Play Ball | Bringing Baseball to Bhutan

Play Ball | Bringing Baseball to Bhutan

by Rhea Hirshman

Choate Rosemary Hall Bulletin | Fall '24

In 2010, when Matthew DeSantis ’03 — a former captain of the Choate Rosemary Hall baseball team — moved to Bhutan, hardly anyone in the small Buddhist nation, nestled in the high eastern Himalayas between China and India, had ever seen a live or even a televised baseball game. But when Matt and a Bhutanese colleague put out a Facebook ad through the Bhutan Olympic Committee, inviting local people to come try the game in Thimphu, Bhutan’s capital, nearly 60 young people, aged from 6 to 20, showed up. Three weeks later, when that number grew to many hundreds, Matt knew they had started something.

Now, a decade and a half later, baseball — that most American of pastimes — is the fastest-growing sport in a country a world away, culturally and geographically, from Matt’s hometown of Wilton, Conn.

In Wilton, his parents’ backyard was the neighborhood sandlot, always full of friends who were often out there playing even before he woke up. “I played baseball ever since I can remember,” Matt says. “It was how I bonded with my father and siblings. My father coached for years, and I learned from him the importance of building community around the game.”

After graduating from Choate, where he played varsity baseball all four years, Matt completed a five-year joint program with College of the Holy Cross (where he continued to play ball) and Columbia University in economics, computer engineering, and management systems. Post-graduation, he took a position with Accenture, an international IT company. While still stateside, he also began providing systems guidance on a volunteer basis for various parties in Bhutan. In 2010, he arrived in Bhutan to work on other projects, including building a payment infrastructure to support Bhutan’s service industries, particularly tourism, and helping build computer systems for various industries shortly following the country’s governance transition from a monarchy to a parliamentary democracy.

Once in Bhutan, working and exploring the mountain terrain, rainforests, and villages, Matt knew that he wanted to stay, and that he wanted to bring baseball with him. He currently runs two businesses in Bhutan — a boutique luxury travel designer and outfitter called MyBhutan (an avid explorer himself, Matt has surveyed some of the least-traveled areas of the Himalayas), and Beyul Labs, a technology company offering business software platforms for emerging economies.

His partner in the baseball endeavor from the day they placed the Facebook ad has been Karma Dorji, with whom Matt shared a cubicle while volunteering in the office of the Bhutan Olympic Committee. Together, they also founded the sport’s governing body, Bhutan Baseball and Softball Association (BBSA), with Matt as chairman and Karma as president. The game’s creation stands as a minor component within a broader initiative led by the Bhutan Olympic Committee, under the guidance of His Royal Highness Dasho Jigyel Ugyen Wangchuck ’03, who was a former classmate of Matt’s at Choate, to foster a vibrant sports culture in Bhutan.

For the first few years, there was no particular organization — games happened whenever Matt and Karma were able to get to the makeshift field after their workdays.

One Sunday in the fall of 2013, we saw a few kids hanging around the playing ground, hoping that we would show up as we had on the other days,” Matt says. “That’s when we realized that what was happening was just the beginning.

Soon, players were forming their own teams with friends. In a particularly Bhutanese touch, one of the teams decided to name itself and have its logo designed after one of Bhutan’s singular wildlife species — the Thimphu Red Pandas. “Bhutan’s primary policy driver is Gross National Happiness (GNH),” Matt says, “and one of the four pillars of GNH is environmental conservation. The Red Pandas founder, Namgyel Wangchuck, proposed the idea to model the sport’s development around this concept.” When the Thimphu Red Pandas, the Paro Ravens, the Wangdue Cranes, the Phuentsholing Crocodiles, the Gelephu Tuskers, and the Samtse Rhinos start earning money, those funds will go toward protecting the animals represented.

GNH is a holistic approach towards notions of progress that gives equal importance to non-economic aspects of well-being. Bhutan adopted the concept in the 1970s as an alternative to GDP (gross domestic product). While Bhutan remains the only country that measures GNH, the United Nations, in 2011, unanimously adopted a resolution introduced by Bhutan calling for nations to embrace a “holistic approach to development.”

Bringing baseball to Bhutan poses several challenges. The mountainous terrain makes finding suitable playing fields difficult. Equipment can be expensive, and getting it into a remote landlocked country adds to the cost; international freight must be trucked in from ports in India or airports in Thailand. As more players started showing up, Matt and Karma started reaching out. Matt’s younger brother, Will, rallied Wilton-area high schools to donate bats, balls, and gloves. Other donations came through personal connections.

Ramon Riesgo, a young man who was captivated by their story in Matt’s hometown newspaper, started talking to — and soliciting support from — anyone who would listen. They built connections with Major League Baseball International and the BBSA has partnered with Baseball United, the upcoming league in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. As part of that agreement, one of Bhutan’s players — the country’s first professional baseball player — will be signed to a contract to play in the upcoming Baseball United Dubai inaugural league later this year.

Back home in Bhutan, thousands of boys and girls are now playing in four baseball leagues (co-ed) and four softball leagues (for girls) hosted by the BBSA. While the basic elements of the game would be familiar to any fan, Karma notes that “In a predominantly Buddhist country like Bhutan, players integrate Buddhist principles such as mindfulness, compassion, and non-violence into the approach to the game, and incorporate a variety of cultural practices.” In addition to beginning games with traditional Bhutanese offerings or prayers, players also draw on their culture to help them with their on-field techniques, whether that means pitchers who draw inspiration from the steady aim and focus required in traditional Bhutanese archery, or fielders who incorporate footwork exercises inspired by Bhutanese folk dances to improve agility and reaction time.

Both Karma and Matt remain deeply involved in developing and promoting the sport and are hopeful about the future as the country continues to embrace baseball in its own unique way.

“What I appreciate most about Choate Rosemary Hall,” Matt says, “are the friendships I’ve formed within its community. Among these friendships, both new and old, are individuals who share an enthusiasm for Bhutan or baseball, including colleagues introduced to me through our broader network, who have been instrumental in the program’s growth.”

As Matt continues his life in his adopted country, he has also taught other skills and devoted his energy to several projects focusing on preserving Bhutanese national treasures, both natural and human-made. Among the latter is a project to document, digitize, and archive the country’s sacred relics housed in Bhutan’s monasteries. “I spent six years developing the project’s production strategy and technical framework, as well as training a brilliant team of monks how to analyze data and build systems architecture,” he says, “while jokingly asking them to teach me the secrets of reincarnation — because the project is intended to last for multiple generations.”