“My dad thought it was strange,” says Matveev. “He told me baseball is an American sport. So what? Soccer is English; hockey is Canadian. Older people can be a little too conservative.”
In this remote place, baseball serves both as a window to the West and as a reason for hometown pride. Sugar Storm players dot the field in the caps of their favorite American teams. When I ask Matveev why he likes the Chicago Cubs, he says it’s because the letter C resembles the Cyrillic letter S—for Skidziel.
Andrey Matveev, who coaches youth baseball in Skidziel and plays for the Sugar Storm, wears his Chicago Cubs cap during the game.
The first spectator to arrive is an elderly man named Rastislav Stepaniuk, who holds the title of the area’s biggest baseball fan. Although he doesn’t entirely grasp the rules, he says the game reminds him of lapta, a Russian sport somewhat similar to cricket that he played during his youth.
“I come to almost every game,” says Stepaniuk, who watches the game by himself in a camouflage hat, having carefully leaned his single-speed bicycle against the fence behind the home plate. “Not long ago a ball hit me in the head while I was sitting here. I walked around like a drunk for a week.”
The blow to the head hasn’t deterred Stepaniuk, who sits patiently and waits for the players to take the small field. Baseball in Belarus is seeing growing interest and teams are beginning to compete in nearby countries, such as Ukraine and Lithuania. The reclusive former Soviet republic has opened up slightly in recent years, as the government tries to mend relations with the West while its neighbor and main financial backer, Russia, faces an economic crisis and becomes increasingly belligerent in Eastern Europe.
