【明報專訊】Baseball may not be the most popular sport in Hong Kong, but there is certainly no lack of budding talents! Let's hear from one of the atheletes of the sport.

Baseball first became an official Olympic sport at the 1992 Olympic Games. It was dropped from the programme list at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics, but it is going to be reinstated at the 2020 Tokyo Games. Paco Chan Ho-yin (陳浩賢), a primary 6 student at H.K.T.A. Shun Yeung Primary School (香港道教聯合會純陽小學), is a baseball athlete who was one of the five Hong Kong representatives at the 25th World Children's Baseball Fair (世界少年棒球大會, WCBF) held in Chiba (千葉), Japan in summer last year.

Paco first learned to play baseball during a physical education lesson when he was a primary one student. He was selected to join the school baseball team in primary two. "I like the positions of the pitcher and the batter. If I hit the ball far enough with the bat, there would be plenty of time for my teammates to run. And when I throw the ball and the batter of the opposing team fails to hit it three times, I can help my team gain points."

Speaking of his dream, Paco has a vision regarding the future of baseball in Hong Kong. "I want to be a baseball coach. I want to teach youngsters to play baseball in the future because I want to pass the sport to the next generation," Paco said. He wants baseball to be a thriving sport. "I hope the sport will continue to remain an Olympic event after 2020," As a baseball athlete, Paco does not just seek victory from the sport.

Paco's participation in the WCBF has broadened his horizons. "It gave me an opportunity to meet baseball players from places like the US, the UK, Japan and Taiwan." It has also brought Paco a valuable friendship with a student he met during the trip. "The most memorable thing from the trip was that I met Nachika, a secondary school student from Japan. When she visited Hong Kong last April, I took her around for sightseeing!"

■ English highway﹕ horizon

The horizon is the furthest that you can see, where the sky seems to meet the land or the sea. It also means the limit of your desires, knowledge or interests.

e.g. Pat wants to travel around the world to broaden her horizons.

■ Key words

pitcher 投球手

batter 擊球手

■ Glossary

budding (adj) 嶄露頭角的

reinstate (v) 恢復

bat (n) 球棒

plenty (of sth) (pron) 大量

vision (n) 想像

thriving (adj) 興旺的

seek (v) 尋求

barrier (n) 障礙物