Joe Cook of Cambodia

Joe Cook (holding picture) posed with his Cambodian baseball players.

The Immigrant Daily

The L.A. Times earlier this week ran a wonderful story on our Immigrant of the Day, Joe Cook, a Cambodian refugee who survived the Khmer Rouge genocide to escape to the United States. Cook has spent the last five years trying to turn the former killing fields of his homeland into fields of dreams -- by bringing baseball to Cambodia. Along the way he's lost his life savings, his car and nearly his marriage. And, Cook insists, some people in Cambodia would like to see him dead. "I want to walk away from this. I do. But these kids," he said, pointing to a photo of three shoeless children in torn clothes toting bats and gloves through a rice paddy, "baseball brings smiles to their faces."

A restaurant worker in Alabama, Cook, with some help from among others Major League Baseball, has brought youth baseball leagues to Cambodia. In December, thanks to Cook, Cambodia fielded a national baseball team for the first time in the Southeast Asian Games in Thailand.

Cook, whose legal name is Joeurt Puk (he began using Cook after taking his first restaurant job), said he spent nearly half his childhood in Cambodia living off tree bark, insects and grass in labor camps run by the Khmer Rouge. Along the way he lost his father and two sisters, was nearly killed when a booby trap exploded next to him, then survived an artillery barrage that pounded the road he and hundreds of others were following on their escape to a Red Cross camp across the border in Thailand.