Mariettan finds baseball bliss in Croatia

"When you are living in an amazingly beautiful country that most people never heard of, doing what you love to do, then it is hard not to be thankful for the path you took," Miles writes in an e-mail.

The odyssey dates to Miles' pre-teenhood, when his family signed up to be an athletes' host for the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta and housed a U.S. swimmer. Having enjoyed the experience, the family welcomed a coach and a pair of players on a touring Croatian baseball group two years later, establishing an open-door policy to any team from the onetime Communist bloc member.

Young Evan idolized the players, according to his mother, Cece Miles. Soon after, the family traveled to Philadelphia to attend a tournament involving the Croatians. That summer, they went to Europe, riding the Croatian team bus to games.

Back home, Miles' own baseball growth was being hindered by attention deficit disorder (ADD), which rendered him academically ineligible for the school team. He found little joy in the cauldron of East Cobb youth baseball.

"I have always believed the point of playing is simply to have fun," he writes. "A lot of times, with the competitiveness of baseball in the Atlanta area, some coaches and parents and even kids lose sight of that."

By age 16, Miles had developed enough to play summers with the Karlovac team, the babe on a roster with 24-year-olds. Baseball in the country, which prefers soccer and basketball, actually picked up during the devastating five-year Serbo-Croatia War and continued apace after the ceasefire in 1995.

Karlovac, with its location along the longtime adversaries' border that placed it in the front lines of the war, was introduced to the game in 1983. The inspiration, according to the book "Baseball in Europe" by Josh Chetwynd, was the baseball-loving (and hating) characters in "Peanuts."

"We all read the comics -- Charlie Brown," Aleksandr Horvatic, among the Croatian originators, was quoted as saying. "They played baseball, so we thought we'd play, too."

An Ohioan, Jimmy Summers, may have been the first American to swing for the fences in Karlovac, when teammates would put down their guns and pick up bats at practice.

As Cece Miles tells it, background noise during Summers' phone conversations home with his mother included gunfire. Trying to put Mom at ease, he said the sounds were emanating from the TV.

Miles' summer stays have lacked such drama. Still, seeing entire blocks in nearby Belgrade demolished from NATO bombings in 1999, not long before his first foray into overseas baseball, causes chills.

"Coming from suburban Atlanta to a former fascist state was quite a shock," he writes.

From his initial at-bat nearly eight years ago, which resulted in a double, Miles has hardly been a token westerner for the team now called BK Olimpija and their vulture mascots. In the European Cup qualifier, a major tournament last month, he went 10-for-17 at the plate.

Rosters in Croatia and neighboring nations are sprinkled with ex-professional minor leaguers, the occasional South or Central American and U.S. collegians, past and present. (Outfielder-pitcher, Slobodan "Bobo" Gales, who bunked at the Miles' house years ago, plays at Georgia Perimeter College.)

A Tweet-able moment for Miles was going 3-for-3 against Finland pitcher Tim Harikkala, a major leaguer as recently as 2007 and owner of a World Series ring.

The bulk of the teams are filled out with home-grown working stiffs. Karlovac's leftfielder waits on Miles' table at his favorite restaurant, the catcher delivers mail and the third baseman operates an accounting firm.

"At its best, European baseball can be very competitive," he writes. "On the other hand, we sometimes play teams where most of the players are just learning the game. The score might be 20-5 ... but the guys on the other team never seem discouraged. They're just happy to play."

Croatia played host to the 2009 Baseball World Cup and its national team, which does not include Miles, ranks 25th out of 74 teams in the International Baseball Federation, 24 rungs below the U.S. Major league baseball scouts know their way around the area.

Miles won't be hearing sales pitches from them, which he can live with. He and Mom feel blessed to have stumbled into what became an exchange program.

"Baseball is the common denominator," Cece Miles says.

The family continues to share living space with glove-pounding Croatians, just as they make Evan feel at home, teaching him their customs and language. (Cece: "He learned all the bad words first.")

Unlike a teammate this season who fled back to the U.S., victim of culture shock, Miles yearns to return for more summers. Maybe even for an entire year.

"I am not that anxious to get back home," he writes, while admitting to missing his loved ones, which includes the Braves. "If the right opportunity presents itself, I wouldn't be opposed to making a career over here."

That would be fine with a grateful Mom, who considers Karlovac her home far, far away from home.

"I don't know where Evan would be without baseball. This is his dream at the moment," she says.

The Croatians, as it turns out, "have done more for us than we have for them."