Sister City exchange focuses on baseball

Nineteen 11- and 12-year-olds from San Mateo will be heading to Toyonaka, Japan Aug. 13 to play a little baseball and learn a bit of Japanese culture.

Toyonaka has been a sister city of San Mateo since 1963 and began exchanging youth baseball teams in 1979. Every other year San Mateo sends an all-star baseball team, chosen from all of San Mateo’s youth leagues, to Toyonaka to play in a non-competitive exhibition tour. The tour goes through Hiroshima, Nara, and Osaka as well as Toyonaka for a total of five games.

Mike Sweeney, a member of the San Mateo Sister City Association 2007 Toyonaka Goodwill Baseball Team is very excited about going to Japan.

"The experience of what it’s like to live as a Japanese family would, just to experience that,” he said.

While there, the boys act as unofficial goodwill ambassadors, representing the United States. The players stay with host families from an opposing team learning Japanese culture and bonding with the families.

"I’ve been involved since 1979 and every exchange is different but the same, its different because of the dynamics of the group, it’s the same in a sense that the relationship between out two cities gets stronger, as well as the bond between the boys and their host families,” said George Musante, treasurer of The Sister Cities Association.

The goodwill between the two cities and the bonding is the most important aspect of this exchange, but the baseball is still important.

"I’d like to see how they play baseball different than we do,” said Tyler Storozinski, a member of the San Mateo team.

The boys went through rigorous tryouts of batting and fielding, then a scrimmage and finally a personal interview. The athletes were chosen not only for their physical ability but for their maturity and sportsmanship as well.

Those chosen prepare for their trip by not only practicing baseball, but by learning more about Toyonaka as well.

"We’ve been assigned some things by the coaches. We have to find information about Toyonaka, learn phrases, the history about the bonding between San Mateo and Toyonaka, facts about the city things like that,” said Sweeney.

"You can tell it’s a success because it’s always parents crying and boys crying ‘cause they’re leaving … when it’s time to go they really feel like they’re leaving their family,” said Musante. "The greatest value is the awareness that even though we’re 6,000 miles apart, people are the same.”

The city of San Mateo has been extremely supportive of this endeavor, helping out the Sister City Association, a nonprofit organization.

"Our city is a multi-cultural city. And one of the strong ethnic groups in our city is Japanese Americans and Pacific-rim people. And so having that communication and understanding of their culture is very important and celebrating the differences and the similarities in our cultures is very important as well,” said San Mateo Mayor Jack Matthews on why this exchange was important for both the boys and the city of San Mateo.

The San Mateo ballplayers will begin practicing together after their Little League season ends in July. Meanwhile, they are raising money to pay for the trip, which receives no public funding. The team needs to raise $60,000 to pay for travel expenses, equipment, uniforms, and goodwill gifts.

On Saturday, May 12 a Dinner-dance and silent auction will be held at Beresford Recreation Center, 2720 Alameda de las Pulgas, San Mateo, tickets can be purchased at the door. And Friday, June 22 there will be a golf tournament at Poplar Creek Golf Course, 1700 Coyote Point Drive, San Mateo.

For more information, please contact Constance Sweeney at Big Wave Public Relations 650-358-9119 or e-mail her at toyonaka@bigwavepr.com.