They deserve to be seen by more people.
What can a group of children in a poor mountain village with broken families and not enough to eat?
World Champion.
You read that right, it really happened in this land.
The story is not long, there are laughs and tears.
I speak slowly, you listen slowly.
01 The N E
His name is Sloppy.
A member of the Beijing Suburban Love Baseball Base.
As the name suggests, people are sloppy and rebellious, and love to fight and break into trouble.
When he was in his hometown, he was a famous little bastard.
He stole a cattle slaughtering knife from the mosque and cut off his fingers with the courage of others at every turn.
When encountering the provocation of the senior, without saying a word, he grabbed the knife and scared the other party half to death.
The Green Dragon Gang was also set up, boasting that there were 500 little brothers everywhere.
When I was in the Beijing base, I either played pranks or fought with other squad members.
So much so that everyone automatically isolated him, no one wanted to play with him, sleeping in the same dormitory.
He has always lived in rebellion.
He's called Xiao Shuang.
Unlike sloppy, he has a melancholy look in his eyes and is quiet and introverted.
Before he was born, his father died of illness, and his mother abandoned him and his twin brother.
Later, the brother was given to someone else, and the thin and weak little pair was raised by the uncle.
Until the death of the uncle, the aunt took over.
The aunt died, and the second uncle took over.
He was always on the move and insecure.
They're called the Mighty Angels.
Like sloppy and small double, behind them is a broken family and an embarrassing fate.
Some have never even met their mothers, who died when they were five years old.
Some mothers died of drug use, and fathers went to jail for drug trafficking.
Some fathers are paralyzed in bed, mothers are severely mentally ill...
From the outside world, these are all problem teenagers.
If they follow the normal script, they will drop out of school early, work in the fields better, and become in the bad ones.
Trapped in a mountain village, trapped in poverty, life at a glance.
The person who changed all this is called Sun Lingfeng, a former national baseball team main force and the founder of the Love Baseball Base.
He wants to change the fate of poor children through baseball.
Painstaking efforts were made to find children from poor mountainous areas.
"Eat, live, see a doctor, and have meat until you are 18 years old."
Zhang Jinxin, a 70-year-old man who has trained many national team players, was also invited to help with the training, and Teacher Guo Zhongjian was responsible for the children's learning and management.
In this way, a former national player, an old coach, and a volunteer teacher formed a miscellaneous army on the outskirts of Beijing.
This is an inflection point in fate.
02 T W O
Walk through the construction site and over the puddle.
Swinging a bat, pitching, running bases...
The sound of hitting the ball and shouting mixed into the construction noise.
Repeat over and over again.
Weak children become stronger and stronger.
From zero foundation all the way to become a good team in China.
Looking back at this road, it is really difficult to raise a bunch of children who can't do anything and are physically weak.
Let's do the math.
The first solution is three meals a day.
To improve their physical fitness, they have to eat a lot of high-protein foods.
Every day, I get 20 pounds of meat, milk and eggs can not be broken.
Sometimes the training intensity is so high that you have to eat 3,000 pounds of rice in a month.
At the beginning of malnutrition, eating can not digest, resulting in many people's stomachs are often swollen and hard, which has to take a lot of effort.
You also need equipment to play baseball.
Gloves, more than a thousand pieces a pair.
Train shoes, buy the cheapest 59 yuan a pair, two months a change.
Baseball caps, baseball uniforms, and some protective gear.
The above is multiplied by the number of people, which is not a small expense.
At the beginning of its establishment, Sun Lingfeng's 2 million yuan was quickly spent.
In desperation, he sold his house and car, but it was still not enough.
A winter heating of 600,000 was enough to crush him.
There was no way, so he pulled down his face and begged everywhere, knowing that before this, he was the captain of the national team, the coach of the baseball team, and others listened to him.
Zheng Zheng iron man, more than bowing his head.
One night last year, on the drive home, he felt his heart pounding and his pupils dilated.
