Philippines teenager Piolo Perez makes the cover of The National Sport on Wednesday, July 19, 2016 to highlight how the game of baseball is stopping the country's youth from being led astray.
A baseball field built atop the Philippines’ most notorious trash heap, and inspired by the Hollywood film starring Kevin Costner about a farmer who builds a baseball diamond on his cornfield, Manila’s huge landfill nicknamed Smokey Mountain has its own “Field of Dreams”.
Like his 60-plus teammates, Perez, used to collect recyclable materials from the truckloads of rubbish from around the nation’s capital of 12 million people that is dumped on the seafront district. But he now has a sporting scholarship thanks to a baseball and softball programme, run by a charity group and local business people.
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