October 2011
1 post
The game will be played...
It’s time to fill you in. Since my last posting, the world became aware of baseball in Uganda. Unfortunately, much of this awareness came at the expense of heartbreak for 12 talented young players in Uganda who got caught up in a bureaucratic mess. They were front page news in a Sunday New York Times, and ESPN’s Sportscenter came calling and asked us to put a 5 minute feature...
August 2011
1 post
Then this happened…
I don’t know how to start this post. I’ve already had several false starts and deleted introductions, some were bad jokes, some were heavy handed intellectual musing, some were just jumping right in with a daily shooting log. Then there was this one, an ineffective, self-reflexive “welcome to my account of some of the strangest couple of weeks I’ve ever had.”...
July 2011
1 post
imagine that
So, I finished the last post with “I can’t wait to see what happens next”. Well, something happened.
On Saturday July 16th the 2011 Uganda under 12 team won the MEA Regional, beating Saudi 6-4 in the final, and became the first African team to qualify for the Little League World Series in its 65 year history… and my world has been spinning ever since.
I don’t need...
August 2010
1 post
touching home
This is the very first frame that we shot for this project. It’s women moving dirt around at Richard’s complex in Nikirebe to fill in a patch in shallow center field that needed to be worked over. A lot has happened since this shot…
I’ve tried to write these blog updates fairly plainly. I report the facts, through my own lens which I, of course, can not escape. But...
July 2010
3 posts
about kutno
I’m at the Warsaw Airport. I’m set to leave Poland in about 8 hours to head to Italy and wait for Benard to arrive in Pisa for the MLB Academy. I don’t know how to talk about what happened here. It was something heartbreaking. It was something crushing. It was something beautiful. It was something terrible. It was something inspiring. It was something predictable. It was...
safe
I have to start with the events of a few nights ago. First off, I and everyone in our film is safe. I and a few others were very close to the first bomb but were never really in any danger and didn’t even know what really happened until the next morning. Thank you to everyone who expressed concern for us, it means a lot.
I debated even mentioning this event at all but based on the media...
tick tock
This one is slighlty overdue as I’ve been busy trying to cram in some stuff to film before flying. There was more than this that happened but I’ll have to roll some over into the next entry. This last stretch has been a mixed bag of filming so I’ll hit a few of the major points.
First, was a quick trip up to Soroti with Benard so he could tell is Mom the good news about...
June 2010
1 post
meet the survivors again...
The last couple weeks the annual national baseball tournaments have been held at Richard’s Complex. These are the same tournaments that were being held when we first flew over here to start filming just over a year ago. The only age group that is important to our story at this point is the Under 12’s and the Survivors team that entered play as the obvious favorite.
A concern moving...
May 2010
4 posts
some big news and other cool things...
This last week of filming had a lot going on. So, the flow of this post might be rather jumpy… but it’s good stuff and at least the pictures are pretty… and you’ll want to read to the end for some cool news.
This is Aaron. I’ve mentioned him several times before and over the last year of filming his character and story are becoming more and more prominent. I met...
all about benard
So, I write these entries assuming that anyone who reads them knows/remembers little to no backstory of the characters and story lines I touch on. Often times, I like the reminder and clarification as well. As this blog gets longer and denser in its entirety I feel that is the best way to go. So after spending the last 3 days shooting with him, I will “re”introduce Benard Adai.
I...
Here we go ______ here we go!
This week and weekend the focus was on the under 12 team which has given themselves a name and an identity. They plan on traveling to the baseball complex in Mpigi just about every weekend from now until their big tournament in Poland in late July to get their games as sharp as they can. But during the week I had a few days so I started with an interview with Eric to get even more on the...
and back again...
Trivia: How many baseball games have been delayed by volcano? Answer: I have no idea, but I know one baseball documentary that was.
I got back on the ground a couple weeks later than expected but I’m here now. After spending 2 months in new york dealing with the footage and business end of things, i’m excited to get back into the living story. Oh, and of course my luggage also...
February 2010
2 posts
week second to last: leading off third
This will probably be my last day-by-day recap of this leg of filming. I’ll give a wrap up post at the end of next week before I head back to the states for a month (where i’ll continue to update this weekly with the new videos that we’ll be putting up on the newly designed site and all the other news that comes up.)
First off, no final answer yet on the tournament from Little...
weeks a lot: turning two
I last left off in the middle of the MLB Envoy Program so let me wrap that up first. The 2 week training/coaching/inspecting/etc clinics finished up at the end of January and ended on a nice note. The younger players (under 12’s) impressed Tom and Pat just about every day from what I could tell. They each remarked that you could drop nearly all of these kids into any team playing well in...
January 2010
3 posts
Week 7 or whatever: MLB Envoy Program Part 1
I’ve decided that a day by day recap of the Envoy program isn’t the way to go here. As I thought it might be, it is a bit repetitive. So, lots of pretty pictures and some written highlights is how I’m going to handle this. Full disclosure, I’m getting a bit stir crazy out here in the middle of nowhere during the clinic and am eager to get back into the city and around...
week 6: quick turn
010810 - A league game. This was the first game since the nysambia exhibition on the 19th so it had been a while with the holiday break. Kyambogo showed the rust and lost both of their games for the first time since I’ve come here. The fighters looked very sharp on the field. Paul played his best all around game I’ve seen. He started for the fighters and threw 5 strong innings...
week 5 - rounding the decade
I should probably stop naming these by week as I don’t exactly update them weekly. I’m pretty close but close. anyway. I’ll start using bad baseball puns instead. They are ample (see I already started).
123009 - Richard Stanley arrived on this day. He walked through the door at the guesthouse at 3:00pm and by 3:01pm he was leading a meeting with the builders, business...
December 2009
3 posts
week 4
This christmas week was certainly slower than previous filming with most of my stories going into relax mode with the holidays. The teams take a break from training baseball until the new year so most of the days focus on interviews and more “character building” stuff. Overall, I’m somewhat surprised by the laid back attitude for christmas around here. I like it though.
...
weeks 2 and 3
121009 - This day I spend with a talented player I’ve mentioned before named Paul. He is 16 and built for baseball. I had never really had a chance to sit down with him so I started from scratch. He started playing when he was 12 at Sharing and took to the game immediately. He showed me two small baseball books he had, one was called Mac Attack and the other was Sluggin’ Sammy. ...
week 1
You’ll forgive the length of this entry. You’ll also forgive my non addressing of my “living conditions”, “what i’m eating”, or answers to questions that you might find in a “travel log”. I’m more interested in writing down my thoughts and ideas about the things I am seeing and encountering in the story I am trying to tell and beyond. ...
November 2009
2 posts
i hate to wake you up to say goodbye
but i’m leaving tomorrow. they’ll be two jet planes and plenty of hours before i touch the ground.