Yesterday, October 21st, we played for three hours with a very enthusiastic and talented group of children (boys and girls) in Bangkok, Thailand. Go to my blog for a full report: http://ted.dintersmith.org/2007/10/21/baseball-in-bangkok/. It was interesting on a few fronts. First, the number of kids playing was impressive — over 120 for an "off season" practice. Second, the team has a corporate sponsor, Minebea, a Japanese-based multi-national company with a large plant in Bangkok. A number of the players and coaches are Japanese, generally with some tie to Minebea. It was great to see Japanese and Thai children playing baseball together so well, and happily.
The teams here are involved with the Little League, and have competed in feed-in tournaments against very strong teams from places like Taiwan. We saw some excellent players, and my bet is that we’ll see some excellent progress in baseball in Thailand in coming years.
