What is cccp comrade
As exotic as real, live Soviets seemed to me at the time, the western wear, Texas accents, cowboy hats, and 72-ounce steaks no doubt seemed just as exotic to a Russian athlete. “The Soviets loved Amarillo.” It’s not hard to imagine why. It drew their best crowds,” said Bob Protexter, another one of the Soviet team’s coaches, in a recent Facebook Messenger interview. “ was an awesome place for baseball and southern hospitality. tour before the Goodwill Games in Seattle. The team that played in Amarillo was part of a U.S. Mick and coaches like him brought expertise and equipment to help spread the American national game on the other side of the weakening Iron Curtain. The Soviets sought to build a program to compete in what was then a new Olympic medal sport. The program was essentially started by an American businessman living in Moscow named Rick Spooner. “Good athletes, not yet very good baseball players,” as Dad put it.
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The roster consisted of professional athletes in the Soviet system who were fringe players in other sports. It came from a guy named Bunny Mick, an American baseball lifer who was in between stints as a hitting coach with the Cardinals and Astros and had been recruited to coach the Soviet players during this tour.
Most of of them were largely indecipherable, but one of them remains legible to this day. Splashed across the player’s white pullover jersey were four red letters with gold trim: “CCCP.” Those same letters appeared on his red cap. The player smiled as I wordlessly handed him the ball, and Dad said a couple of welcoming words he knew in Russian. It was all part of a goodwill tour that the team was on at the time. Spinning around to face me, his attention duly caught just as Dad suggested, was a player on the Soviet Union’s National Baseball Team. Dad suggested I use a particular word to get the attention of the broad-shouldered, visiting player near the baseline.
More notable to my dad and most of the other fans were the Texans’ opponents that night: the USSR National Baseball Team.Īfter the game, baseball and ballpoint pen in hand, I slipped past the first base dugout toward the players, in search of an autograph. For starters, fans were allowed on the field for handshakes and autographs after the game, which was the most exciting part for me. From the top of the stands you could see the nearby stockyards, their omnipresent feedlot aroma mixing with the odors of fresh popcorn and just-mowed grass.Īs a six-year-old in 1990, I spent many a summer evening there watching the Amarillo Texans in the now-defunct collegiate Jayhawk League. Fans could gaze beyond the advertisement-studded outfield wall and see a grain elevator in the background. Potter County Memorial Stadium, a now-vacated minor league and college ballpark in Amarillo, Texas, was never anyone’s idea of a Cold War showdown site. For all photos but this one, click to enlarge