International Pastime: One Man's Hope for Baseball in Cambodia

Joe Cook watches as a player is about to throw a ball.

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  International Pastime looks at baseball's influence outside the U.S.Kevin Baxter of the L.A. Times pens a tremendous piece for the paper today about one man's rather obsessive quest to bring baseball to his homeland of Cambodia. Joe Cook (legal name: Joeurt Puk ), a Cambodian refugee of the Khmer Rouge genocide, now lives in Alabama. Among the thing things we learn about the man: he's the grandfather of the sport in his homeland, pouring $300,000 into baseball there. A good chunk of that is from his own pocket. This has left him poor and in bad graces with his wife. He's $41,500 in debt. His car was repossessed; his gas and electricity has been shut off.At first glance, this all seems somewhat crazy. After all, trying to bring baseball in a stable form to his country has basically left Cook's life in shambles. But then again, few of us have ever come from this:
  Arriving in Chattanooga as a 12-year-old, he was introduced to a number of marvelous things he had never seen before, such as a flush toilet, television, radio, the mirror.

And baseball.

"Seeing kids running around without having to worry about booby traps or gunshots, explosions. America was like heaven," Cook said. "I didn't know how to grip the ball. I didn't know nothing. But baseball at that time, it was fun."

I finally found myself happy in America for the first time."Cook might be crazy, but he also is bringing the game he loves to a place he sees as starved for fun. One should not fault him for this.