It was difficult to drive to the hospital, diagnosed myocardial infarction, and then died later.
After the heart was propped up with four stents, he quickly went back to training.
Not only him, master Zhang Jinxin had torn his knee meniscus before, he couldn't squat, and he had to undergo physical therapy every night.
In his 70s and retirement age, he still insisted on training these children with injuries.
And they have to endure questions about how they make money from poor children.
Along the way, they have encountered many difficulties.
A training base was moved several times.
Baseball is difficult to find a venue in China, and it is difficult to find a place to face various problems.
Sometimes they are asked to move out because of safety hazards, and they are afraid of being reported, so they have to turn off the lights early at night to prevent the light in the room from being discovered.
Sometimes when there is demolition, there will often be a bunch of bullies to cut off water and electricity.
Moreover, the site is often in the construction site and farmland, and the environment is very harsh.
Every time the base was demolished, it would cry into tears.
They couldn't, they had to take every opportunity to train.
There are also children's reading problems.
Many children's cultural level is very low, and some even do not understand pinyin, which is not generally difficult to teach.
We can only work hard to recruit more volunteers and work hard to teach.
It can be said that everyone has broken their hearts.
Fortunately, some changes are quietly happening.
03 T H R E E
The children's scars are slowly being smoothed out.
Take the wild and untamed sloppy tiger.
Loving to provoke is just the only way he knows how to win the attention of the outside world.
In his upbringing, there was a lack of love.
When I was three months old, my mother couldn't bear to leave home and never came back.
He hated his dad so much that he thought every day that he would come back.
The songs that are often hummed at the base are all about thoughts:
"Mommy, Mommy, I miss you, after leaving me, my sky is raining..."
One year, dad brought back his stepmother and little brother, went out to play the next day without taking him, sloppy and hungry for a day.
When my stepmother ran away, my father was working outside, and sloppy was hungry at home for three days.
After years of not eating enough to eat, he was malnourished, and when he first arrived at the base, he ate more fiercely than anyone else.
That kind of fierceness is different from swallowing, it is full and continues to eat, and it still wants to eat until it vomits.
He was so scared that he didn't finish this meal.
Not only that, he was afraid of the dark and afraid of loneliness.
At night, a man did not dare to sleep, begging others to accompany him.
Otherwise, tie yourself with a belt and wrap your arms around the plush doll to fall asleep.
And all of this was hidden by him under the appearance of no heart and no lungs.
Usually I cry with the quilt in my arms at night, and the next day I play like nothing happened during the day.
It wasn't until one time he was criticized, when master instructed him to train them all to be a wolf, that he exposed his heart to the fullest:
"I'm a stray dog."
But later, you can see that sloppy is slowly coming out of the shadows.
What the coach brought to him was not only baseball, but also a person who lived in the world and cared for him like a father.
He never gave up on him.
He still misses his mother, but the difference is that there is more love around him.
On the day he left the small mountain village, Ma Hu took away a notebook with messages from classmates:
"Sloppy, although you beat us, we have forgiven you."
"I hope that ten years from now you will stand in front of me and already be a good baseball player."
After he had run through many disasters at the base, the coach let go of harsh words and sent him back when he went down.
Sloppy was sitting in the back seat of the car, half of his face covered in the dark, but the tears were clearly visible, and he said that he had to train hard.
Later he really kept his promise.
Fading away from the wild, he learned to unite.
Care for your teammates, encourage them, and mingle with them.
Learned to be grateful, and at the end of each training, I bowed to the field:
"Thank you for the venue, goodbye venue."
Try to learn to sing the national anthem, sing the national anthem with your teammates in a foreign country.
When asked what he wanted to do in the future, his answer was to join the national team and win glory for the country.
No matter what event he attended, he stood straight aside with his hat in his hand:
"That's the minimum courtesy of a baseball team."
This is sloppy and the epitome of every member of the Strongball Angels team.
Lucky to penetrate a beam of light in a troubled life, driving away all the yin and yin in the past.
