Some 20 years or so ago, in the northwestern Argentine city of San Salvador de Jujuy (pictured below), my wife and I were conversing in English when a tall young black man approached us and also addressed us in English. It was more than a little surprising at first, as the country’s Afro-Argentine population – “forgotten but not gone," in the words of one historian – came mostly from the area in and around Buenos Aires, not from this largely indigenous region.
As it happened, the individual in question was not an Argentine nor a Brazilian nor any other Latin American, but rather a US citizen who had come south to play basketball in Argentina and was feeling a bit homesick. This memory came to mind last week as I stood in line to board a flight, from Lima to Los Angeles, in which there was another tall young black man who, as it happened, would briefly occupy the aisle seat next to me in coach (I had the window, but had hoped there would be nobody alongside on a flight that was not quite full).
The young man, whose name I learned was De Angelo Kirkland, stepped out to let me take my seat and then curled up in a near fetal position to prepare for takeoff. As we waited, I asked whether he had been playing basketball in Argentina and, indeed, he had – living in the provincial capital of Paraná (pictured above), about 500 km northwest of Buenos Aires. From Pensacola, Florida, the 6-foot-8 (2.03-meter) forward had played college ball at Columbus State, in Georgia, and then moved south until very recently, when a Japanese team bought out his contract from the Argentines.
In Argentina, he drew a salary in US dollars despite the “currency clamp” that reigned in the country until very recently. He apparently spoke very little Spanish, but his coaches spoke fluent English and, to meet living expenses, he could sell dollars to teammates at the so-called “blue rate.” He thought highly of Argentine players – several Argentines, of course, have been successful in the National Basketball Association - and the local level of play. Conditions, though, were rather like minor-league baseball – basic accommodations and frequent bus trips – in an eight-month season with two or three games per week.
The Japanese opportunity came about because his cousin, who already plays in Japan, recommended him to the coach there. To get to Japan, though, he would have to take a four-hour flight from Buenos Aires to Lima, a nine-hour flight from Lima to Los Angeles and, after a brief layover, another 12-hour flight to Tokyo followed by yet another flight to Seoul where he would have to apply for a Japanese work visa.
Shortly after takeoff, LAN’s cabin crew found him additional leg room in an exit row, and I had two seats to myself for the remainder of the flight. I spoke to him again, briefly, on arrival in Los Angeles, but would have liked to have learned whether he had further professional ambitions – a Google search tells me he went undrafted by the NBA and, at age 25, his window for doing so could be relatively brief.
Baseball has always been my favorite spectator sport and, as
an adult, my main recreational sports passion has been slow-pitch softball,
though I’ve only played sporadically the past couple years. Even
in Buenos Aires, I’ve played a bit of baseball and softball, though they
are clearly niche sports here.
At present, a perplexing leg injury keeps me from swinging
the bat, running the bases and chasing down fly balls even if the opportunity
presented itself. This weekend, though, I experienced a pleasurable respite
from the endless 24/7 of scoreless soccer games that’s Argentina’s usual sporting
fare - on a visit to my wife’s hometown of Olavarría,
in Buenos Aires
province, I got my first opportunity to see my nephew Mariano Peruilh
play fastpitch
softball in a tournament
that has drawn half a dozen teams from quite a distance away. It was rather
like finding an Olympic-size swimming pool in the Atacama, as the photograph above suggests.
The six teams in the tournament include Mariano’s own
Estudiantes Black Jack and their co-hosts the Koalas Racing (one of five teams
in Olavarría’s local league; the next nearest teams are in the port city of Bahía
Blanca, 302 km to the southwest). One of the tournament teams is the Indios de
Bahía Blanca (which is also the hometown of NBA star Manu Ginóbili), but there
are also Mayú of La Pampa province (431 km west of Olavarría), the Tigres of
Pilar (368 km northeast) and Don Bosco of Paraná, Entre Ríos (723 km north). Surprisingly, there was no entrant from the Argentine capital.
Paraná is the
traditional hotbed of Argentine softball, a city of 200,000 people that has
at least eight fields, three of them lighted (in the photo above, a local player crosses the plaza in front of the city's cathedral). Mariano once moved there to
finish high school in hopes of honing his softball skills to make the national
team as a pitcher. That’s not yet happened, but he’s young enough (19) that it's still a possibility.
Olavarría’s Club de Estudiantes has two well-kept fields,
one complete with a press box and concessions (with choripán instead of hot
dogs). With temperatures above 90° F (about 34° C), we spectators were
fortunate that dark netting shaded the stands. In these conditions, the
catchers had it particularly tough but, in general, the quality of play was good
to excellent.
On this particular day, Mariano (pictured above and below) started strong on the mound
and at bat, establishing an early 3-0 lead with a pair of crisp run-scoring
singles off a hard-throwing Tigres pitcher. At the same time, though, he cost his
own team a potentially big inning with a base-running gaffe and then made a
fielding error that led to a two-run double; an inning later, he surrendered a
prodigious home run that tied the score. At that point, unfortunately, I had to
leave because of another family commitment, but Estudiantes got him a couple
runs to win by a 5-3 score. In the next game, against their local rivals the
Koalas, he got the save in a 2-0 shutout.
I had to take the bus back to Buenos Aires very early Sunday
morning, so I missed the second day (which included a home run derby). Mariano's team didn't fare so well on Sunday, and will have to beat Bahía Blanca early this morning in order to face the Paraná powerhouse in the afternoon semi-finals.
Dynamic Update, Tuesday, December 9: I read in this morning's El Popular, Olavarría's hometown paper, that Estudiantes lost their semi-final game to Mayú of La Pampa and then lost to Bahía Blanca in the third-place consolation game (in which Mariano hit a three-run homer). Mayú beat Don Bosco of Paraná for the championship.
