By OSWALD T. BROWN
WASHINGTON, D.C., April 14, 2024 — My days and nights have been turned around and I generally work until late at night, often well past midnight. In my capacity as Press Attaché at the Embassy of The Bahamas here in Washington, D.C., I make every effort to do the best I can to cover events involving His Excellency Wendall Jones, Bahamas Ambassador to the United States, who is doing an excellent job as the country’s top diplomatic in the United States, as well disseminating information received from The Bahamas’ other diplomatic missions across The United States.
After going to bed well past midnight last night, I had difficulty falling asleep because of some stressful problems I am currently experiencing. So, I started binge-watching Sidney Poitier movies, of which I have an extensive collection. Of course, I have seen all of them many times before, but they always generate as much enjoyment now as they did when I first saw them.
Starting with “The Organization,” in succession I watched “They Call Me Mr. Tibbs”, “In the Heat of the Night” and “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner” before my eyes got heavy and I fell asleep. I woke up tired and weary, well past 10 o’clock this morning.
Staying in bed for another hour or so, I got up and had a cup of tea, and as usual said my Morning Devotion, during which I firstly thank my Lord and Savior for “granting me another day on your earth and for being in the driver’s seat of my life.”
I continued my morning devotion by reading the OUR DAILY BREAD post on Facebook, and an excerpt from the scripture reading segment was like an epiphany that seemed to specifically address my lingering problems. Here’s that excerpt:
LUKE 12:25–34
25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each has enough trouble of its own.”
Almost miraculously, my pressing problems were no longer worrisome, and although I had less than four hours sleep, I felt rejuvenated as I started to do the work that I had to do today., hoping to complete what I planned to do before my beloved Washington Nationals baseball game against the Oakland Athletics got underway. However, I did not succeed in doing so.
Indeed, the game ended as I was nearing completion of this article, and my beloved Nationals blew a 6 – 0 lead and lost the game, 8-7; however, I am still in a good frame of mind, a blissful condition that I fully give credit to the scripture-reading passage during my Morning Devotion. That certainly is proof of the redemptive power of prayer.
I have literally been a baseball fanatic from the sport was first introduced in The Bahamas in the 1950s. Historically, cricket was considered the Number One sport in The Bahamas because of our British colonial heritage, but after Andre Rodgers became the first Bahamian to sign a professional baseball contract in 1954 and made it to the Major League three years later in 1957, “baseball fever” spread through the country like an infectious disease.
I had a front-row seat in the arena during baseball’s early developmental years, first as a sports reporter at the Nassau Daily Tribune and later as President of the Bahamas Baseball Association (BBA), the governing body of the sport in the country.
In fact, I was President of the BBA from 1964 to 1968, which was after The Bahamas established a pipeline to the Major Leagues for talented young Bahamian baseball players.
After Andre Rodgers became the first Bahamian to make it to the Majors, Tony Curry became the second Bahamian to do so when he was “called up” by the Philadelphia Phillies in 1960. Other Bahamians who followed in subsequent years included Ed Armbrister (Cincinnati Reds 1973), Wenty Ford (Atlanta Braves), Wilfred Culmer (Cleveland Indians 1983) and Antoan Richardson (Atlanta Braves 2011).
What many Bahamian sports aficionados may not remember is that the late Vince Ferguson — who was later better known in The Bahamas as an educator and in sporting circles as long-time President of the Bahamas Amateur Basketball Association (BABA) — was also an outstanding baseball player. Vince played professionally for seven years and was one step away from making it to the Major League when he decided to abandon his quest to become a Major Leaguer after playing the 1967 season with the Richmond Braves, which at the time was a Triple-A International League affiliate of the Atlanta Braves.
And, of course, the late Edmond “Ed” Moxey, who played Class A professional baseball at Modesto in California in 1963, had a great Minor League career, but never made it to the Major League. He ended his professional career after playing the 1969 season in the Mexican League, which was classified as Triple A.
Currently, Bahamian Jazz Chisholm Jr., centerfielder for the Miami Marlins, is one of the Major League’s most exciting payers and has the capabilities and charisma to be a superstar. Jazz last year became the first Bahamian professional baseball player to be selected to the Major League All-Star team.
There are also sundry other outstanding Bahamian players at various levels of the Minor Leagues in the pipeline headed to the Majors.
During my tenure as President of the BBA from 1964 to 1968, I took teams to the National Baseball Congress (NBC) tournament in Wichita, Kansas, on two occasions before stepping down as Preident in 1968 to go to London on a one-year training course in journalism on the staff of the London Evening Standard.
When I returned from London in November of 1969, the following year I was again elected President of the BBA. Along with a team of effective BBA officers and the late Allan Jackson, who was a great Baseball Commissioner for many years, baseball had what I often describe as some of its best years since it became a popular sport in The Bahamas.
A top priority was to resume participation in the NBC tournament in Wichita, and we had the good fortune of having Andre Rodgers as manager of the team we took to Wichita in 1971.
My presidency of the BBA ended in 1973 due to personal reasons that eventually resulted in me relocating to the United States in late 1974.
There is no question that future of baseball in The Bahamas – and all sports, for that matter – is in good hands with the development of sports in The Bahamas generally being among the top priorities of Prime Minister Philip E. Davis and his PLP government. What’s more, the Prime Minister could not have chosen a more efficient Minister to head the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Culture than Mario K. Bowleg, who has unquestionably done an outstanding job in carrying out his ministerial responsibilities since being sworn in as Minister shortly after the PLP’s landslide victory in the September 16 general elections.
