baseball

From baseball player to spy

Moe Berg as a catcher during his time in Major League Baseball. (photo from Irwin Berg)

Near the end of John Ford’s essential 1962 western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a newspaper editor coins the credo, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

The fact, as we all know, is that Americans are all-star myth-makers and myth-lovers. Many American Jewish boys caught the bug via the improbable immigrant saga of Moe Berg, a paradoxically brilliant professional athlete who led a secret second life as a spy for the U.S. government. How much of Berg’s story is true, though, and how much was legend passed among kvelling kids in the schoolyard?

Aviva Kempner, who hit a home run with her 1998 documentary about another Jewish ballplayer, The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg, was the obvious, natural and best-equipped filmmaker to take on the mid-20th-century mysteries at the heart of Berg’s minor celebrity.

The Spy Behind Home Plate, which screens at the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival March 8 at the Rothstein Theatre, is a testament to Kempner’s determination and persistence. Chock full of dozens of contemporary and archival interviews, and packed with rare photos and even rarer film footage, The Spy Behind Home Plate is a definitive record of Berg’s achievements.

Although it’s an effective way to impart information, the dogged, dog-eared marriage of talking heads, vintage visuals and period music can’t fully evoke the shadowy stealth and deadly risks of Berg’s wartime activities. Hamstrung by her budget, Kempner wasn’t able to stage reenactments or employ other strategies to illustrate the unfilmed and unrecorded liaisons and conversations that Berg had in Europe in 1944 and 1945. The Spy Behind Home Plate, therefore, is like the steady everyday player who notches the occasional three-hit game but never achieves the transcendent grace and power of a superstar.

Morris (Moe) Berg, international man of mystery, was born in New York in 1902. His father had fled a Ukrainian shtetl for the Lower East Side, where he started a laundry before buying a drugstore in Newark.

The family moved to New Jersey when Moe was a boy, and he grew into an excellent student and a terrific baseball player. After a year at New York University, he transferred to Princeton, where he was a star shortstop (back when the Ivy League was the top, if not the only, sports conference) and graduated Phi Beta Kappa.

While his older brother Sam fulfilled Dad’s wishes and went to medical school, Moe signed a contract to play pro ball. He acceded to his father’s demands up to a point by attending Columbia Law School in the off-seasons, earning his degree and passing the New York bar in 1929.

It was a false bargain: Moe despised the idea of being a lawyer, while Bernard Berg never accepted a baseball career as a legitimate pursuit. In fact, the old man refused to go to the park and see his son play.

From an athletics standpoint, his dad wasn’t missing much. A knee injury early in Moe’s career, compounded by primitive diagnosis and treatment, severely slowed him. Over 15 years as a backup catcher, Berg notched exactly 441 hits in 663 games.

What set Moe apart was his charm, charisma and erudition. He studied Sanskrit at the Sorbonne one off-season, and read multiple newspapers every day. When he went to Japan on a barnstorming tour with Babe Ruth and other Major League stars, he learned Japanese.

Berg carried a camera everywhere on that trip, and made a point of checking out the roof of a tall Tokyo hotel in order to shoot a 360-degree panorama of the city. It’s not altogether clear if he was already working officially (albeit surreptitiously) for the U.S. government, but his film was of significant help when the United States went to war with Japan after Pearl Harbor.

In fact, in early 1942, Berg recorded a radio segment in Japanese that was broadcast in Japan and drew on the goodwill he’d accumulated over two prewar visits.

photo - Moe Berg in a military jeep in California with his brother Sam during the war, July 1942 — Moe Berg in a military jeep in California with his brother Sam during the war, July 1942. *(photo from Irwin Berg)*

Berg had been sent on research missions to South America, but that was too far from the real action. It appears he found a home in 1943 in the newly created Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the intelligence branch that evolved into the Central Intelligence Agency after the war.

His primary and crucial assignment was to ascertain how close the Germans were to having a nuclear weapon, and to sway Italian scientists from the Axis to the Allies. To successfully carry off his cover story, Berg was briefed on the science and strategy of the Manhattan Project.

One biographer recounts, “The OSS had given the Manhattan Project its own spy, in effect, its own field agent to pursue questions of interest wherever he could in Europe. And that was Moe Berg.”

