Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

Show NLP summaries collection recirc on article pages

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

What actually happens within your lawn when you don’t mow it

What Trump said in his 10 gag order violations

Find your Westminster show dog name: You may be a CH Lolly’s Marble Tuxedo MX

Battles rage around Rafah’s edge as more than 100,000 flee the city

Biden’s weapons sales to Israel breach legal limits, former officials say     

China’s latest wellness trend? Marathons. But good luck getting a spot.

Trump team throws out GOP plan and builds a ‘leaner’ 2024 operation 

2024 election latest news: Biden raising money in San Francisco, Seattle areas

Trump thinks his anti-green culture war is worth a $1 billion donation

Vegetables star at Mita, where you get taste after taste (after taste)

To get outs with his fastball, Trevor Williams put his ego aside

4 best things to do with kids in the D.C. area this weekend

Claire Messud turns her family’s history into a masterpiece

Kristi Noem’s dog killing is pure Southern gothic

Joseph Epstein, conservative provocateur, tells his life story in full

Google’s new ‘Find My’ device network is useful but a stalking risk

Apple apologizes for iPad ad after blowback 

Hack targeting hospital chain Ascension is impacting patient care

The case for eating at Italian gas stations

Cruise ship drags dead whale into New York, prompting investigation

5 big travel lessons from an accomplished conservationist

Israel’s shameful ban on Al Jazeera

Checks, not sex, and other takeaways from Trump’s New York hush money trial

In Arizona, election workers trained with deepfakes to prepare for 2024

Photos of his mom at lunch are a balm people didn’t know they needed

Dog hit by car loses leg, is adopted by firefighter who helped her

Postal worker finds WWII-era letters, drives 5 hours to deliver them

Miss Manners: Why were other diners laughing at us?

Ask Amy: Man doesn’t want cancer to define him

Carolyn Hax: In-laws stalk the live stream to check couple’s attendance at church

The urgent air defense lessons of April 16 

Are smartphones destroying childhood? It’s complicated.

In the campaign against Donald Trump, do the ends justify the means?

5 myths about Social Security as the program faces a funding crisis

Social Security has to be fixed. But you still need your own savings.

An I bond is now at 4.28 percent. Are they still a good deal?

US-POLITICS-BIDEN

A teenager in a knee-length robe hits a baseball toward other baseball players as a Buddha statue towers in the background.

Matthew DeSantis

Ugyen Pelzang had unleashed a titanic swing that sent a baseball soaring into the air past the gawking infielders in front of him. It was a sure home run. But that wasn’t why the photo of him went viral.

Pelzang’s homer happened on a paved parking lot, not a baseball diamond. Looming over the improvised field, in lieu of foul poles or bleachers, was the bronze figure of the Great Buddha Dordenma, a towering Buddha statue, and a backdrop of a thick forest shrouded in fog. Pelzang, the 19-year-old batter dressed not in pinstripes but in a knee-length robe, was nevertheless a familiar character at the center of the image: a slugger swinging for the fences.

“I was planning for a home run,” Pelzang wrote to The Washington Post. “And hit the ball with all my might.”

The photo of Pelzang captured a striking scene of America’s pastime taking hold in the mountains of Bhutan, thousands of miles from the sport’s birthplace. It was taken by Matthew DeSantis, a co-founder of the Bhutan Baseball and Softball Association and a Boston Red Sox fan from Connecticut who spent over a decade slowly shepherding the growth of baseball in the remote South Asian country.

When DeSantis’s photo was published alongside an <a href="https://www.mlb.com/news/featured/bhutan-hopes-to-be-next-great-baseball-country" target=_blank>MLB.com feature</a> about Bhutan’s nascent baseball scene in early August, the baseball world took notice. Fans on social media were awestruck. Major league veterans, including a Hall of Famer, liked the photo and sent words of encouragement. DeSantis quickly put prints of the photo <a href="https://matthewrdesantis.client-gallery.com/gallery/baseball-in-bhutan" target=_blank>up for sale</a> to fundraise for baseball in Bhutan.

It was a breakthrough, DeSantis told The Washington Post — not only for his program but also for players like Pelzang who had become some of the first of Bhutanese children to grow up with the game.

“To have that type of response from baseball lovers worldwide, it’s just going to drive us to work harder,” DeSantis said.

DeSantis traveled to Bhutan in 2010 to work as a systems developer. While volunteering at Bhutan’s Olympic Committee office, he met Karma Dorji, a Bhutanese employee at the committee. DeSantis, who played shortstop in high school and college, pitched the idea of showing Bhutanese children the game. Dorji, who played cricket growing up, knew little about baseball but happily agreed.

