Ukraine's Mr. Baseball turns his attention to orphanages (03/28/04)

Ukraine's Mr. Baseball turns his attention to orphanages

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

ZHYTOMYR, Ukraine - Ask an American kid whom he would tag with the name "Mr. Baseball" and he could say Mark McGwire or Barry Bonds. Perhaps someone else might recall Reggie Jackson from another era, or Babe Ruth.

In Ukraine they would probably disagree. The bet here is that if you would ask that question of most any young baseball player in Ukraine, the name most likely mentioned would be Vasyl (Basil) Tarasko, a Ukrainian American born and reared in New York.

Mr. Tarasko, who works as head coach of the City College of New York (CCNY) baseball team and is a part-time scout for the San Diego Padres when he is not doing his stuff in Ukraine, has never hit 60 or 70 home runs for a major league baseball team. He has never struck out hundreds of major league batsmen in a single season. And he has not played in a single World Series.

But his statistics are equally impressive. In the course of 12 years, Mr. Tarasko has delivered to Ukraine what amounts to some 10,000 pounds of baseball equipment and uniforms. He has made 30 trips to help develop the American national pastime in the country from which his parents hailed.

During those visits he has taken part in forming at least a couple of dozen baseball squads. He is also the prime organizer and country director of Ukrainian Little League Baseball, officially recognized by the sanctioning body based in Williamsburg, Pa.

During his current visit to Ukraine, kids at an orphanage where Mr. Tarasko had just delivered $8,000 worth of baseball equipment - yet another impressive statistic - were asked to name their favorite baseball player. They replied, "Vasyl."

On a warm, early spring day, while most of the 382 kids at the Zhytomyr Orphanage waited in the assembly hall for the arrival of Nadezhda Herbst, spouse of U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst, who would greet the children and help distribute the equipment, Mr. Tarasko exchanged high fives with some of the 50 or so kids, boys and girls age 9-11 who had volunteered to learn the American sport. Others watched with great interest as he showed them the proper way to hold a baseball. Later, in the school's gymnasium the kids received their baseball jerseys and caps and began to learn how to play the alien game.

For Mr. Tarasko, who has helped to establish leagues in several Ukrainian cities - most successfully in Kyiv and Kirovohrad - it was a new experience as well.

The longtime coach said that he had decided to change tack in the last year after noting that the organizational aspect of developing the sport had come to a halt.

"In 2003 we hit a crossroads," explained Mr. Tarasko. "For the last few years, Little League baseball was not expanding. Most cities had one team. The Little League concept is to have at least four teams in a league compete and at the end of the year have the winners play for the championship."

In Ukraine, where sports clubs are concerned with fielding teams in various age brackets rather than several teams in one age bracket, it was difficult to get sponsorship for several teams in a city. Ukraine's Mr. Baseball identified Kirovohrad as the single place where baseball has a strong toehold, with hundreds of kids competing in several age brackets in various leagues.

What bothered him as well was that single teams in some cities that were not part of a league would receive new equipment each year, but presumably the need for it was limited to practices and the few times they participated in intra-city tournaments. He began to wonder what was happening with the stuff not being used. At first Mr. Tarasko was concerned that baseball had reached an insurmountable obstacle in its organizational development in Ukraine, but then he hit upon an idea.

"I asked myself, where are kids who might want to play baseball? It dawned on me that the orphanages were it," he explained.

In 2002 Mr. Tarasko had become acquainted with the work of the Help Us Help the Children Foundation of Toronto, a Canadian charitable organization that helps Ukrainian orphans, after he had asked them to add some baseball equipment to a humanitarian aid shipment they were undertaking.

After obtaining a list of Ukraine's largest orphanages from the group's Kyiv director, Marysa Krysa, he had his assistant, Vitalii Lyzohubenko, who is a senior trainer in Ukraine's State Committee of Sport and assistant country director of Ukrainian Little League Baseball, investigate to determine how much desire existed among the orphans and within the administrations of several of the largest orphanages. The threesome settled on two orphanages, the one in Zhytomyr and another one in Radomyshl, also located in Zhytomyr Oblast. Two other orphanages were picked as well, but they later declined to participate in the project.

Mr. Tarasko had forayed into a new aspect of organized baseball. He and Mr. Lyzohubenko, along with Harold Weissman, another New Yorker and avid Little League organizer who had been with Mr. Tarasko since the early 1990s - and has traveled to Ukraine eight times - chose several coaches from the teaching staffs of the two orphanages and took them to Kirovohrad for several days of intensive training.

Mr. Tarasko now expects that each orphanage will develop four teams apiece, thus creating two new little leagues. While their intra-league play will be limited for a year to a tournament between the two orphanages, next year they are expected to become full members of the nationwide Ukrainian Little League Baseball structure. Today that structure consists of leagues in Rivne and Donetsk, as well as in Kyiv and Kirovohrad. Mr. Lyzohubenko estimated that some 2,500 children and teenagers play organized baseball in Ukraine today.

Mr. Tarasko became Ukraine's Mr. Baseball in an unlikely manner. He first came to the country to teach the sport after replying to an ad in CCNY's college newspaper in 1991. The ad called for volunteers to coach baseball in the USSR. The Soviet Union had begun to develop baseball in the country after it became a demonstration sport at the 1986 Olympics. Mr. Tarasko won a single coaching position from among 60 other applicants and was assigned to the Moscow Red Devils. While meeting with Soviet officials at the Embassy in New York before his departure, he casually asked whether there were any teams in Ukraine.

"They said, of course, and so I ended up in Kyiv coaching the adult team, Pobutovyk," explained Mr. Tarasko.

He spent six weeks coaching in Kyiv in June and July 1991, as well as some time in Lviv. A month after his departure, Ukraine declared independence. The next year he decided to return with equipment for kids. The legend of Ukraine's Mr. Baseball had begun.

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