Kempner accords a great deal of screen time to this episode in Berg’s clandestine career as a professional spook. It’s a great story, in which the solidly built former catcher is assigned to attend a conference in Switzerland and determine – from the keynote speech by a visiting German scientist, Werner Heisenberg – if the Nazis are within reach of perfecting the bomb.

Berg carries a pistol to the symposium, with orders to use it on Heisenberg if he deems it necessary. It would be churlish of me to recount the outcome of Berg’s suicide mission except to say that the catcher-turned-spy who spoke seven languages lived unhappily ever after the war.

Kempner leaves us wanting to know more about Berg’s later years. By the weirdest of coincidences, Sam Berg headed a group of doctors sent to Nagasaki to study the effects of radiation poisoning. Incredibly, Moe and Sam never knew about each other’s exploits. This lone fact reveals that there’s still more to know about Moe Berg’s story.

The Vancouver Jewish Film Festival runs until March 8. For tickets and the movie schedule, visit vjff.org.

Michael Fox is a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.

Team Israel’s fairytale run

Josh Zeid during the game against Japan. (photo from worldbaseballclassic.com)

Team Israel had a great run at the World Baseball Classic tournament. The ballplayers with a David vs. Goliath approach came out swinging hard and stunned the world with four consecutive wins in the preliminary and second rounds. But two losses in a row – an 8-3 loss to Japan March 15 and a 12-2 clobbering by the Netherlands on March 13 – made advancing to the finals a dream for the next global tournament.

The March 15 game started with five scoreless innings, but Japan blew open a lead in the sixth with five runs and added three more for good measure in the eighth. Israel scored all its runs in the top of the ninth.

The World Baseball Classic is a tournament in which the best baseball players in the world compete. Team Israel had bookers betting against it even making the main event, but the blue-and-white uniformed ballplayers, who were ranked 41st going into the Classic, not only made it to the preliminary rounds but won an astounding four in a row at the tournament.

Dubbed the Cinderella team of the contest, Team Israel stunned Cuba 4-1 in the first WBC quarterfinal game at the Tokyo Dome and, before that, swept the first round of games by beating South Korea, Taiwan and the Netherlands.

Only three of Team Israel’s 28 players are Israeli; the rest are Jewish Americans. According to WBC rules, anyone eligible to hold citizenship in a country can play for its national team. There are other teams with players who do not hold passports for the country for which they’re playing.

“The players love playing for Israel,” Israel Association of Baseball president Peter Kurz told Israel21c. “A lot of them want to come and visit after the tournament or after they retire.”

photo - Mensch on a Bench – the Israeli team’s mascot – waits for the game to begin — Mensch on a Bench – the Israeli team’s mascot – waits for the game to begin. *(photo from worldbaseballclassic.com)*

For fans, that the ballplayers are proud to wear “Israel” on their uniforms and represent the country is more than enough.

“I am a lifelong baseball fan, and it’s thrilling to see Israel competing on a world stage. But Israel’s participation in the World Baseball Classic is about so much more than baseball,” said Elie Klein, an associate partner at Finn Partners Israel who calls himself a “rabid New York Mets fan.”

“While baseball fans around the globe have taken notice of Team Israel due to their surprising athletic prowess, Jews around the world – many of whom have never watched a single inning of baseball – are drawn to Team Israel out of deep Jewish pride. Not because they are Israelis, but because they aren’t – they are largely American Jews who have decided to wear uniforms emblazoned with the Jewish star and don kippot during Hatikvah, to identify as Jews in such a public way,” said Klein.

American rapper Kosha Dillz (Rami Matan Even-Esh) even made up a song about Team Israel. And Team Israel will also be remembered for its mascot, Mensch on a Bench, a stuffed doll that was the Jewish answer to the popular Christmas toy and story Elf on the Shelf.

On March 22, the United States team beat Team Puerto Rico to win the championship.

Israel21c is a nonprofit educational foundation with a mission to focus media and public attention on the 21st-century Israel that exists beyond the conflict. For more, or to donate, visit israel21c.org.

Uniquely B.C. baseball story

Ellen Schwartz (photo from Ellen Schwartz)

Historical fiction is a great way to learn about the past and, while aimed at younger readers, many an adult will enjoy and learn from Ellen Schwartz’s Heart of a Champion (Tundra Books).

