Constable: Baseball the bridge to Ukraine for suburban coach

Rain and cold have canceled some spring baseball in the suburbs. Peter Caliendo of Hoffman Estates is more concerned about his Ukrainian friends, who have had their games postponed by war.

“The field in Bohuslav might still be good,” Caliendo, vice president of the nonprofit International Sports Group, says after communicating with people at the baseball facility his group helped to construct in that ancient town about 75 miles south of Kyiv. “The family that owns it is hunkered down.”

Caliendo, 60, president of Caliendo Sports International, has traveled the globe as a coach and ambassador for the game, which is played in 120 nations. Caliendo has many friends from his more than a half-dozen trips to Ukraine, the last in 2020.

“I have been going back and forth, since the war started, on WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, email. These are very good friends,” Caliendo says of his Ukrainian connections.

Even after the Russian invasion, Caliendo heard from Ukrainian national coach Oleg Boyko. “He was still thinking baseball,” Caliendo says. But safety is the bigger concern.

“Many kids go to the West of Ukraine now. There are still silent zones,” reads a message from one of the Ukrainian coaches Caliendo has befriended. “Some leave Ukraine to wait ending of war.”

One group of Ukrainian teenage baseball players is now in Serbia, playing for a Serbian team. Others have gone to Poland, Italy and elsewhere to play. “Hope to play in Ukraine this year,” the Ukrainian coach says in his message to Caliendo.

“I am saddened by all the young kids I know there and hope they are all safe,” Caliendo says.

While many of the young players and their mothers have left the country, the coaches he knows remain in Ukraine, including a Little League coach in Kyiv.

“He sent his family away and he stayed. He said he's slept in 10 different locations,” Caliendo says.

One of the handful of baseball fields in the country is in Kyiv, the capital city that has been ravaged by tank shells and missiles. “They just finished putting AstroTurf on it right before the war,” Caliendo says, adding that he doesn't know if it has been damaged in the attacks.

Seeing the reactions to ground-shaking explosions reminds Caliendo of his initial reaction to a relatively minor 2019 earthquake that interrupted his dinner in Fukushima, Japan, with legendary home run king Sadaharu Oh. Scared and unsure what might happen, they evacuated the restaurant, and things quickly returned to normal. That is not the case for Ukrainians, who have endured a month of warfare with no end in sight.

“Obviously, they are scared and extremely upset with the Russians,” Caliendo says. “We also have a lot of friends in Russia. We have over 100 coaches in Moscow. I'm praying for everybody in Russia, too.”

Baseball connections often bridge political divides, notes Caliendo, who has had wonderful success during his trips to Cuba. One of the episodes of Caliendo's baseballoutsidethebox.com podcast focuses on the advances baseball was making in Ukraine. While only one Eastern European player has made it to Major League Baseball (Dovydas Neverauskas, a Lithuanian pitcher who spent 2019-20 with the Pittsburgh Pirates), the area is filled with potential, Caliendo says.

“There is a lot of young talent in Ukraine and all of Eastern Europe. I call Eastern Europe the new frontier of baseball,” Caliendo says.

The way Ukrainians haven't given up, and show loyalty to their nation as they are still fighting a superior Russian military, doesn't surprise Caliendo. He's seen those same traits in the young Ukrainians he's met in coaching sessions there.

“They have a passion for the game,” Caliendo says. They also possess a characteristic that is essential in a game where even the greatest hitters fail about 70% of the time.

“They are mentally tough,” Caliendo says. “When it comes to failure, for them it's a little easier to deal with because of everything they've been through.”

He says he plans to return to Ukraine for more baseball instruction as soon as the war is over.

“Ukraine is one of the areas our association wants to do as much as we can. We're definitely going back. We just don't know when,” Caliendo says. “Knowing them, they are going to get back to baseball as soon as they can. These people have baseball in their blood. They love it.”