No joke. Nicaragua loves its baseball. There are regular articles in
the newspaper about American teams with players from Nicaragua. Nicaraguans,
upon discovering where I am from, will often say “Los Tigres!” or will ask me
if I like the Red Sox and/or the Yankees.
The baseball field or stadium is often used as a reference point when
giving directions. And baseball is played year-round in nearly every community,
by children and adults alike. The passion with which the community follows its
local teams rivals, or sometimes even exceeds, that which it has for the
professional departmental teams.
When you stop to think about it, baseball is a great sport for a place
like Nicaragua. The basic requirements for a game of baseball are simple: a
bat, a ball, and a relatively flat patch of land to run around on. Everything
else – the uniforms, the fancy stadium with lights and sound equipment, the food
stands – is nice, but not necessary. While a player must have some degree of
skill to be good at the game, one does not need extreme height, strength, or
athleticism. The game itself seems well-suited to Nicaraguan culture as well:
with no fixed periods of play time, a baseball game can stretch on for a whole
afternoon and into the evening.
Baseball fever is certainly upon Pearl Lagoon, and it’s hard not to get
caught up in it all. This year, Pearl Lagoon is hosting the 62nd
annual Atlantic Coast Baseball Series, an honor that is bestowed upon a
community at most once a decade. Fourteen nonprofessional teams from coastal
communities of the RAAS and RAAN (the Northern and Southern Autonomous Regions
of Nicaragua) have descended upon Pearl Lagoon (along with approximately 6,000
of their fans) for two packed weeks of games, leading up to Holy Week. There
has been a flurry of preparations in the past few months, including finishing
the construction of a new stadium (a project 10 years in the making, with many
stops and starts along the way due to mismanagement of funds), adding rooms
onto hotels, stocking up on supplies, picking up trash and cutting grass, and
buying fancy new outfits to wear when attending a game. A reggae song was even written
especially for the series this year (and can now be heard at least 30 times a
day).
We are now more than a week into the games, and I can’t believe I’m
about to say this, but…I’ve started to really enjoy baseball. Not in the way I
enjoyed baseball at home, where the focus was more on the food, drink and
company; here in Nicaragua, I actually pay attention to the GAME. I want to be
there from start to finish; I sit amongst the other fans in the uncomfortable,
dirty cement stands for hours to support the Pearl Lagoon team (which, by the
well, may very well be this year’s series winner). When people are cheering
around me, I not only know why they’re cheering, but I’m right there cheering
along with them. And when I’m too tired to make it to the stadium, I’ll listen
to the games at home with my host family on a small battery-powered radio.
I know. I’m pretty surprised too. It took moving to Nicaragua to learn
to appreciate America’s pastime.
In case you’re wondering, while popcorn (with real butter!) and peanuts
are available for purchase, there are no crackerjacks to be found. Nor are
there hot dogs, French fries, or nachos. Instead, you can snack on fried
chicken with fried plantain chips and cabbage salad, fresh mango slices with
salt and chile (a chili-infused vinegar), or quesillo (a piece of
mozzarella-like cheese, vinegar-soaked onions, and crema, all wrapped in a
fresh, warm corn tortilla). And yes, there is beer (though only Toña is
available).
Words of the week:
Beisbol – baseball
Estadio – stadium
Jugar – to play
Pichear – to pitch
Jugador - player
Fanático – fan
