VIETNAM: Vietnam-born Major League Baseball star hopes to make the sport popular in his homeland.

Record ID: 692987

  • Title: VIETNAM: Vietnam-born Major League Baseball star hopes to make the sport popular in his homeland.
  • Date: 30th January 2006
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (English) DANNY GRAVES, A CLEVELAND INDIANS' BASEBALL STAR, SAYING: "Not at all. I feel I belong here. I feel like we just were here last year, you know. It doesn't feel like 31 years since I've been here. I feel there's a place for me here. I feel fond of these kids, too. Baseball is not very close to them. These kids are good athletes, all Asians are good ath
  • Embargoed: 14th February 2006 12:00
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  • Topics: Lifestyle,Sports
  • Reuters ID: LVAB4CESMECTNV7MYMMUW0H6HVMF
  • Story Text: For the first time in 31 years, Cleveland Indians pitcher Danny Graves and his mother have returned to Vietnam.
    Walking through rice fields and villages of one of the country's poorest provinces, Quang Tri, Graves got a chance to get acquainted with his homeland as a 20-member baseball delegation travelled the country in an attempt to turn former battlefields into baseball pitches.
    Graves was born in Saigon to a Vietnamese mother and American serviceman father during the Vietnam War. The Graves family moved to the United States shortly before the fall of Saigon, when Danny was 14 months old.
    Quang Tri province, one of the bloodiest battlefields during the Vietnam war, is still suffering the legacy of war with unexploded ordinance or "UXO", still hidden in the jungles and countryside.
    The delegation watched demining activities which continue in the Hai Land district of the province, which is believed to have the largest number of unexploded ordinance in Vietnam. Between 1975 to end of 2005, 2,591 people were killed and 4,355 injured by landmines and UXO.
    The latest victim, Nguyen Xuan Thuy, a 23-year-old man, was killed on January 5, 2006. His father lost his leg when he stepped on a landmine while searching for scrap metal in 1981.
    At the Le Loi High School baseball field in Dong Ha, a location just south of the former demilitarized zone, Graves established Vietnam's first baseball field.
    The dirt and sand that covered field was converted from an old soccer pitch using $40,000 donated by the U.S. Major League Baseball and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. And now, the Vietnam Veterans group is sponsoring a project called "Renew", which will help clear landmines in the area and assist victims to improve their lives.
    Graves, who grew up like many American boys tossing a baseball around with his father and friends, eventually became Major League Baseball's only Vietnam-born player.
    And at the new baseball field he coached a group of some 100 select, uniform-clad teenagers from the in the basics of baseball.
    When asked if he felt awkward to be in Vietnam, he said, "no, not at all. I feel I belong here. I feel like we just here last year, you know. It doesn't feel like 31 years since I've been here. I feel there's a place for me here."
    "I feel fond of these kids, too. Baseball is not very close to them. These kids are good athletes, all Asians are good athletes, I always to believe that they are very quick learners, very teachable," he added.
    Vietnam's most popular sport is soccer. Although baseball is played in many countries, it is virtually unknown in Vietnam.
    But Danny and his baseball team want to help train up a Vietnamese team and plan to come back in November for another, longer, practice session.
    He hopes baseball will eventually take root in Vietnam as it has in other Asian countries. His dream is that someday a Vietnamese baseball team will be able to compete with Japanese or Korean teams.
    "When I leave next week I don't want these kids to forget baseball. Just because I'm here now, it's all great and everything looks fine. When I leave and don't come back until November, I want these kids to keep practising. That's what baseball is here for, for them to practise and play and to get better. But they don't won't get better if they don't practice and play and then we can't compete with Japan and Korea," Graves said.
    Graves' mother, Thao, who was also making her first trip back to her native country since she left, said she was excited about what her son was doing.
    "I'm very proud of him. I'm very happy to see everybody so exciting want to learn from him. I'm very proud, it's the pride of a mother," she said.
    Before coming to Quang Tri to innaugurate the baseball field, the delegation showcased a game at the National University for Sports and Physical Culture in Bac Ninh province, about 20 kilometers from Hanoi.
    The University has a 20-member baseball team. Training is underway with hopes that someday the team could represent Vietnam at the South East Asian Games.
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