Heavy hitter: Gift Ngoepe’s amazing journey to baseball stardom

Gift tells us that one of his lifelong dreams is to make baseball more popular and more accessible in his home country.

“I’d love to give kids in SA, especially disadvantaged kids, the opportunity to play the sport. Limpopo has a baseball team and they’re actually very good at softball — they’re one of the best teams in the country. They just don’t have the equipment or the resources to form a proper league.

Right now, like many around the world, Gift’s plans are in limbo, as he waits in the US for international borders to reopen. Since his debut, he’s played with teams in the US, Canada and Australia, and has his sights set on a return to the Australian Baseball League, where he was most recently playing with the Sydney Blue Sox.

The message that Gift would like people to take from this documentary is that, to succeed, you have to believe in yourself. “I can’t stress this enough,” he says. “You will have people who believe in you but that’s not going to be enough to take you all the way. I had to defy all kinds of odds to become the first African-born player to play in the major league. There were times when I didn’t believe in myself, but at the end of the day, it was up to me to decide whether I wanted this or not. So believe in what you’re doing with your craft and then give it your all.

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