Sometimes, even parents joined in for a few innings after they returned home from work. In the twilight, games would continue until it was too dark to be able to see the ball. As I grew older, I played softball in high school. Occasionally, my family would travel to Houston or Dallas to watch professional games, and we always rooted for the Texas teams. When I moved to Washington, D.C., many years later, I played on company-sponsored softball teams that met for games after work. One of the things that I have missed most while living in İstanbul is playing and watching ball games in the summer months. In an effort to teach Ali Adem a few things about his American heritage, a couple years ago I bought him a small baseball bat and ball on one of our trips back to Texas. When we returned to İstanbul, we took his new equipment to the park, and there he began to learn the basics of throwing, catching and batting. A few of the neighborhood children joined in on the occasion, but since this was a game that was totally unfamiliar, they were puzzled by the equipment as well as the aim of the game. Still, Ali Adem and I sporadically continued our practice sessions. However, I found that I missed the camaraderie that comes from a real game of baseball that is so common in the United States.
Ali Adem also wanted to be able to play baseball with other children his own age. He has watched movies about baseball, and one of his goals has been to play on a Little League team. We both were excited to discover that there is baseball in Turkey, although it is still a relatively new sport here. Alper Bozkurt, head coach of the Turkish national team and president of the Baseball Academy Titans, has begun bringing baseball to Turkish children. Although Ali Adem was a little younger than the other players, he was allowed to participate in the annual baseball summer camp held in İstanbul.
For Ali Adem, this was a dream come true. Every morning he rose early, anxious to begin the journey across town in order to play ball. For seven hours a day, he learned the rules of the game and had the chance to practice and hone his skills with other children. Most, if not all, of the other children had been playing baseball for a year or more. I was a little apprehensive about how Ali Adem would react to having such a large learning curve to deal with. I should not have worried. By the end of the week, I could see the vast improvements he had made. The coaches were patient with him, understanding that this was something he was new at but something that he was willing to work hard to learn. When the week was over, he was a little sad, wanting to continue playing baseball every day. Even though he had to work hard to catch up with the other kids at the camp, he has found more confidence in the new skills he has learned. Now when we play catch in the park, I can see the results of all the hard work he put in, and I know how far he has come in just one week of the baseball camp.
As an expat parent, being able to see children playing a sport that I grew up playing is a way of bringing a small but important piece of my homeland to my new home country. I hope that Ali Adem will continue to play baseball here, and who knows, maybe he will reach his dream of playing on a Little League team. Who knows, perhaps in a few years, we will find baseball terminology creeping into Turkish as it has in English. Will we soon be hearing phrases such as stepping up to the plate, a home run, out of left field and hitting it out of the ballpark translated into Turkish? I, for one, hope so.
For more information on the baseball camps in Turkey for children, go to www.turkishbaseball.com. This Web site, in both Turkish and English, has information about teams across Turkey and ways that companies and individuals can become involved.
Send comments and questions to k.hamilton@todayszaman.com 