Leave warm, leave hope.
04 F O U R
Every child is secretly transforming.
The time he was invited to the United States to compete, the base was facing demolition.
Unlike the sheer sadness of the past, they want to make a difference, make a name for themselves, get more attention and keep the base.
The main player Sloppy Tiger and the captain Dabao could not participate due to overage, and more pressure was on the small pair with shoulder injuries.
"Let's really fight a championship and come back!"
From that moment on, all metamorphosis became visible to the naked eye.
Before the game, the always annoying sloppy helped Xiao Shuang massage and relax.
Regardless of whether the ball was played well or not, the cheering sound never stopped.
The human heart is twisted into a rope.
Facing the last champion, it was tough.
Opponents are taller than them, stronger than them.
But they didn't start the game either, gritting their teeth and cutting a point.
Outside the arena, when the master saw this scene, his eyes were wet with tears:
"It really gave them a point."
Unfortunately, the strong baseball angels who tried their best were ultimately defeated.
At the moment of the final scene, Xiao Shuang collapsed on the ground and cried because of his mistake.
And his teammates came up to help him, and Sloppy kept comforting him that he had a chance.
"Baseball is not about winning and afraid of losing, but about daring to play and win."
A very subtle scene, which can be glimpsed, is called growth.
The game was over, but the Strongball Angels had just begun.
Later they participated in many competitions and really made a name for themselves.
Four children were selected for the national junior baseball team.
It is already at the top level in domestic competitions and has never fallen out of the top three.
He also traveled to Japan and won the growth group championship.
There are still many possibilities for them to be selected by baseball.
In the future, they will either become members of the national team, or become club players, or become teachers...
All have a bright future.
Today, the Love Baseball Base has also established a women's team.
The same requirement: poverty.
Same purpose: to call the board of fate.
The story of baseball's life-changing continues.
05 F I V E
Very utilitarianly, I hope more people can see the strong stick.
Eleven- and twelve-year-old children, with their hands full of cocoons and injuries on their bodies, still repeat the training.
The captain of the national team who gave up the high salary was questioned by the outside world about relying on poor children to accumulate wealth, and still sold houses and cars to continue to support.
The old coach who re-emerged from the mountain, who had to undergo physiotherapy every night for the torn knee of the meniscus, still did not speak of pain.
In them, they all have the most surging youthful spirit, and the absolute bravery that competes with fate.
This is the true story that is happening in this land.
The director who made the documentary quoted Herzog as saying:
"Bring an egg, just the fact that everyone can see;
But if you bring a chicken that breaks out of its shell, it's a story about life. ”
That's what the strong stick is.
It allows children in poor mountainous areas to see hope, to see more possibilities, to see the light of humanity.
It is telling people that even if the body is scaled, the wound will always be scarred, and the wound will eventually be healed.
Today's strong stick needs more attention.
With a documentary, it appeared in people's field of vision, unfortunately, not many people paid attention.
I was terrified that when this small wave passed, the strong stick would be drowned in all kinds of entertainment hot searches.
Then they will still repeat the previous difficulties, maybe more difficult.
Because they recruit more children from poor mountainous areas and want to help them change their destiny.
Walk into the cinema, check out the movie, and pay more attention.
I remember at the end of the film, Xiaoshuang left the baseball team and returned to his hometown, wanting to take care of his second uncle who was suffering from cancer.
He stood on the hillside and shouted to the second uncle:
"You can't leave me alone."
This is also said to us.
Don't leave this group of teenagers behind.
Because they are also hopeful!
Resources:
Documentary "Awesome! Juvenile》
Southern Weekend "Baseball 'Orphans': A Training Ground that Changed Destiny"
Extreme Day Studio "On the outskirts of Beijing, the Leader of the Green Dragon Gang grew into a "stick!" Juvenile"》
A seat for "Shoot "Awesome! When I was a teenager, I was a new father, there was the pressure of life, and I was disappointed in the documentary.
/Author of today/