The St. Louis Cardinals dugout had some extra visitors before Saturday’s game as a team of 13-year old Dominican baseball players were welcomed to the field.
“We’ve been doing it for four years now, taking a group of our boys down to play in the Dominican Republic. In November, I went with our youngest one and said I’d love to bring a group back here,” explained Mike Matheny, who’s Catch-22 Foundation was able to work with Go Ministries to square away the visa and other paperwork to make the trip happen.
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“They’ve been playing and beating the tar out of some of our boys,” smiled Matheny, before adding another purpose of the trip. “They’ve been doing community projects too. They went yesterday to the Challenger Field, with the handicap-accessible field and helped out some of the handicapped kids. They’ve been doing some other service projects–not just sitting around playing Nintendo and eating McDonalds. It’s been nice.”
The group will leave tomorrow for Louisville, KY where Go Ministries is based for more service projects and baseball.
“I think it’s just an impact on our kids so much,” continued Matheny. “We go down there and I do believe it’s opening the eyes of some of the people down there that these Americans choose to come down, bring some food, and go and serve, and do some projects. More than anything else, what were recipients of is seeing these kids put in a spot to really force them to see life and grow up a little bit, to realize how good we do have it here in the States and in our own individual communities. Just seen some radical transformations, just talking to parents about how their kids come back and say it’s been the greatest thing that they’ve ever been a part of.”
U.S. OPEN TROPHY
–The U.S. Open Golf Championship won’t be played until next week at Chambers Bay near Tacoma, Washington which is allowing the trophy to make a cross-country tour to the event.
As part of the USGA’s Open for All program, the trophy tour began April 29th in New York City and has been making promotional stops along the way to the Northwest for the tournament on June 14th.
The U.S. Open was last played in St. Louis at Bellerive Country Club in 1965. Gary Player defeated Kel Nagle in an 18-hole playoff to win the championship.
