Nestled in a clearing between rye fields and lush jungle, the bases on one of the few baseball diamonds in the Philippines' Tanauan City sat in sludge.
In video taken by scouts visiting the area, a rooster crowed in the background and a dog watched from behind a rusty foul-line fence.
Baseball dreams hardly exist there, where kids play with fraying gloves and a cracked yellow bucket of cowhide-less baseballs. Yet to representatives visiting last summer from the Philippines national baseball team, the field represented promise.