It is the 67th time Vasyl Tarasko has come to Ukraine to host a baseball championship for the nation’s schoolchildren.
While it is America’s national pastime, in Ukraine Little League Baseball programs only began in 1995, thanks to Tarasko.
An American of Ukrainian origin, Tarasko first began to build a baseball community here 1991. Before deciding to work with Ukrainian baseball players Tarasko, 67, was the head coach of the City College of New York baseball team.
Now Tarasko is retired, but he believes that “anyone who wants to play baseball – boy or girl – can play it, and no one can be rejected.”
Since the 1990s, Tarasko with a team of some 10 Ukrainian volunteers has covered the costs of shipping equipment and uniforms and bringing professional coaches here to teach children. Tarasko says the only thing that Ukrainian school directors or physical education teachers need to handle themselves is the accommodations for coaches.
“I don’t knock at doors; people recommend schools to me or clubs that have youth programs,” Tarasko explains.
Money for the program comes from a number of businesses and institutions, including the U.S. Agency for International Development, Peace Corps, and American non-governmental organizations.
In cooperation with another Ukrainian-American, Roman Leskiw, who joined Tarasko’s initiative some seven years ago, Tarasko holds several local baseball championships for children aged nine to 12 each year.
“I thought what Tarasko’s doing for Ukrainian children was great,” Leskiw said about his involvement.
Tarasko says it took a long time to get the project off the ground. But they now are seeing the results of their hard work: the organization has sent three Ukrainian teams to the U.S. to play in the world championship in recent years.
The Little League Baseball program operates in several Ukrainian cities, including Donetsk, Kirovohrad, Rivne, Chernivtsi and Sumy.
“However, we lost Simferopol,” Tarasko says, adding that he was saddened by the thought of canceling this year’s championships in Ukraine due to the unstable political situation. But he says the children still have the resolve to compete.
“That’s why I’m here now,” Tarasko says.
The 15th Ukraine Baseball Championship is scheduled for June 5-7 in a Pushcha Vodytsya school near Kyiv, where teams from Kyiv, Rivne and Kirovohrad will compete. A day before the first pitch was thrown out, Tarasko came to Kyiv carrying heavy suitcases packed with souvenirs for the children.
The winners will face competitors at the Europe Championship in the Polish town of Kutno in next month. At summers’ end, the strongest European team will travel to Williamsport in Pennsylvania to compete in the World Championship.
Tarasko would love to see a Ukrainian team there, but thinks that it is not the victory that matters most.
“Not everyone can be the second (Andriy) Shevchenko, but maybe some of those children can turn into good baseball players,” Tarasko says, referring to the Ukrainian soccer legend. “And kids just love it.”
Moreover, it’s not only children from regular schools who benefit from learning how to play the quintessential American sport.
“I realized there are lots of children in orphanages who can also learn baseball,” Tarasko says.
He reached out to Maryna Krysa, the head of the charity foundation Friends of Kids in 2004 and obtained a list of Ukraine’s largest orphanages. Together they began a program involving 14 Ukrainian orphanages. Since, the number has fallen to four centers.
Since 2004, the group has held two championships each year – one for children in regular schools in June and another one for the orphanages in September.
“They (the children) called it Christmas in September as each child gets at least three presents,” says Leskiw, who will come to Ukraine for the autumn championship to be held at the orphanage of Kreminets in Ternopil Oblast.
“When a kid gets their first hit, when we see smiles on their faces – all those little moments make me happy,” Tarasko told the Kyiv Post.
More information about Little League Baseball in Ukraine can be found at www.ukrainebaseball.org.
Kyiv Post staff writer Olena Goncharova can be reached at [email protected].
