Los osos de malas noticias *

For this story, you need to know a few things. First off, Jimbo, my notoriously hairy buddy often featured in my blog and fellow peace corps volunteer ≠ Kimbo, the equally notorious streetfighter who probably could grow a beard just by thinking about it. Maybe to avoid any confusion, I’ll start using nicknames.

So Ridiculously Hairy Jimbo lives an utterly horrible life in a picturesque town on the gentle slopes of a volcano, full of beautiful people who couldn’t be more open and nice. That's right, Absurdly Hairy Jimbo’s site is literally on the side of a 7,000 ft volcano. Horrible.

Because of this, or maybe because of the abject poverty, who knows, the kids up there have never played baseball before and have never used mitts, baseballs, or any sort of equipment. Cue Gabe with his giant hockey bag full of bats and gloves courtesy of my man Mark Erlandson. Thanks again, Mark!

To get the kids out and excited for physical activity that doesn't involve hauling 100 lb sacks of fertilizer, Surprisingly Hairy Jimbo invited me to come up and help run a day-long baseball camp for his community's kids. Nothing too complicated, just a few workshops teaching the fundamentals.

I jumped at the chance, convinced there would be a reward in my future for my selfless, humanitarian acts (read: cold beer). And I guess the whole helping salvadoran youth and checking out Suspiciously Hairy Jimbo’s community thing kinda influenced me too.

Jimbo did some great promo work beforehand, including using the nearby church's voice of god PA system (I gotta get one of those) to command kids to attend our camp, as if god himself were a baseball fan. In the end, over 30 bichos came, albeit an hour late. We rotated them through stations, taught them how to spit and grab their crotch, and got a few of them to at least admit beisbol was kind of a cool sport. But nowhere as cool as futbol.

Here are a few pics from the weekend.

Infield drills. More than a few kids took a couple hard grounders to the face. Como se dice "walk it off, kid"



Wendell giving some batting tips. Get that elbow up, punk!



Aw, look at that kid kinda sorta backing up his friend, just like I taught him



We ended the afternoon with a little homerun derby competition. How'd they do? Um, well, there's always tee ball...



Stylishly Hairy Jimbo, handing out the bribes, I mean snacks



Davebo showing em how it's done



Happy future MLB'ers



Improbably Hairy Jimbo and Wendell enjoying a bromantic moment together



A few excerpts from our 9 hour (I wish I were joking) game of cribbage, following the camp







All in all, an awesome time giving a little taste of the old US of A to El Salvador's youth. And if anyone has any football equipment, send it on down!

* Title translation: The Bad News Bears. Please tell me you've seen it.