For Schwartz, a TV documentary led to her novel about the fictional Sakamoto family, set in the very real time when Japanese Canadians were interned during the Second World War. It was in watching this documentary that Schwartz first found out about the Asahi baseball team.

In the author’s note, she explains that asahi means “morning sun.” The team was established in 1914, winning their first title in 1919, the Vancouver International League championship. They won the Pacific Northwest League championships every year from 1937 through 1941.

After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and declared war on Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom, writes Schwartz, “In Canada, Japanese Canadians were branded ‘enemy aliens’ and quickly lost their rights. The government, fearing that they would be loyal to Japan and would share war secrets with the enemy, took away their fishing boats, cars, radios and cameras. The Japanese were subject to a dusk-to-dawn curfew.

“In the spring of 1942, the Canadian government began to remove Japanese Canadians from the west coast of British Columbia. Men between the ages of 18 and 45 were sent to road camps in the Interior to build roads. Women, children and older people were sent to internment camps, many in abandoned mining or logging ‘ghost towns.’ Small, primitive shacks were hastily built to house them. The people lost their homes, businesses and possessions, never to get them back.”

In her research for the novel, Schwartz told the Independent, “I learned so much. In addition to the Asahis, I delved into the history of the Japanese-Canadian community in Vancouver and then in the internment camps. I hadn’t realized how established and prosperous the Japanese-Canadian community was in the pre-World War II years. Although there was a lot of discrimination – for example, Japanese Canadians didn’t have the vote, they were paid less than Caucasians for the same work and they often suffered racial slurs – these were middle-class families who were integrated into Canadian society. That’s why it was such a shock when they were uprooted and sent to internment camps in the Interior.

“I had heard about the internment camps but I didn’t realize how awful they were until I went to the Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre in New Denver [on Slocan Lake in the Kootenay region] as part of my research. When I stepped inside the original 1942 shack that is preserved there, I was shocked at how primitive and barren it was. In that moment, the second half of the book came to me, as I experienced what it must have felt like for Kenny and his family.”

In the novel, 10-year-old Kenny (Kenji in Japanese) aspires to be an Asahi like his older brother, star player Mickey (Mitsuo). However, Kenny has been diagnosed with a heart condition, which means he has to practise secretly, so as to not worry his parents. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, dreams of baseball are replaced with the nightmare of having to register as an enemy alien, of being subjected to a curfew, of having his father’s business closed, of his father being sent to a work camp and of being evacuated to an internment camp, only allowed to bring minimal belongings. In Kenny’s case, he, his mother, older brother and younger sister (Sally) are sent to New Denver, where Kenny and his mother manage to find the strength to inspire others in the camp to hope – and play baseball again.

The Sakamotos’ neighbors, and dear friends, are the Bernsteins, who have two daughters, Susana and Brigitte (aka Gittie). This allows Schwartz to draw parallels between the treatment of Jews in Europe leading to the Holocaust and Japanese in Canada during the war.

“I wanted to point out that the treatment of Japanese Canadians, although obviously not nearly as lethal or horrific, was comparable to that of Jews in Europe,” explained Schwartz. “In both cases, a minority was being persecuted simply because of their religion or nationality. Giving Kenny a Jewish best friend would make both characters sympathetic about this issue.

“The other reason I made Susana Kenny’s best friend is that, because of his heart defect, he would not have been able to keep up with other boys and might have had a girl as a best friend. Initially, Susana was a minor character, but I really liked her – she had chutzpah – so I gave her a bigger role in the story. It’s her courage and loyalty that give Kenny the impetus to find his own.”

Schwartz herself didn’t have a particularly religious childhood. “My mother was religious; my father wasn’t. We went to High Holiday services and that was about it,” she said. “But we lived with my grandparents when I was little, and my grandfather was observant and I adored him, so I grew up with a real fondness for Jewishness. I loved the family seders with everyone together and my grandfather chanting the Haggadah. I feel Jewish inside even though I’m not observant now.

“When I’m thinking of characters, I don’t set out to make them Jewish, but sometimes they emerge that way. Even if a character isn’t identified as Jewish, I know that that character is, and that gives the character an inner richness for me. For example, my first novel series was about a girl named Starshine Shapiro. I never mentioned that Starshine’s family was Jewish, but in my mind they were, and some of the humor in the books had a definite Jewish flavor.”

