By OSWALD T. BROWN
WASHININGTON, D.C., April 12, 2019 — I am as excited as a little boy on Christmas Eve anticipating the arrival of Santa Clause as I look forward to seeing my first Washington Nationals game live tomorrow, Saturday, April 13, at Nationals Stadium.
Thanks to my “sister” Denise Rolark-Barnes, Publisher of the Washington Informer, and Ron Burke, Director of Advertising and Marketing at the Washington Informer, I have received two tickets for tomorrow’s game against the Pittsburgh Pirates.
The Washington Nationals is one of the corporate sponsors of the District of Columbia Spelling Bee, which has been sponsored by the Washington Informer since 1983, and this year’s D.C. Spelling Champion will be a special guest at Saturday’s game, an annual tradition started when the Washington Nationals signed on as a corporate sponsor.
Wouldn’t it be great if there were more corporate sponsors in The Bahamas with a similar altruistic commitment to the Bahamas National Spelling Bee (BNSB). For the first time this year, the BNSB is sending two contestants to represent The Bahamas in the 92nd annual Scripps National Spelling Bee, which will be held at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbour, Maryland, near Washington, D. C., from May 27 – 30, 2019.
In addition to Roy Seligman, the 10-year-old Lyford Cay International School student who won the 22nd annual Bahamas National Spelling Bee championship finals held at Atlantis on Paradise Island on March 10, The Bahamas will also be represented by Kevin Williams, an 11-year-old Yellow Elder Primary student who finished second in this year’s BNSB championship finals.
The Nassau Guardian, the major corporate sponsor of The Bahamas National Spelling Bee, has been committed annually to covering the expenses of The Bahamas champion’s trip to D.C., bit I am not sure whether or not The Guardian has also committed to covering all of the expenses of a second contestant based on reports I have received out of Nassau.
By virtue of finishing second in the BNSB championships finals, one of the prizes won by Kevin as a trip to Washington for the Scripps Spelling Bee, so his airline fare and accommodations were guaranteed. However, now that he is a contestant, it is absolutely critical that his spelling coach, who was instrumental in preparing him to compete in the BNSB, accompanies him to D.C. But funds to cover her expenses are not the responsibility of the BNSB, so a fund-raising campaign has been organized to assure that Kevin’s coach is with him in Washington, D.C., when he competes in the prestigious Scripps Bee.
I have not been asked to make this appeal, and I certainly hope that the Principal at Yellow Elder Primary School, where Kevin is a student, has no objection to me requesting that persons wishing to assist in assuring that Kevin’s coach accompanies him to D.C. should contact Yellow Elder Primary or BNSB officials at the Ministry of Education.
I actually started to write this to briefly discuss my excitement about attending my first Washington Nationals game tomorrow, but as the individual responsible for introducing the Scripps National Spelling Bee to The Bahamas when I was Editor of the Nassau Guardian in 1998, I am extremely pleased with the fact that this year we will have two talented young spellers entered in the Scripps Bee in D.C.
But back to the game. Baseball is my most favourite sport and I have been a rabid fan from my early teenage years. Back then, like the vast majority of my contemporaries, I was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan, but when Andre Rodgers became the first Bahamian to play in the Major League with the New York Giants in 1957, I switched my support to the team for which my “homeboy” played.
When the Giants subsequently relocated to California and became the San Francisco Giants, my support for the Giants remained rock-solid, and even after Andre was traded, I continued to be a Giant fan, even though I also supported whatever team Andre was playing with during his 10 years in the Major League.
During my second tenure as President of the Bahamas Baseball Association (BBA) in the early 1970s, I invited Bob Brown, an executive of the Baltimore Orioles, to visit Nassau to see the level of baseball that was being played in The Bahamas at the time, but ostensibly the visit was arranged to discuss the possibility of the Orioles using Nassau as their spring training base.
That likelihood never went beyond the discussion stage because our baseball facilities were not up to standard to accommodate Major League spring training games, but Bob and I became great friends after I relocated to Washington, D.C., early in 1975 and he extended an open invitation to me to give him a call whenever I wanted to attend an Orioles game. Washington, D.C. did not have a professional baseball team when I initially moved to D.C., so I frequently took him up on that offer and subsequently became a strong Orioles fan.
After returning to The Bahamas in 1996, having lived in D.C. for more than 20 years, I often visited D.C., and when the Montreal Expos moved to D.C. in 2005 and became the Washington Nationals, during my visits I would attend Nationals games and subsequently became the die-hard fan that I am today. So, I am certainly looking forward to my first game of the season tomorrow.
