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For players, baseball crosses barriers
By TERRI D. REEVES OLDSMAR -- It was a chilly night but one that warmed the heart. Thirteen years after the Berlin Wall was demolished and the Cold War ended, two youth baseball teams, American and Russian, came together for an impromptu game of friendship. On Tuesday night, the Oldsmar Thunder, an American Athletic Union team with players ages 10 and younger, faced Moscow's recently formed Svyatogor team of 8- through 12-year-olds at Canal Park. The game was arranged Sunday after one of the Oldsmar coaches saw the Russians playing another team in Safety Harbor. Oldsmar Mayor Jerry Beverland threw the first pitch and the city's parks and recreation department donated use of the field. Kevin Tripp, 10, said he had been looking forward to playing the Russian team all day. "I couldn't believe I was going to play baseball with people who came from the other side of the world," he said.
The visit was co-sponsored by Russian and American individuals. Friends and business partners, Lory and Anthony Turevych, Debra Alexander, and Sergy Veruhola, all from the Tampa Bay area, chipped in about $5,000 to pay for the hotel rooms, some meals, and tickets to Disney World and Busch Gardens. "We are very good friends with the team's head coach," Anthony Turevych said through interpreter Andrew Grimko, a Clearwater resident. "In Russia, the kids aren't so rich and we wanted to give them these presents." The barriers for playing baseball can be substantial in the cold and economically struggling country. The weather is suitable only four months out of the year, good equipment is very hard to come by, and games are played in open fields with no backstops or baselines. Oleg Rubcov, a 10-year-old from Moscow, said he had only seen baseball fields as nice as the one in Oldsmar on television. His favorite part of the trip was seeing palm trees and riding the roller coasters at Busch Gardens. He said they had a few small coasters in Russia but he had never ridden any. Was he frightened on the monster roller coasters that turn riders upside down? "Not at all," he said through the interpreter. Since the international rules of baseball are the same, the game went off without a hitch. The only difference was that neither team could understand the other's chatter. "They (Russians) have a different style of playing," said Morgan Cowan, 10. "They yell a lot when they play." "We didn't have any idea what they were saying," said Justin DiSanto, 9. "That can be both an advantage and disadvantage," added his father, John DiSanto, head coach of the Oldsmar team. At the end, Oldsmar Thunder defeated the Russian team, 20-8. But this was a game where the score didn't seem to matter. They finished exchanging gifts and high fives. The Russians gave their new friends trinkets from their country and an invitation to visit next summer. The Oldsmar team presented their new friends with duffel bags stuffed with New York Yankees paraphernalia. The bags were donated by Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. Oleg Inoyatov, 10, said he had a wonderful time playing baseball and visiting America. "It is very warm for December," he said. Warm in many ways, one might think.
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