Schwartz hasn’t always been a writer.

“After I stopped teaching elementary school in the late ’70s, I started writing educational stories. That was my first foray into writing,” said Schwartz, who grew up in New Jersey and moved to Canada in 1972 with her husband, Bill. “I wrote stories for kids about energy conservation and the environment, which were important to me. I suppose I started with educational writing because I was comfortable ‘talking’ to and teaching kids. I sold the first educational story to the government of B.C. and the second one to the National Film Board. Then I decided to try to write a regular story, and that became my first book, Dusty.”

Schwartz teaches creative writing at Douglas College and she also works as a corporate and technical writer and editor, she said. “My husband and I own a small communications company called Polestar Communications. We do all kinds of writing and editing for public agencies and companies – reports, brochures, articles, educational material, technical material, web writing, etc. We also do marketing and organize events. That’s how I spend most of my writing time.

“I also write magazine articles, mainly for the Costco Connection, the magazine of the Costco corporation,” she added. “The editor usually assigns me stories about books and authors, which, of course, I love. I have interviewed and written about some great authors, including Ann-Marie MacDonald, Richard Wagamese, Linden MacIntyre and Alice Munro.”

On her website, Schwartz notes that she hasn’t even always wanted to be a writer.

“Dancing is my favorite thing,” she said, “and I often tell kids that if God tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘You can be a professional dancer tomorrow if you give up writing,’ I wouldn’t hesitate for a minute. I take a jazz class once a week and love it.”

While her career path may have changed a few times, Schwartz said the process of getting an idea to publication hasn’t changed much since she published her first book more than 30 years ago.

“Essentially, it’s the same,” she said. “I get an idea, mull it over for awhile, make notes and then plunge in. Many drafts later, I send it to a publisher and hope for the best. Once a manuscript is accepted, I work with an editor (I love working with editors) and do another rewrite. Then the book goes into production, which I have very little to do with other than approving the cover. (I have no artistic talent – my abilities extend to stick figures – and don’t illustrate or do any book design.)

“Of course, now I can submit work electronically, and it’s a lot easier to bounce ideas back and forth with my publishers before I send them the story,” she continued. “And I do a lot of research on the internet rather than in the library, though, for most stories, I still read many print articles and books for background information.”

And she does more than that.

Linda Kawamoto Reid, research archivist at Nikkei National Museum in Burnaby, writes in the foreword of Heart of a Champion that Schwartz “thoroughly researched the times by talking extensively with members of the Japanese-Canadian community. She met Kaye Kaminishi, our last Asahi baseball player, who was a rookie in 1941, and sought out the facts by conducting interviews, reading books and watching films. The story has surprising elements of reality, from the food eaten to the description of events following the bombing of Pearl Harbor.”

Japanese Canadians were not allowed to return to the coast until 1949 and it wasn’t until 1988 that the Government of Canada formally apologized for the treatment of Japanese Canadians during the war. As for the Asahis, the team was inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 2003 and into the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame in 2005; in 2008, the team was designated an Event of National Historical Significance.

So, is the country in which we’re now living less, more or similarly susceptible to the factors that allowed the refusal of Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust and the internment of the Japanese, as but two extreme examples of the racism of those decades?

“Call me a cockeyed optimist, but I think we’re less susceptible to that kind of racism and exclusion in Canada,” said Schwartz. “The recent acceptance of the Syrian refugees is a heartwarming example. When my kids were in school in Burnaby in the ’90s, there were kids of every color and nationality in their classes and no one thought anything of it. We can’t ever take tolerance for granted, but I think that Canada in 2016 is a pretty welcoming place.”

Ellen Schwartz will be at Word Vancouver on Sept. 25, at the Vancouver International Writers’ Festival Oct. 18-23 and at the Calgary Jewish Book Festival Dec. 4-11.

Blue Jays CEO wants to win

Toronto Blue Jays new president and chief executive officer Mark Shapiro. (photo from Toronto Blue Jays)

The Toronto Blue Jays almost made it to the World Series in 2015. With spring training having just started, we’re crossing our proverbial fingers (in the most Jewish way possible) that we’ll see that same Blue Jay magic – and more – in the months to come. Eyes will particularly be on the new leader at the helm, Mark Shapiro, who officially joined the Jays as president and chief executive officer last fall.

