Grow chose Belize�s ruins for reasons of pragmatism and safety. The Maya ruins of Tikal in Guatemala had also been the site of a series of brutal robberies and rapes in 2001. That wasn�t a risk the team�s cultural liaison wanted to run. Moreover, the native language of Belize is English, though Creole rules the streets of Belize City and Spanish is common in the north and west of the city. �I speak a mean Gaelic, but my Spanish isn�t much, and Creole is doggerel a moi.� So even though a couple Spanish-speaking Greens accompanied the contingent (Ramon Ortiz and Dennys Reyes) and might have served as translators, Grow thought the better Mayan choice was Belize. For the first time, Grow invited some former members of the organization to join the trip, and accompanying current members of the team and office staff were one-time Greens and Timbers Rene Gonzales, now working as a representative for a Mexican utility company; Ron Karkovice, who promotes a line of men�s beauty products; and Doug Dascenzo, whose life out of baseball has been largely in the shadows due to his tragic disfigurement while playing for the Seattle Timbers. An errant pitch impressed the curved stitches of a major-league fastball against the hapless cheek of the journeyman outfielder. Thanks to recent advances in scar therapy, Dascenzo was facing the world again and consented to join the team on its Mayan expedition.
The flight to Belize City was uneventful. Things started to get interesting once the team chartered a bus and drove west to the Cayo District for a visit to the Mayan ruins of Xunantunich. First the air conditioning broke down. �It�s warm until it gets hot,� remarked Nick Johnson later. Then twenty miles past Belmopan, the bus came upon a wreck on the Western Highway involving a Hummer and a Zeta Water Truck (�The Melting Pot of Belize� read the truck�s banner). It was a nasty accident, but it also caused quite a traffic jam. Traffic was detoured, and the Greens� chartered bus found itself crawling through the rolling fields of the Cayo District, with Mennonite farms and cattle spreading out far as the eye can see. Then the bus broke down. Before the mechanic dispatched from San Ignacio could reach the scene a John Deere tractor with two helpful Mennonites appeared, declared themselves Progressives, and got the bus running in no time. Cards and small talk were exchanged the while and the upshot was an impromptu game of softball pitting a girls� team from Spanish Lookout against the assembled Greens. It ought to have been a friendly mismatch, but the Mennonites had a devastating sixteen year-old lefthander named Ruth, who embarrassed Johnson and a number of the regulars with a humdinger fastball and a Jim dandy of a bender. The two teams played to a scoreless tie, and the Greens came away impressed. �Yes, they dress funny, and it�s softball,� said shortstop Derek Jeter. �But that girl sure could pitch. Nice looking too.�
The next day, the team visited majestic Xunantunich, which inspired delight in all, except perhaps traveling secretary Becky Olson, who has done her share of traveling but still professed some concerns about the height of El Castillo. �It is a long way down. Lord knows how many might have fallen over the centuries. That's not a human sacrifice I'm prepared to make.� After Xunantunich, the organization went on to Orange Walk, base camp for a day trip to the Mayan ruins of Lamanai, a primordial river trip down river. Adam Kennedy called the boat ride �something right out of National Geographic,� and Jeter loved the ball court at Lamanai. �It�s not baseball, but, hey, it�s got a ball. Or did they use heads?�
But tragedy struck on the boat ride back to Orange Walk. Dangling his hand in the water, Dascenzo had a fingertip nipped off by a New River crocodile. Howling in pain, he cried as his screams were suppressed by a collective effort of the rest of the boat�s passengers, intent on enjoying the serenity of the verdant river banks and snowy river birds. �No reason he had to spoil it for everyone,� noted Kennedy. Dascenzo got proper medical attention in Belize City, but the fingertip was lost for good, and the crocodile escaped without identification. Dascenzo confessed that �all crocodiles look alike to me.�
In Belize City, the team looked to avoid any more drama. But national elections had been called for early March, and political spirits ran high throughout the country of Belize. The reigning People�s United Party, the blue, hoped to buck history and become the first government since independence in 1981 to hold office for concurrent terms. The opposing United Democratic Party, the red, was trying to resume power and unearthed a series of weekly scandals designed to discredit the PUP, from secret long-term agreements with a bus company, to a passport scandal to the swindling of scholarship money through the ministry of education. Against both parties were the independent candidates, the green, who considered both parties corrupt and asked the people of Belize to overlook lifelong affiliations and give the country a fresh start. Mere tourists, the Greens took no stand. At most, they compared favorite television commercials and campaign jingles. But as it happened, in a Belize City nightclub, politics came to the Greens, despite their bystander status. At M.J.'s nightclub the night before their departure, the Green contingent found itself embroiled in conflict because of their name. A drunken party of PUP loyalists asked about the political attachments of the Greens. Mistaking their team moniker for political alliance with the independents, the PUP hooligans started a row, which started with raised voices and led to raised fists. Before club bouncers could stop the donnybrook, a PUP fanatic had pulled a knife and slashed Dascenzo, slicing his left cheek from lip to ear.
Dascenzo was rushed to the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital and stitched up, but stitches could only to so much. �If he weren�t already scarred for life, this attack would be a real hardship,� said Karkovice, his one-time teammate. �But if it had to happen to anyone, it�s best it happened to Doug. He�s a gamer.� In the company of the Greens party, the game and mutilated Dascenzo returned to the States on the plane the following morning, pledging to continue his gospel of scar therapy. �It can�t do anything for my missing fingertip, but if Curad Scar Therapy can help hide both my ugly facial scars, imagine what it can do for you or your loved one.�
As for Grow, she loves the adventures, and she knows it's part of the job description. Still, she regrets the pain. "Look, I love a good scare as much as the next gal, but these are real people here. You can't look at Doug and not feel for him. The man is doubly disfigured. Plus consider what this latest adversity does to our insurance rates. Whoosh, right through the roof." Grow conceded that plans for next year's off-season might exclude the Third World. "I don't like the term either, but, let's face it, these major leaguers like hot and cold running water and no machetes in bars. Can you blame them?" Concluded Grow with a smile, "Maybe it's time we go back to Ireland."
In the meantime, as the new baseball season beckons, Grow will settle down to setting up the team's local off-the-field work, which includes personal appearances, charity fundraising, and visits to local schools, hospitals, and brothels. "We need to keep sowing the good seed that is the Moline Greens."
Moline Greens� cultural liaison Dineen Grow had no way of knowing what would happen when she planned this year�s Caribbean adventure. Then again, she never does, not when she�s leading the Greens away from the safe confines of Moline Park. She thought she was arranging an off-season team excursion to Belize that would follow up the archeological investigations of last year�s off-season, when members of the Greens organization spent a serene week at Chaco Cultural National Historic Park in New Mexico, heart of the Anasazi culture in the American Southwest. Team members along for that trip last January so enjoyed the communing with sheep and the ancestors of ancient native Americans in keg-fueled kiva parties and peyote-driven bacchanals that Grow thought to pursue the ancient Indian theme even further. �What with that immobilized native setting right outside our doorstep, the ancient Mayan thing looked like a no-brainer.