” stitching on his jersey and prepped for the next pitch.
Additional reporting by Ven Rathavong