I had seen a write up about this guy a couple months ago in a tiny Alabama-based paper, then another via an article for an Alabama-based TV station. There’s probably a great book to be written about this guy’s life and if I had the time book contract to do it I would. For now we can settle for this piece in the LA Times.

This is Joe Cook, who works as a sushi chef in, yes, Alabama. He’s Cambodian and he’s taken it upon himself to bring baseball to his home country. But having fled his home country to escape the Khmer Rouge, he seems to have placed baseball on a pedestal that few of us — even those of you that are truly nutso about baseball — can relate to. In fact, the truth is I think this guy is a little crazy, although I’ve certainly never had to endure anything even approaching the killing fields.

Cook, a Cambodian refugee who survived the Khmer Rouge genocide to escape to the United States, has spent the last five years trying to turn the former killing fields of his homeland into fields of dreams for a generation that has known little more than war, poverty and despair.

Along the way he’s lost his life savings, his car and nearly his marriage. And, Cook insists, some people in Cambodia would like to see him dead.

“I want to walk away from this. I do. But these kids,” he said, pointing to a photo of three shoeless children in torn clothes toting bats and gloves through a rice paddy, “baseball brings smiles to their faces.”

In December, thanks to Cook, Cambodia fielded a national baseball team for the first time in the Southeast Asian Games in Thailand. It was a milestone as inauspicious as it was historic: Cambodia’s first four hitters struck out without even touching the ball, and it took four games for the team to get its first hit.

By then Cambodia had been outscored, 67 to 1 — which, according to Cambodian ground rules, added up to a tremendous victory.

You can check out the rest of the story in the LA Times here. Great photo, huh?