Pat Kelly and Hal Young Assemble Honduran Goodwill Tour to Instruct Kids and Deliver Much-Needed Baseball Equipment
Submitted by Pat Kelly, Sacramento MSBL Â
First and foremost, I want to give a shout-out to Hal Young and his late wife, Denise, who are responsible for developing the Worldwide Child Relief Foundation. They developed the Community Center in La Calle Real, where they teach English, computer skills, cooking, health education, special needs, and business development.
Some of our proceeds from the trip go to help maintain and support the Community Center. Â Hal makes numerous trips per year to Nicaragua and is responsible for organizing our annual Goodwill Tour.
Our first clinic was about four hours away from the airport, up in a little town called Somoto. They had the mayor come out and welcome us, and said how appreciative they were for us to make the effort to come up there.
Our second clinic was in a stadium in Esteli, where they just finished the winter league playoffs with Leon. Â These kids were probably the most skilled out of all the places we went. We were honored to have Pedro Ramos, who played for the Yankees and the Senators, come out and watch our clinics. Pedro is 90, and it was fun to have him around at our clinics.
Our third clinic was in Telica, where they had a parade for us and took us through the town playing music, and many people came out to welcome us on our way to the baseball field.
The highlight of our trip was to spend a day with Dusty Baker and his staff at Roberto Clemente Stadium in Managua. Dusty was the coach for the Nicaragua team, who were going to play in the WBC.
We traveled out to Ometepe Island for our final clinic. The kids out there do not get off the Island. It is located between two volcanoes on Lake Nicaragua. The principal of the school was responsible for getting the 34 kids there for our clinic.
We took over 800 pounds of used, donated baseball gear down there, which we give away to the kids after our clinics. If the kids were not so respectful and appreciative, this would not have been my fifth trip on our Goodwill Baseball Tour.
