The BYU baseball team got to experience a whole new brand of baseball playing in the unofficial baseball capital of the world, but they shined the brightest away from the diamond. In addition to winning all four of their games against instructional league teams from the Yankees, Red Sox, Rangers, and Royals, the team hit all the bases helping out with humanitarian aid.

They assembled thousands of hygiene kits, and packed up bats, gloves, shoes, helmets, baseballs and more. Senior catcher Chase Frampton said they ended up with about 40-50 bags of gear.

“We collected the equipment from different people around here, and we took that down there for different clinics and orphanages,” Frampton said.

But what made even more of an impact is the time the players spent getting to know the kids.

“That’s what they loved the most,” said Frampton. “Especially in the orphanage, they just loved just being able to have that one-on-one time.”

They also delivered school supplies and held a baseball clinic for over 200 local kids. They gave baseball equipment to 25 little league teams – whose players usually don’t have bats, gloves, or even shoes. And what was most appreciated is that the equipment delivery came with some personalized instruction.

Frampton said, “It wasn’t so much the stuff that we brought, as much as being able to spend time with them.”

The team did a lot more while they were there: they took food and hygiene kits to a village that needed them, their bus got stuck in the mud travelling between two cities, and a swarm of killer bees stopped the action when they flew right through the middle of the diamond in the Cougars’ game against the Rangers. For more pictures, video and information about the trip you can visit the BYU Baseball Facebook page or the BYU men’s baseball blog.

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Christine Assily

Latest posts by Christine Assily (Posts)

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