Shapiro has arrived at a pivotal time for the franchise, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this season. Many are eager to find out in what direction he’ll take the team, but one thing is certain: he wants to win.

“Clearly, winning has to be the primary area of focus,” Shapiro told the Independent. “A relentless, obsessive commitment to building a winning team.

“Building a team isn’t just collecting talent,” he continued. “It’s about players that are committed, that are willing to take risks and commit to something bigger than themselves.”

He also said he wants to integrate more sports psychology into the team’s routine, and “build a business organization that obsesses about fan experience at every interaction and every touch point.”

Next on his list is Rogers Centre, which is in dire need of a renovation, one that may cost upwards of $400 million.

Shapiro, like anyone else who has experienced the dome, has been a fan of the awe-inspiring structure since his first Jays game, which was in 1989, soon after he completed his history degree at Princeton. “My memory is seeing this building and just being blown away at what an incredible engineering marvel it is,” he said.

Rogers Centre isn’t the only spot that needs an upgrade. The team’s spring training facility in Dunedin, Fla., is widely considered to be the worst in Major League Baseball. Shapiro has to choose between renovating or moving the Jays to a new facility when the team’s lease expires in 2017.

To make matters more difficult, team cornerstones José Bautista and Edwin Encarnación become free agents at the end of this year and the Jays’ stock of minor league prospects was depleted by last year’s trade deadline frenzy. Still, there’s every reason to believe Shapiro will hit it out of the park, given that he’s spent an entire lifetime surrounded by the game, its players, its strategy and its details.

Shapiro invested nearly a quarter-century with the Cleveland Indians, having worked his way up from player development to team president. It was there that the Sporting News named Shapiro Executive of the Year in 2005 and 2007.

His managerial style hasn’t changed all that much, he maintains. “If you have a moral compass and a set of well-defined values, those are going to be the determinacy of how you lead,” he said.

But baseball and Shapiro go farther back than Cleveland. Son of Baltimore attorney and sports agent Ronald M. Shapiro, the game was ingrained at a very early age.

“Baseball was a part of the fabric of my childhood growing up. It was a connection and a bond for me with my dad,” said Shapiro. “It’s hard to separate out baseball from my childhood, whether it was stickball, wiffleball, Little League or playing catch in the street. Maybe it was the fact that my dad, at some point in my adolescence, started representing Major League players and they started being part of my life. Baseball, informally or formally, was always a part of my life.”

Among his baseball heroes growing up was Baltimore Orioles’ Brooks Robinson, for “consistency, the way he treated people and his artistic style of play,” said Shapiro. Jewish ball player Al Rosen, aka “the Hebrew Hammer,” who played for the Cleveland Indians from 1947 to 1956, was also a role model.

The Hebrew Hammer wasn’t his only source of Yiddishkeit growing up. Shapiro said he was reared with a “strong Jewish identity,” associating most with the “education, culture, understanding of history, and the values intertwined in that history.” They include, he said, “work ethics, commitment to community, compassion and tolerance,” which, he said, were “defining attributes and values that were a part of my childhood.”

Shapiro and his wife Lissa Bockrath-Shapiro try to instil those same values in their children, son Caden, 13, and daughter Sierra, 11.

Even though today’s Jewish players are few and far between, every now and again Shapiro will run into a fellow Jew and shmooze.

“It’s obviously a rarity and, obviously, there’s a lot more front office guys, like Mike Chernoff [Cleveland Indians general manager]. When we saw a Jewish player, we’d always chuckle with pride at that player succeeding. It was a topic of conversation,” said Shapiro.

Cleveland player Jesse Levis and Shapiro used to kibbitz about being MOTs, members of the tribe. Since he began work in Toronto after the ball season was over, Shapiro has not yet met lone Jewish Jay Kevin Pillar.

Meanwhile, one item needs clarification. There’s been no shortage of times that Shapiro has been asked why he pronounces his name Sha-pie-roh instead of the usual Sha-peer-oh. For the record – and he wants to set the record straight – his name has always been that way.

“People say, ‘Are you trying to hide the fact that you’re Jewish?’ If I did, wouldn’t I call myself Smith?” he said with a laugh. “Come on, really, there’s got to be a better way to do that.”

