by Pam Postema, Asst. to Yuma GM

September 15, 2014

“Who is that guy?”

No one recognized him. The stranger disappeared into the bowels of the ballpark. “Prob’ly just some fan from Angoon,” Police Chief Galen Swan suggested.

“They sent fans all the way here just for a ballgame?” Frances Swan, secretary and treasurer of the town council, said incredulously.

“Hard-nosed baseball types’ll do that,” said Chief Swan. “Even in Alaska.”

“Maybe he’s a new employee,” suggested City Clerk Marilyn Swan.

“Didn’t the ballclub agree to hire only Kivalina residents?” asked Elder Colleen Swan.

“I’ll look into it,” said Mayor Tom Hanifan. “Meanwhile, watch the kids, enjoy the celebration.”

Young fans, Kivalina natives all, were cavorting on the base paths while their elders enjoyed the free hot dogs and whale meat sandwiches. The Sanctuary, as the Kivalina Bowheads’ stadium was rechristened two years ago, had been converted from baseball to something resembling a county fair. It was the biggest public celebration the tiny hamlet of Kivalina had seen since the Russians sold Alaska and departed in 1867, leaving a handful of whale hunters stranded on a narrow peninsula of sand jutting into the Chukchi Sea. Even the 1958 celebrations of Alaska’s statehood didn’t reach Kivalina. “We were too busy hunting whales to worry much about what statehood might mean for us,” Joseph Swan, a local fisherman, explained. “And it ain’t meant much since, neither.”

But baseball has. Beginning in 2008, for reasons no one can recall (at least no one in Kivalina), the Planetary Extreme Baseball Alliance brought baseball teams to remote Alaskan villages like Kivalina and Barrow and Cold Bay and Akutan Island – places were baseball had never been played before. Places where baseball had never been seen before. And it thrived.

But never had so many in Kivalina taken such an interest in the game. As the Bowheads continued to win, the local fervor for the team reached peak levels. Impromptu rallies took place, even a bonfire. And last week, the dream came true.

It took only two games, two wins against the Barrow Frozen Bullies, for Kivalina to clinch the Oiler division title and a spot in the Alaskan League playoffs. Over 300 residents were present at The Sanctuary for the third game of the series to witness the victory and title clinching – which isn’t bad for a village with a population of 377.

“Everyone’s here,” Mayor Hanifan shouted over the crowd. “The town hasn’t pulled together like this since… well, since the seawall breached back in 2012.”

“What else they got to do?” chimed in Chief Swan. “Ain’t like they got cable TV to go home to.”

In August of 2012, all 377 residents of this Alaskan whaling village were evacuated from their homes as an ocean storm breached their seawall. They moved lock, stock and barrel into the Bowheads’ ballpark. Since then, local attendance at ballgames has risen steadily.

“At first,” the mayor explained, “some folks resented having to live inside a baseball stadium, but eventually they realized the accommodations were better than what they’d left behind. And they appreciated that while the feds and the State have turned a deaf ear on Kivalina’s troubles, the Yuma Bulldozers organization has been mighty generous.”

“We owe them our lives,” said Colleen Swan, elder of the local Inupiat tribe, to which 96% of the residents belong.

“Those people in Yuma got big hearts,” the mayor added.

“Comes from losing so much,” Chief Swan added.

“Maybe the team’s generosity extends to strangers now, too,” Colleen said, pointing down to the field, where the unidentified man they’d noticed earlier reappeared, carrying something. He crossed the diamond to the bullpen, where he disappeared from view a second time.

“Who is that guy?”

No one knew.