Diamond Diplomacy: Baseball as a foundation for understanding
By Josue Lopez-Calderon and Cesar De La Vega
It was usually the unofficial summer kick-off weekend in Southern California in the early 2000s. School hadn’t let out yet but the summer buzz was palpable. I was an adolescent at the time and playing in the Irvine, Calif., PONY Memorial Day Tournament, an event that brought together teams from California and Mexico.
After one of our games, my father and I brought over some water bottles and sandwiches to share with players wearing Mexico jerseys. We shared a meal together and learned about the teams and coaches that traveled from Mexico each Memorial Day to play in the tournament. It was the genesis of a relationship that persists today and is at the core of what we do through The Baseball Foundation. Though we’ve matured to doing more than break bread, the seed was planted that day.
Baseball ‘had always been more than just a sport to me. My father used baseball to teach me life lessons and keep me away from the drugs that permeated my neighborhood in Santa Ana, Calif. Those lessons stuck with me: “You can only control two things in life: your attitude and your effort,” he would say. “Life is 10 percent what happens to you and 90 percent how you respond.”
He used baseball as a tool for my development partly because he wanted a better life for me. In his youth, my father developed a substance use disorder and he did not want to see me go down the same path. He bounced back from it and found himself in a much better space for many years. Unfortunately, in 2013, he was injured at work. He subsequently suffered a relapse. Then an adult, I relied on this 10-90 baseball lesson during a difficult time for my family. I decided I needed to take action in order to help international youth who grow up in similar environments to my father’s in Mexico. I sought to help them access the educational opportunities I had thanks to baseball, and encourage them down a path of health and well-being.
My path to higher education was shaped by baseball beyond those life lessons my father passed down to me through the game. In high school I was afforded the opportunity to represent a Mexican baseball team in Japan and Brazil. Not only did these opportunities allow me stand out among my peer group when I applied to college, but I also realized that my behavior and interactions with locals offered an impression of my country and my heritage. I also realized baseball was no longer just an American sport but an emerging global game, and that United States products and culture were really popular abroad.
A year later, with these ideas marinating in my mind, I reconnected with a good friend from college, Cesar De La Vega, who shared a passion for baseball, the desire to affect change, an interest in philanthropy. He also brought a unique health equity and justice lens to our budding idea. Over the course of several conversations, we decided to make our vision a reality. We haven’t looked back since.
I am confident that had my father been given similar developmental opportunities through baseball, he could have avoided his substance use issues and pursued higher education. Through The Baseball Foundation, we hope to provide youth with collaboration across borders, a greater awareness and appreciation of different cultures, and an understanding of pathways to higher education through baseball.
The Baseball Foundation believes everyone should have a fair and just opportunity to lead a healthy life. This requires removing obstacles to health such as lack of access to a quality education, safe places to play and engage in physical activity, and well-resourced neighborhoods.
It also means promoting educational attainment, which is linked to improved health outcomes over a lifetime. Steps must be taken to increase access for all to the resources and opportunities that allow people to make healthy choices. The Baseball Foundation makes college baseball a viable alternative to leaving school early in an attempt to reach the majors. We expose youth from visiting countries to Major League Baseball players who played in college to speak of the benefits of pursuing a higher education that go beyond the diamond.
We also are working to facilitate dialogue and exchanges between U.S. embassies through baseball tournaments among diplomatic officials of baseball-playing countries. These are just a couple of the ideas we’re developing for a rollout over the next couple of years. We welcome you to visit our website to learn more about our previous and upcoming events.
Today’s geopolitical climate, now more than ever, calls for more opportunities to foster meaningful, beneficial exchanges and partnerships in order to tackle some of our biggest global challenges and shape the future of our interconnected world. Our focus on youth reflects our belief that their generation is paving the way for a peace-building movement and a brighter future grounded in an ethic of appreciating differences and bonding over a shared love of the game.
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