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Way Back Then
Did you know that baseball was introduced to Egypt about 130 years ago? In 1889, the Chicago White Stockings and the All-Americans (a collection of National League players) embarked on a goodwill world tour, called the Spalding World Tour, to share America’s pastime across the globe. The signature stop was Egypt, where the players explored the ancient civilization and played an exhibition game in the shadows of the Giza Pyramids and under the watchful eye of the Sphinx.
Baseball would not return to Egypt until the 1980s, when the growing American expatriate community founded the Maadi Little Baseball League (MLLB) as a volunteer-led, family league. Since then, MLLB has remained the only organized baseball league in Egypt. In 2017, the Egyptian Baseball and Softball Federation was formed to bring the game to the wider Egyptian community. In 2023/24, Triple Play began playing a crucial role in bringing the two organizations together.
The Journey Begins
On March 6, 2023, I met a young man who was deaf who asked me to watch him play baseball. To my surprise, it was "5-on-5 baseball," which I had never seen before. In addition, I was seated in the VIP section at the stadium, which I found out was due to my being American -- my SF Giants hat was the give-away. After the game started, a gentleman sat down next to me and struck up a conversation, he in his best English and me in my best Arabic. It turned out that I was talking to Ibrahim Shareef, the General Secretary for the Egyptian Baseball and Softball Federation. Ibrahim and I agreed that something needed to be done to bring baseball back to the local population. After a number of meetings, I was invited to run a training session in "Baseball 9," as the Egyptians call it, on March 29, 2024. Not knowing what to expect, I was impressed by the turnout and the level of devotion. We had 40 young players, male and female, many of them coming from great distances in the governorates of Cairo, Giza, Fayoum, and Beni Suef to learn a game they had never played. After the session, they told me their dream was to compete internationally through the WBSC, and eventually compete in the Olympics.
The Start Point
Along with continuing to train these players, I volunteered to coach the Seniors Division for 13-16 year-olds in MLLB. Maadi is a district in Cairo, where much of the international community lives. Bridging the two organizations has allowed me to start recruiting coaches and gaining field use to help facilitate the training for the Federation team. Teaming up with MLLB has also given us enough players to play actual games! The Federation team gets real experience in game situations, while MLLB players have the opportunity to play against different competition. Beyond baseball, the cross-cultural experience has allowed both sides to learn about each other's culture, and will go a long way to fostering relationships that I hope will turn a local team into a local league.
