HIGÜEY.- Young baseball fans in Higüey got a major-league boost last Thursday from a Canadian who shares their passion for the sport.

Garry Boyko of Chilliwack, British Columbia, presented the Cristóbal Cedano Baseball League with 100 baseball gloves, six sets of catcher’s equipment, facemasks, helmets and bats donated by people in his community and flown to Punta Cana free of charge by Skyservice Airlines. Boyko said the sight of the hundreds of boys in their red league uniforms who came to the community field to watch the handing over of the equipment was more than he could have imagined when he got the idea a month ago to bring a few baseball gloves with him on vacation.

“This was a divine act,” he said. “The logistics of this … had to be more than just my doing. I’m humbled at this point.”

Boyko and his wife Connie had been to the Dominican Republic three times before, and on their second trip, Boyko had brought 12 baseball gloves. This time, he wanted to bring at least 30, and enlisted the help of his coworkers and community church groups. Then, the local newspaper, The Progress, published an article about Boyko’s intention to give the gloves to a deserving league, and the donations began pouring in. Says Boyko, “Every day I was emptying boxes and boxes of baseball gloves.”

In four weeks, Boyko had 110 kilograms of cargo he needed to ship to Punta Cana and then transport to Higüey, so he began asking for assistance on the Trip Advisor message boards, and met Mike Bryant, Assistant Operations Director of Sunscape Resort in Punta Cana.

Bryant said Boyko’s mission perfectly fit his vision for a resort-sponsored community assistance program. Next year, Sunscape Resorts will be changing its name to Dreams, and Bryant hopes to officially launch Making Dreams Come True, which will support Dominican education, sports, and healthcare. “We’ll pick up any kind of donation from any resort. It’s the community getting involved to help the community. We’ve all got something, a lot of them don’t have anything, and it’s not even a feel-good thing, it’s a necessity.”

Bryant, who is also Canadian, said sports were a good starting point for the program because they’re a rallying point for any community. “Sports leads to good health, good health leads to good education and social interaction, skills, abilities,” he said. “It was a major part of my life growing up in Canada, it’s a major part of these kids’ lives. They all play baseball some way or another. If it’s just a stick and an old can, that’s what they do.”

Added Boyko, “In Canada, our children are passionate about hockey. You can get a stick and a ball or a piece of paper rolled up, and they’ll hit it back and forth like hockey. Here, their passion is baseball, and I wanted to help feed that.”

League president Cristóbal Cedano said the donation was a symbol of the D.R.’s friendship with Canada, and greatly appreciated by his players. 90 percent of them come from low-income homes and can’t afford their own equipment, so to be able to share the league’s equipment will help them enormously, he said.

One player, 14-year-old Jordan Martinez Solano, a pitcher, was presented with his own special glove: he’s left-handed.

Junior Rodriguez, also 14, said his favorite part about playing for the league was being able to represent his team in his red and gray uniform, emblazoned with the Cristóbal Cedano logo.

Both Rodriguez and Solano hope to play in the Major Leagues someday, preferably for their favorite team, the Boston Red Sox.

Boyko said it was the chance that one of them could make it to the Major Leagues that motivated him. “I wanted to make sure they get that opportunity.”