by Pam Postema, Asst. to Yuma GM

September 22, 2014: Kivalina, AK — Once before, in 2011, the Kivalina Bowheads played in the Surf and Snow Amalgamation playoffs. They lost. No one in Kivalina noticed.

The residents were embroiled in a legal battle with major oil companies over the rising seas that threatened to swallow the village. Unable to persuade the state of Alaska to declare their tiny hamlet a disaster area, Kivalina’s town council came up with the idea – imaginative to some, outrageous to others – of suing the oil corporations that had been pumping and continued to pump crude oil out of Alaska. The corporations, Kivalinans reasoned, were responsible in large measure for global warming, which in turn was the cause of the rising seas that threatened Kivalina.

The lawsuit, which they eventually lost, kept the villagers busy in 2010 and 2011. No time for frivolities like baseball.

Besides, as Bob Swan, a former resident who claims membership in the prominent Swan clan, explains, “No Inupiat ever played baseball. It’s foreign. It’s strange, weird, and incomprehensible. Until the flood, no one cared what happened with the Bowheads.”

“Until the flood”—that would be the flood of 2012, when the Chukchi Sea finally delivered on its threats and swept across the narrow peninsula that was home to Kivalina’s 377 residents. They retreated to the only structure undamaged by the rising waters, the only structure large enough to accommodate an entire village, the only structure left standing in hundreds of miles after the storm: the baseball stadium. Situated on a hump of land across the bay from Kivalina, the Bowheads’ ballpark was renovated for the Kivalina evacuees, with semi-private toilets, expanded dorm rooms and new kitchen facilities, and it was renamed The Sanctuary. Most of the money for renovation came from the Bowheads’ parent club, the Yuma Bulldozers, but there were sizable contributions from other PEBA teams. Though the accommodations were a bit sterile and institutional compared to their cozy cottages and fish shacks on the peninsula, no one from Kivalina complained.

Quite the opposite. Residents volunteered to work for the club and assist in the renovations. Some were hired permanently. Others made themselves useful as the former ballpark was transformed from a singular function – baseball – to multiple functions: home, community shelter, playground, school, hospital, post office and, yes, ballpark. The locals who had previously ignored the fate of the Bowheads ballclub began to take an interest. Attendance of Kivalinans rose dramatically. Home games became the central social event of the community. Town council meetings were scheduled around ballgames.

So when the Bowheads qualified for the playoffs this year, the response of the locals was quite different than it had been in 2011. That year, though Kivalina took two of three games from the Angoon Avalanche before being defeated in three games by the Sitka Capitals, no one from Kivalina attended the away games of either series. Few locals even attended the home playoff games. As Joseph Swan puts it, “We were too busy hunting whales.”

But this year has been different. That was evident when residents organized the first bonfire to support the ballclub before they flew to Akutan for a series against the second place Island Eagles. “The bonfire was a big deal,” according to Mayor Tom Hanifan. “We’d had bonfires before, but always part of native ceremonies; never like that, a spontaneous expression of the community.”

With the success of the Bowheads, the stadium has become the center of Kivalina social life. “No place better to be,” says Police Chief Galen Swan. “Everything you’d want is here: food, toilets, entertainment, even your home, however temporary it may be. ‘Sides, everyone else is here, so… where else you gonna go?”

Where else, indeed? Even before the flooding, the tiny village of Kivalina offered few distractions: no movie house, no theatres, no sports fields. Just an abandoned bowling alley, a high school gymnasium, and a couple bars. The Sanctuary now has a makeshift movie room and kids play on the outfield grass while adults sip beer and harder stuff in the outfield bleachers. But all that comes to a halt on game day. No booze, no flicks, no kids on the field. Everyone focuses on baseball.

On game day, Police Chief Swan becomes head of stadium security. “Glorified cop work,” he calls it. “A lot like being Chief, really, ‘cept there’s more to do.”

Joseph Swan sells dried salmon and whale meat, as well as the local delicacy, candied salmon, from his cart just inside the stadium gates. “It’s a nice break from hauling fish nets. All I can eat, too.”

“Anything that gives me a day on dry land is worth it,” says fisherman and whale hunter Ben Swan. He works with the clean-up crew.

Even Colleen Swan, the legal mind behind the suit of the oil companies and an elder in the Inupiat tribe, takes part by selling tickets.

“The whole town pulls together on game day,” Mayor Hanifan says.

And if Kivalina loses this year like they did back in 2011?

“We’ll notice,” promises the Mayor. “Probably have to have another bonfire to lift our spirits and remind ourselves that there’s always next year.”

No one else in Kivalina is thinking about next year. The focus is on this year, this club, and the playoffs about to begin.