The story is familiar to many: as immigrants coming through Ellis Island, there was a name change and a mispronunciation that stuck. Philadelphia and Cherry Hill, N.J., lay claim as the “only places in the world you’ll hear ShapIro spelled Shapiro, and you’ll hear Shapiro spelled Schapiro,” he explained.

To be sure, fans are less concerned about the name than they are about the game. And, if he could impart one message, it would be that he’s here to win.

“My favorite Blue Jays stories are waiting to be written,” he said.

Dave Gordon is a Toronto-based freelance writer whose work can be found in more than a hundred publications globally. He is managing editor of landmarkreport.com.

America’s pastime in Africa

Ruth Hoffman with baseball player Arthur Lusala, left, who today studies developmental economics at university, and coach George Mukhobe. (photo from Ruth Hoffman)

Vancouver baseball teens and their parents piled into the Rothstein Theatre on Sunday, April 19, for Opposite Field, a documentary by Jay Shapiro about a Ugandan Little League baseball team and its struggle to compete on the international stage.

The story caught Shapiro’s eye several years ago when he learned about an American businessman, Richard Stanley, who was sponsoring Uganda’s first baseball field and creating a Little League team. It was comprised of tenacious youngsters, many from poverty-stricken homes and unable to afford the most basic baseball gear. But the Ugandan team proved you don’t need fancy equipment to be a winner. What they lacked in material possessions they more than made up for in determination and skill, eventually traveling to Poland in 2011 to play in the regional championships. There, they earned the right to compete in the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Penn., where they would have been the first African team in history to participate.

Bureaucratic red tape forced the cancelation of their trip, when visas to the United States were declined due to insufficient documentation. One player in Opposite Field explained that unlike most families in North America, who possess and protect important documents like their children’s birth certificates, in Uganda this is close to impossible. Birthing clinics fail to record information and families struggling to feed their children have other priorities than obtaining and keeping the documents.

Enter Ruth Hoffman, a Vancouver accountant who heard about the plight of the Uganda Little League team in August 2011, not long after their visas were declined. A specialist in microfinance who has worked in Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Hoffman is a mother of three and well acquainted with baseball.

“My twin boys competed in Poland and their team made it to the World Series in 2006, something that became the highlight of their youth,” she recalled. Her sons’ trip had almost been canceled, too, as they were trying to fly to the United States at precisely the same time as the shoe bomber’s failed attack was discovered, stopping most international flights. Hoffman recalled hovering at the airport among the reporters, waiting desperately to get onto a flight. Determined as they come, she told her boys’ story to a reporter – that they were scheduled to play but couldn’t get a flight out to their destination. It quickly garnered media coverage with surprisingly positive results. “British Airways put the boys and their team on the first flight [possible],” she said.

With this experience in mind, if there was anyone could change the plight of the Uganda Little League team, it was Hoffman. First, she called the mayor of Langley, B.C., as the team had been scheduled to compete at the World Series against the Langley Little League team. She suggested they bring the Uganda team to British Columbia to play Langley. After further discussions with Uganda coach George Mukhobe, it was decided that the Langley team would visit Uganda, instead.

Shapiro and his cameras were there for the January 2012 trip, as were three members of Major League Baseball, Jimmy Rollins, Gregg Zaun and Derrek Lee, who felt compelled to join the unique journey. Hoffman partnered with a humanitarian organization, Right to Play, which encouraged her to leave a legacy for what became known as the Pearl of Africa series. Together they raised $155,000 for this trip, funds used towards education of the Uganda team players, equipment, improvement and construction of baseball fields and a player transportation fund.

It might have ended there but that was just the beginning for Hoffman. In Part 2 of the Pearl of Africa project, she raised another $40,000 for the Uganda team, funds that helped train Uganda softball and baseball coaches. Her goal for Part 3 is to raise another $20,000 for the Uganda Baseball and Softball Association.

Opposite Field tells some of this story, focusing mostly on the time leading up to the Langley team’s visit. Filmmaker Shapiro humanizes the team by focusing on individual members, their personal struggles and their motivations and goals. In the process, he takes viewers deep into Uganda, revealing a level of poverty unrivaled in North America. It’s a beautiful story with a happy, or happier, ending, one that’s still in the making.

View an excerpt online at opposite-field.com or look out for the entire documentary, whose Canadian rights have been purchased by CBC, on television.

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond, B.C. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net.