(Be sure to watch the video at http://www.alle-kiskitoday.com/webcasts/1451 for interviews and clips from the game between teams from Japan and New York)

Like every summer over the past decade, the world came to the Alle-Kiski's doorsteps recently, bringing talented and polite young men here for the sheer fun of smacking the stuffing out of a little white ball.

Ready to go home from the Freeport International Baseball Invitational a few years ago, Kentucky Coach Bob Sanders couldn't find one of his players. Then he saw him, out in the middle of centerfield at Freeport's Swartz Field. He sends players to go get him, and pretty soon the whole team is standing there with him. The player and some of his teammates are crying.

"Coach," the young man says to his coach, "I don't want to leave this. This has been the best. I'll never forget the way it felt to be treated the way people here treated me. Everybody who came up to me knew my name…made me feel like I was some kind of star. If I never play another game of baseball, this was worth it all."

Another player speaks, "Coach, now I know what old people mean when they talk about how the game used to be…This was just pure, raw baseball for the fun of it. I'll remember this for as long as I live, and I'll remember you gave us the chance to be here too. We all decided we think you're a pretty special guy after all."

Sander's entire team was all on the same page; no one made fun of the tears. The coach explains it himself: "What was important to me in this story though was that it had very little to do with baseball itself. He wasn't talking about his homerun, his great catches, the wins or loses. He was remembering the people and the feelings he felt. I have to admit; even I welled up a little bit then." (a link to Sander's letter is below)

Kengo Takeno, a Japanese coach, felt similar when he wrote: "We normally would not have had the opportunity to go…The fact that we were able to go as representatives of Japan to play on American soil was marvelous. It was like the movie "Field of Dreams."…The stadium at Freeport looked like a jewel box when we looked down on it from a hillside. Our good performance, the warm welcome and the friendship with the local community were all elicited by baseball." (a link to Takeno's letter is below)

This year, 40 teams from all over the globe played 100 games in five days in the AK region, all for the love of the game—which happens to be the address and name of the Invitational's website. The 2005 Freeport International Baseball Invitational was held in July at fields in Springdale, Natrona Heights, Arnold, Kittanning, Ford City and Freeport. It featured 15 to 18 year-olds from Kentucky, Maryland, Ohio, New York, Canada, Japan, and The Netherlands. An estimated combined attendance of 12,000 came to the games.

Ralph "Sonny" Westerman got the idea for the Invitational 12 years ago when his friend, an umpire, told him he knew of a team in Canada who would play Westerman's Freeport team. The Canadian team had a Japanese player/coach named Kengo Takeno who began to bring a Japanese team. Sonny says, "It all mushroomed from there." He began inviting teams from all over the US and the world.

"I must have," Sonny says, "sent out 75 letters to teams all over the world, inviting them. Anyplace you could think, of I'd write." And today they still write teams around the globe.

Sonny Westerman had a chance to swap roles to some extent, with one of the ball clubs that have come to Freeport for nine years. He went to Brooklyn a few weekends to help out one of the teams that comes every summer. Tony Major, an attorney from New York, heads up a baseball club called Major's Minors. They have a team of young men from Brooklyn that they bring to the Invitational.

"Some of the young men have never been out of the city," Sonny says. For them and for teams like those from Japan, it truly was an opportunity of a lifetime.

In July, Alle-Kiski Today had an opportunity to visit with some of the players from the Brooklyn Major's Minors team, as well as with a group of college players from Japan. You can watch the video interview with the two teams here at http://www.alle-kiskitoday.com/webcasts/1451 , as well as clips from the preceding game between the two clubs.

Catch the photo gallery from this game at on Alle-Kiski Today right here.

Read the letter to the Invitational from Kentucky's Coach Bob Sanders at http://www.fortheloveofthegame.org/love.htm

Read the note from Japanese Coach Kengo Takeno at http://www.fortheloveofthegame.org/freeport.htm