The month of July has now come and gone and in Manzano #1 we continue to play baseball. The beginning of my time here, teaching baseball, required little initiative on my part. The children in the community are very used to playing multiple sports in the course of a year. <em>Futbol</em> (soccer), surfing, volleyball and baseball are the most common sports that the children as well as most adult men take part in so getting the kids to play baseball consistently was not hard to do. Kids Club is Waves of Hope’s after school program in which all of our games took place. In the past, Kids Club has served as an outlet for the children to meet and blow off stem or play various team oriented sports, so baseball fit right in. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, the days we meet for Kids Club, I made it a point to ask, while we were in school, what they wanted to do for that day. Baseball consistently became the answer.
So every Tuesday and Thursday, and some Sundays, we gather up all the boys and girls into the trucks, lug two bags of various equipment to our home field in Manzanillo and just play. Although its not the first lesson you learn in baseball it will prove to be the most important. This lesson in the baseball world as well as the everyday world is widely known as consistency. Consistency is the backbone of any mastered skill and without it you can never see those skills sharpened to perfection. Although this word doesn’t register with the 8 – 12 year olds in the campo, it does with the 13 – 20 year olds. With Carlos and Davies. With Victor and Ezekiel and Daniel. And every other <em>hombre</em> up at 4am to start the day by tending to his work, no cuss no fuss. July was about a lesson in consistency and day-by-day strengthening our collective backbone.