Thursday, March 27, 2025

Baseball begins, LA (Buddhist Bhutan)


America brings us hegemony I mean baseball.
Hegemony means cultural influence. The USA may have too much of it. Buddhists in Bhutan, the last Himalayan Buddhist kingdom, play baseball in front of the giant Buddha Dordenma statue in the capital Thimphu, and MLB couldn't be happier.

Buddhist Bhutan obsessed with Western sports

The Cup (Bhutanese film)
The Cup (Tibetan ཕོར་པ། or Phörpa) is a Tibetan-language film written and directed by Khyentse Norbu in his feature directorial debut. It's about two young football-crazed Tibetan refugee novice Buddhist monks who desperately try to get a television for their remote Himalayan Buddhist monastery so they can watch the 1998 FIFA World Cup final. Though not nominated, The Cup was Bhutan's first-ever submission for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.

In the Buddhist mountains of the world's most remote country, baseball takes hold
Baseball in Thimphu, Bhutan (Major League Baseball/Matthew DeSantis @matthewrdesantis)
.
King Pop Warner Bhutanese Little League?
(MLB) High up in the Himalayas between Tibet and [Buddhist] India sits the small Buddhist country [former kingdom] of Bhutan.

Sometimes known as the world's last Shangri-La, this nation of snowy alpine peaks and untouched mountain streams has fewer than 700,000 people who call it home. Yet, what is perhaps the most remote country in the world is on its way to being a baseballing nation, growing from a few dozen kids playing on a concrete slab after school to more than 6,000 children who are fast becoming baseball fanatics despite few having ever seen a Major League game.
Bhutan Baseball and Softball Association (X)
"Everything from the friendship I grew with my father to my brothers to everyone in my town growing up, it was all based around baseball," Matthew DeSantis, the co-founder and chairman of the Bhutan Baseball and Softball Association told me during a recent visit to New York.

Why are American so rich and pretty? Maybe

Angelic Shohei Ohtani used to get the US girls
"From a community perspective in Bhutan, it was a way for me to both be involved stronger, and also to give something back that I thought the kids would love and connect over," Matt went on to say.
Ohtanis are expecting a baby girl (People)
Soft-spoken and thoughtful, the American was dressed in a warm brown gho -- a robe cloth that is part of the national dress, the traditional Bhutanese garb, on the day we met.

Though his trip to capitalist New York brought him close to where he grew up in nearby Wilton, Connecticut, one got the feeling that Buddhist Bhutan is where he always belonged.


Paro Taktsang, Tiger's Nest Monastery, Bhutan
Oddly enough, baseball wasn’t how DeSantis first discovered the small Himalayan country, but rather its young leader, Prince Dasho Jigyel Ugyen Wangchuck, whom he met on the school basketball team while attending Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford.

(Bhutan is now a parliamentary democracy, but the royal family still holds its titles -- similar to the monarchy in England).

After DeSantis’ first three weeks in Bhutan, where he trekked through the dense and pristine southern rainforest and stayed in roadless villages, he decided to move there for good.

Tibetans reborn white in America
Reborn in America, 1973, after being killed by Chinese in Tibet in 1960.
Tibet was once a Himalayan empire made up of 25% Buddhist monastics:
  • Fresh to US from Bhutan: DragonHerbs.com
    American Ron Teeguarden     married a Bhutanese woman to access pure herbs for his tonic concoctions, which he used to sell from a tea shop in Santa Monica, California: Dragon Herbs
  • Bhutan used to be one of the hardest countries in the world to visit, due to severe limits on visas (and a necessary commitment to spend hundreds of US dollars a day when visiting) to keep it pristine and to limit hegemony and decadent outside influences. It's stilly pricey: MyBhutan

Rich Ron married Bhutanese beauty for access
It was while founding the tech company and luxury travel operator MyBhutan, which helped visitors explore the region, that DeSantis met Karma Dorji.

Dorji, now the president of the Bhutan baseball association, "had a strong passion to bring sports to the kids and make it accessible and free."

Shohei Ohtani dating Cal Berkeley's K Dung?
They had no grand design on establishing a baseball association, though: The two simply loved baseball. DeSantis learned the game back in America, while Dorji fell in love while attending the World Children's Baseball Fair in Japan. They wanted to offer it to the children who lived nearby the military barracks in Thimphu. More: mlb.com

Los Angeles environmentalist to protest Dodgers
Dodgers vs. Detroit Tigers opening day game at Dodger Stadium (Sierra Club Angeles | IG)
.
Sierra LA World Water Day
The Sierra Club's next protest [against Phillips 66 petroleum polluting corporation and sponsor affiliated with the team] will be at the Dodgers' first home game, today, Thursday, March 27th, 2025, at 3:00 pm.

We meet for the pre-game outside Dodger Stadium on the south-east corner of Stadium Way and Vin Scully Avenue. Recommended parking: Lot 13 south of entrance on Stadium Way. All environmentalists are welcome. Wear Dodgers logos and fan gear if available. More

Protesting the Dodgers at a game
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)