This is a heart warming story and at the same time a gut wrenching story.

Recently the McClatchy Report ran a great story:

They’ve only got a five year-old softball bat, a threadbare cap, three scuffed balls and nine second-hand gloves from a flea market. They train on a college soccer field. And there’s not a uniform among them. However, they love America’s pastime as much as Crash Davis of “Bull Durham” ever did.Meet Iraq’s national baseball team.

Striker or batter, coach Hamza Madlool, 26, formed the current team after an earlier team had to be disbanded at the height of the country’s civil unrest. Players on that club and the baseball federation president, Isma’eel Khallel, got e-mail and telephone threats from Sunni insurgents linked to al Qaida Iraq. The insurgents accused them of playing “an occupation game.”

Both coaches receive the equivalent of $106 a month. None of the players makes a dinar — an amateur status the NCAA would endorse. The real problem is equipment. One time the federation gave them a Chinese-made aluminum bat, but it bent after the first batter connected. Assistant coach Hasan scoured a book fair at Baghdad University for a baseball rulebook, but struck out.

Can you see an American MLB player training under those conditions?  They would pout and go home and pout some more.

This is a great report and I feel for them , just as I felt for the Iraqi soccer team, which has recently played its first home game in 7 years.

These athletes need so much that can be easily fixed.  Why do not those overpaid, steroid infusion MLB players donate some of their massive wealth to help the club out?  For once why not give something back to the sport that has given them EVERYTHING?

My hat goes off to these guys, they are true athletes that are doing what they are doing for the love of the sport.  And then you have the so called “athletes” in the US they spend all their time injecting ‘roids or hanging out in strip clubs or a wealth of other self-indulgent activities—you decide who are the true athletes between the two and who represents the sport of baseball better.  For me it is a no brainer…I have little use for spoiled little pricks that think I somehow owe them something because they wear a uniform.