U.S. Teen-agers on Soviet Baseball Tour

Goodwill and baseball is what a team of high school-aged players from Hoboken, N.J., hopes to bring to the Soviet Union.

The team, dubbed the U.S. Ambassadors, leaves Aug. 17 for a 10-day, 3-city tour of the U.S.S.R.

“We’d like to teach them about baseball and life in America,” Derek England, a 15-year-old third baseman-outfielder, said. “And we want to learn what life is like in Russia.”

The Americans, aged 14 to 16, will play games at Moscow, Kiev and Tbilisi.

Although the first team to receive an official invitation from the Soviet Federation of Baseball, the Ambassadors won’t be the first club to tour the Soviet Union. In June, John Hopkins University played a three-game series against a Soviet team, the first such matchup in the Soviet Union.

That series was arranged by Johns Hopkins alumnus Max Flaxman, a dealer in skins and hides in Moscow who heard the Soviets were seeking an American squad for some exhibition games.

The Ambassadors’ tour was first suggested by Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) during a trip to the Soviet Union last year. The trip was announced Wednesday at a luncheon attended by Ambassador Vernon A. Walters, permanent U.S. representative to the United Nations, and Valentin Lozinskiy, the Soviet ambassador to the U.N.

“We’re both very competitive,” Walters said of the two countries. “In sports, you don’t have a bad feeling, even when you lose.”

Whereas Walters completed his speech to the players in Russian, Lozinskiy spoke only English.

“It is so fitting that your team is called the Ambassadors,” he said. “You are ambassadors of goodwill.”

Lozinskiy said the Soviet Union doesn’t claim “we invented baseball any longer,” although he said the game is similar to one played in Russia years ago.

“People have so much in common,” he said. “You will notice the development of glasnost (openness) in our country. We would be glad if you bring that feeling home.”

Most of the players on the Ambassadors played on a Sandy Koufax League team that was 22-1, won the 1987 district, state and Northeast Regional championships, and finished fourth in the Koufax World Series in Puerto Rico.

In the Soviet Union, they will be played against a team with players ranging from 16 to 20 years old.

“The boys are really looking forward to it,” said Bill Culhane, an assistant coach. “They have gone to classes, taking courses on Russian culture and history, and U.S. culture and history. And they’ve learned some Russian words we’ll need.”