They put up a Facebook post asking if any children in Thimphu, Bhutan’s capital, wanted to try out the sport after school. To their shock, around 60 kids, from 8-year-olds to teenagers, showed up.

A young boy wearing a light blue jacket grips a baseball and glove and practices a throwing motion. Behind him, children play on a yellow grass and concrete against a backdrop of trees and hills.

Courtesy of Matthew DeSantis

Bhutan’s first Little Leaguers started off playing on patches of concrete and dirt at the center of a neighborhood running track, using a cardboard square held down by rocks as home plate. They had little in the way of gear, and even the youngest players pitched and fielded using hardballs, DeSantis recalled.

“They were great ballplayers, all of them,” DeSantis said.

But bringing baseball to Bhutan came with challenges. Getting enough baseball equipment to the landlocked country, where international freight has to be trucked in from ports in India or airports in Thailand, is costly. And the hilly terrain made it difficult to find enough playing fields for a growing player base.

DeSantis and Dorji started off with donated gear from a high school in Connecticut. The pair, funded largely through donations at first, steadily grew their baseball and softball programs until six of Bhutan’s 20 districts formed youth clubs. Now, the association boasts four baseball and softball leagues for children and teenagers, around 6,000 boys and girls.

DeSantis and Dorji have been buoyed by the enthusiasm of the children they’ve trained. Pelzang, who started playing baseball at 15, said he was curious to join a sport totally new to his country. DeSantis added that he saw a sense of fun infuse his players in Bhutan, who played hard but rarely let tensions between teams or competitiveness sour the mood. To his relief, there are no parents haranguing umpires or <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2023/04/26/little-league-parents-umpire-punishment/" target=_blank>arguing</a> calls.

“We haven’t seen any of that yet,” DeSantis said, chuckling.

DeSantis said that Pelzang’s viral home run, which came during a spontaneous pickup game in June, showed how far the sport had come in Bhutan. Pelzang joined Thimphu’s team, the Red Pandas, in 2019 and has since blossomed into a fearsome power hitter, DeSantis said. He jokingly called him “Bhutan’s Babe Ruth.”

“Gentle personality,” DeSantis said. “But not at the plate!”

The other players around Pelzang in the photo were veterans of DeSantis and Dorji’s baseball camps who joined in 2010, DeSantis said. Even as he snapped photos of the game, DeSantis caught himself reminding the pitcher to bend his back and Pelzang, one of the team’s taller players, to watch his follow-through.

“Seeing them now, as young adults hitting the ball that far, while also having memories of them as young children tumbling around with hats and gloves too big for their heads and hands, was a special moment,” DeSantis said.

A wide shot of the mountainous terrain of Thimphu, with forested hills looming in the background. In the foreground, several children play baseball on stretch of yellow grass.

DeSantis hopes the awareness and fundraising from the photo can help continue to push Bhutanese baseball forward. The photo was liked on social media by several former and current major leaguers including Nick Castellanos, CC Sabathia and Randy Johnson. Former Tigers and Yankees all-star outfielder Curtis Granderson <a href="https://fb.watch/myiNd0D1bp/" target=_blank>sent</a> a video message from Chicago to Bhutan’s baseball players, encouraging them to continue playing.

Pelzang and his peers will. They are now the senior players on their teams, eager to guide the next generation of Bhutanese kids learning the game. More opportunities may come soon. Last year, Pelzang became one of two players who earned the first scholarships for baseball at Bhutan’s Royal Thimphu College, which doesn’t field a team but awards scholarships for athletic achievement. In August, the Bhutan Baseball and Softball Association joined Baseball United, a Dubai-based professional league, which will guarantee a roster spot on one of the league’s four teams for Bhutan’s first pro baseball player.

Pelzang knows he’s blazing a trail. He said Bhutan’s story could be an example for any underdog striving for the big leagues.

“Even though we don’t have the proper facilities, we try our best to train and improve ourselves,” Pelzang said. “And if we can do it, any players around the world can do it.”

Stanford University, BA in History and MA in Communications

Daniel Wu is a reporter on The Washington Post's Morning Mix team. He joined The Post as an intern on the Metro desk in 2022 and previously worked for the Seattle Times and the San Jose Mercury News.

Daniel Wu

washpost

Ugyen Pelzang’s home run went viral. Can it boost baseball in Bhutan?

the-washington-post

handout

name

prism://prism.query/site,/national/morning-mix?limit=20

Morning Mix

The Washington Post's Morning Mix blog covers stories from all over the nation and world.

prism://prism.query/site-articles-only,/national&limit=20

National

The Washington Post's national news coverage. Get the latest national news, featuring national security, science and the courts. Read breaking national news headlines from across the U.S.