April and Kevin in Kuna Yala, the northeast coast of Panamá

Sunday, May 11, 2008

World Series in Panama

Last week was the World Series.

Well, the Panama version.

Even though the entire country is the area of South Carolina and has just 3 million people, there are about 9 to 12 teams in the Major League here, one (or more) from each province, and they can be pretty fanatical about their teams and province identity. Veraguas, our province, is Los Indios, or the indians, and you'll see hats looking very much like the Cleveland Indians on a lot of folks; one of our friends has a hat with the Indian on the front and "Clevenland" - with an extra "n" - on the back, possibly a misprint from the US. (I don't know for sure the number of teams because we don't have TV or listen to the games on the radio much, and it is never clear to me which provinces have combined teams, and which have more than one.)

The season isn't long, starting sometime in January or so, after the youth leage has played their games after the rains stopped, and finishing in mid-April. This year, Veraguas apparently made it into the championships. And we were in Santiago, our provincial capital, on the night of Game 6. We had to win to stay in. We were downtown, and found out that they (not sure who "they" are) had set up two Huge Screen TVs and massive speakers (you must have things very loud for some reason) for folks to watch the game. Probably 250 people had collected to watch, groan, cheer, and yell as the game progressed.

Here is the scene in the square sometime in the second inning.

In the end, Veraguas lost the game and Los Santos won the championship. But we enjoyed watching the families and people watching the game.

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