MUCH MORE THAN A BASEBALL STORY by Monzer Mansour On the last Wednesday of this September, my Fayetteville home was the site of what a casual observer would have to describe as a random encounter. The doorbell rang around 5:30 that afternoon and I opened the door to greet coach Norm DeBriyn, whom I had never met. The former Razorback baseball coach of 33 years had hustled his way to my house on about an hour’s notice. As busy as his schedule was, what lay in store was something Coach DeBriyn wasn’t going to miss. Waiting with me for DeBriyn’s arrival was Joeurt Puk, a Cambodian-American whom neither DeBriyn nor I had ever met until that day. Joeurt goes by the name "Joe Cook." Joe is a chef at a Japanese steakhouse in Dothan, Ala. Joe had just arrived at my house by car a little after 3 that afternoon on his first trip to Northwest Arkansas, driving without any sleep after having departed from Alabama when his work shift ended around 1 a.m. In a few minutes, the three of us, along with my daughter, Morgan, sat in front of my television watching a DVD Joe had made. Joe narrated live as we watched barefoot Cambodian children wielding their picks and shovels, turning Cambodian rice patties into baseball diamonds where their picks and shovels would soon be exchanged for bats and gloves. Behind my random Wednesday afternoon is a story about baseball, genocide, and one man’s heroic determination to bring joy and hope to the children of one of the poorest countries in the world. I learned about Joe Cook for the first time early one Sunday morning in August of this year. I was skimming the news headlines on my Yahoo home page when I my eye caught an unusual but seemingly promising headline about baseball’s new arrival in Cambodia. I read the short article and followed Internet links to read more about Joe and Cambodia. As many of you might know, Cambodia was decimated by a genocidal campaign carried out by the Khmer Rouge, a communist military organization led by the infamous Pol Pott. Between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge murdered well over 1.5 million Cambodians as it sought to impose its brand of communist totalitarianism. Cambodia had already been the site of significant military conflict during the Vietnam War. The Khmer Rouge’s genocidal campaign brought immense suffering to the Cambodian people, from which recovery has been slow. A UNICEF 2005 report on the state of the world’s children states: "Cambodia is still one of the poorest countries in Asia, with some 34 percent of its people surviving on less than one US dollar a day. Nearly half of all Cambodian children are malnourished, and one in eight dies before their fifth birthday, largely due to preventable causes." Joe and his father, mother and numerous siblings suffered greatly during the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror. At age five, Joe lost his father, and most of his brothers and sisters. Joe himself suffered beatings and torture by the Khmer Rouge in an attempt to gain information from him about his father, who had previously been in the Cambodian military. At age eight, Joe, his brother and mother escaped from a concentration camp and made a grueling trip on foot to the Thailand border. Joe nearly died en route from an explosion caused by a booby trap. When he was 12, Joe and his mother and brother, made it to Chattanooga, Tenn., with the help of a Christian relief organization. Here in America, Joe learned English and, perhaps as importantly, he discovered baseball. Joe quickly grew to love baseball and he played every chance he got. Although he had to quit playing organized ball in the 11 th grade to work to help support his family, his love of baseball remained very much alive. When Joe turned 25 he abided by family tradition and entered into an arranged marriage with a nice Cambodian woman. Joe admits that living in the U.S. since he was 12 made it difficult for him to marry a woman he had never met. "But then I thought, maybe I should do what my mom says," Joe recalls. Today Joe and his wife live together in Alabama with their two children. In May 2002, Joe traveled to Cambodia because he had heard that one of his sisters whom he had presumed dead since the mid 1970s might still have been alive. When he arrived, Joe met the woman that might have been his sister and, after exchanging information, their verdict was clear. A family reunion had begun. Joe met his nieces and nephews and they took Joe to see their school and their friends. Joe promised the children that he would come back and teach them about a game called baseball, a game totally foreign to Cambodia. The children were perplexed, but Joe assured them that they would soon learn more about this strange game when he returned. Over the remaining months of 2002, Joe painstakingly and tirelessly collected equipment, solicited support, scraped up supplies, rallied supporters and spent his own money (to the tune of $37,000). The result of Joe’s efforts is perhaps best described in his own words: "In November 2002, I returned to Cambodia as promised with gifts for the children and donations of school and baseball equipment for the Meas Chum school in the city of Baribo, 68 miles west of Phnom Penh. " Over the following days, I helped the children build Cambodia’s first baseball field. And on November 26, 2002, baseball was ‘born’ in Cambodia and I officially introduced it to people for the first time. I taught the children and teachers how to pitch, throw, catch, hit and run the bases. They soon got the idea — and I was so happy to see children playing baseball for the first time in Cambodia. " When I read Joe’s story for the first time that Sunday morning in August, I was simply overcome. Joe Cook had, as a young child, and like so many tens of thousands of his fellow Cambodian children, witnessed horrors so unspeakable and experienced evils so unimaginable. But now Joe was returning to the place of those horrors with a triumphant innocence that the worst of evils never took from him. Only the most ardent cynic would fail to appreciate the efforts a man who so joyfully assumes the burden of restoring to a poor nation’s children the simple childhood joys found in playing a game. When I finished reading Joe’s website, www. cambodiabaseball. com, I emailed Joe, advised him that a check was in the mail, and I let him know that if he didn’t have a contact in Northwest Arkansas, he could call on me. To my surprise, Joe called. Before I knew it, some friends of mine had collected a couple SUVs full of baseball equipment and brought it to my house where Joe said he would pick it up. I also put Joe in contact with a friend, who in turn put Joe in touch with DeBriyn. And that’s how the three of us came to meet at my house on that last Wednesday in September. As DeBriyn was leaving my house, he and I tried to convince Joe not to drive back to Alabama that evening without having had any sleep. But Joe said," Coach, I don’t have a minute to spare because if I let up, those kids might lose. " Coach DeBriyn and I then turned to each other, shrugging simultaneously in resignation, acknowledging silently to one another that sometimes you just can’t reckon with a hero’s determination. Monzer Mansour is a legal attorney, who practices in Springdale.
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