Major League Baseball All-Star and 2012 Hall-of-Fame inductee Barry Larkin will visit Guayaquil, Ecuador, as a Sports Envoy on February 17-20.
The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs today announced that Larkin will be accompanied by Joe Logan, a former player with the Montreal Expos and coach of the Orlando Reds, will accompany Larkin.
The visit is the fourth joint Sports Envoy program, following past visits to the Colombia, the Republic of Korea, and Taiwan.
Sports diplomacy builds on Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s vision of “Smart Power” which embraces the use of a full range of diplomatic tools like baseball to bring people together through friendship and foster greater understanding.
Larkin and Logan are expected to conduct clinics for 100 underserved youth and their coaches at Yeyo Uraga which is a local baseball facility. The sports diplomats will also engage students in dialogue on the importance of education, teamwork, and leadership at the Centro Ecuatoriano Americano and Colegio Americano.
The Department of State will welcome a group of Ecuadorian youth for a Sports Visitor program this 16-26 of August where a delegation of young baseball players, ages 9-12, will come to the United States for 10 days of baseball clinics and activities. The young players will also have a chance to attend the Little League World Series in Pennsylvania.
Barry Louis Larkin was born April 28, 1964 in Cincinnati, Ohio. He is a retired Major League Baseball player. Larkin played shortstop for the Cincinnati Reds from 1986 to 2004. He was one of the pivotal players on the 1990 Reds’ World Series championship team. Larkin was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in January 2012 and set to be inducted in July.
