The Baseball Field
There’s always a special place in everybody’s heart where it just feels like home. The place where you could relax, enjoy life, and just disconnect yourself from the entire world once in a while. For me that place is a baseball field that is in Los Limones. Los Limones, a small village in the Dominican Republic, is a place where everybody knows everyone’s name and business. It’s located very close to the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Baseball is the number one sport played in the Dominican Republic, people live to watch and play baseball. A lot of major leagues players come from the Dominican Republic. The second you enter the village, you will see the baseball field; it is quite large, yet it’s a peaceful place. Once you experience the place for yourself, or with family and friends like I did, it’ll be quite hard for you to consider any other place giving you a better feeling of happiness and peace.
I remember being 8 years old, and I had already moved out of Los Limones to live in the city called Santiago, but every weekend we would go back and spend it over there with the family and friends, and also to watch the baseball games. In my village they have their own Yankees and Mets teams, the only difference is that they are the Dominican version. I was the first one waking up early in the morning just to go to the baseball field and watch my grandfather’s cows walk around the field. I never knew the reason why they would do that because there was no grass at the field at all or even in the whole village. The streets were basically sand, and you could see the small tornadoes that the wind would make. After watching the cows for a while, I would go back home just to eat, and take a shower so I could go back to the field. I wanted to sit in the red old and dirty benches just to feel that nice warm air hitting my face. I was never lost. if they needed to find me, I was at the field by myself walking around and getting a tan mostly every day.
Besides from loving the peace that the field brings me there are a lot of events that happen at that field. Every year there are these big parties that people make which are called Las Patronales, where people drink a lot, and there’s a princess and a queen for each village. I remember being 7 years old and being nominated as princess of my town. These parties last a week or even 9 days and everyone would go over there to the baseball field because everything was there basically: the games, the food, the drinks and also, they would go over there to watch people play baseball. After 5 years without going to my country, I finally went back this January and I was so lucky that there was still time for me to attend to this year’s patronales at my village. It was the same people, nothing has changed and that’s what makes it so special over there.
I spent 5 years in this country without going back to my small village, going to baseball games with my brothers just to see if I could find a field that makes me feel the same as the other one, but it was impossible.
Every time I was at that field in Los Limones it felt nice seeing my family together. I would see my brothers play baseball and I would get so happy because my brothers are really good at playing baseball. If we hadn’t had to move over to the United States there’s a big chance that both of them would’ve been in the major leagues by now.
Baseball is what brings the families together in my village. Every 31st of December there’s a baseball game called “The end of the year Game”, where families that used to live there and moved to another country or another city attend that game. There are 2 different teams, which are the travelers and the people that are still living in the village. There’s no peace at all that day, there’s loud music everywhere, but seeing my old friends and cousins at the baseball field made me feel excited. At the end of the day, around 11:55pm, everyone gets together at the center of the field with a lot of fireworks and we wait until it hit 12:00am and its New Year, so they shoot the fireworks. The end of the year event is the most important and the most beautiful out of all the events that happen at that baseball field. Its just something special for me, my family, and for the people who were born and raised in that small village.
Even though travelers love to come to the small village and relax, there’s a small problem that they don’t like. They have to go to the baseball field to get internet connection because in the entire village there’s no internet; let’s just say technology hasn’t touched that much over there. That’s another reason why I love that field: besides giving me peace, and happiness, it also gave me internet while I was there.
In conclusion, that big baseball field located in Los Limones, Dominican Republic means everything to me. That field is what I call “Home”. The happiness that it brings me, there’s nothing that can compare to that. Maybe I was gone for 5 years but every day I was still wondering if anything was new. I heard my dad talking how things were changing, but when I went back 9 months ago everything was still the same. The same old dirty red benches that haven’t been replaced, and instead of seeing my grandfather’s cows walking around the field now I see my dad’s and mine walking around looking for food somehow where there’s only sand. Not too far from this year, I want to build a house right next to that baseball field, so when I’m ready to retire I know where I’m going to spend the rest of my life, right next to my home field.
