Chandler Baseball Camp

05/03/2022

A chess experience like nothing else you've ever imagined: Timur Gareyev returns to Oklahoma this month!

Grandmaster Timur Gareyev will make a special appearance at the Chandler Baseball Camp on Saturday, May 21, 2022.

06/12/2021

12/10/2019

03/04/2017

CBC neighbor new lights! Congratulation

02/15/2015

Time for a new vision.

From Mind to Design

07/06/2014

Attention campers: Fox 25 will be doing a story on the camp tonight at 9pm.

07/06/2014

http://newsok.com/fields-of-dreams-two-men-working-to-restore-historic-chandler-baseball-camp/article/4986057

Tucked away in the woods just north of sleepy Chandler, there is a place where a man built his dream, baseball ruled the world and generations of boys learned to become men.

06/22/2014

Building big league citizens

04/10/2014

Construction at CBC cafeteria

05/27/2013

1 overall pick in the 2013 MLB draft will be from Chandler Oklahoma. i am so excited for Jon Gray! [ it is an early call ]

Congrats Jon Gray. Big 12 Tournament 'Most Outstanding Player'. Good luck in regionals!

04/12/2013

I’ve said often enough to anyone that’ll listen that I don’t know the first thing about running a baseball camp, but two things I’ve learned that have been very useful to me in life are to ask a lot of questions and to never be afraid to bring in someone that knows more than I do.

I’m in Europe this week working and took some time to meet up with someone that knows a lot more than I do about baseball and the baseball camp. Didi Dahmann is the Assistant Coach of the Solingen Alligators, the 1st Division, Baseball Bundesliga team from Solingen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.

Didi is a 30-year veteran of German baseball and has been instrumental in growing the game in his country. He’s taught the game to kids, coached adults, has been with the Alligators organization as they’ve gone from playing on borrowed public fields to a ballpark of their own. In 2006 they won Germany’s League title. So Didi knows baseball.

His experience has put him in the middle of three areas that are of particular interest to me and what we’re trying to do with the baseball camp: building community support, coaching kids, and the business side of baseball. What made me especially eager to meet him is that he spent his summers at the Chandler Baseball Camp.

Didi went to camp each summer starting in the early 1980s and kept coming back: first as a player, later as a counselor, and eventually as a coach.

Over dinner in Cologne the other night we talked about his time at the camp, we talked about his memories of Chandler, and Didi talked about how influential the camp experience had been for him, molding him as a player and a person.

Didi remembered the sounds of an Oklahoma summer night, the noise from the cabin fans, watching baseball films projected on a sheet, getting an injury fixed by Dr. Mileham, and Andrew Vassar working in the laundry room, but what he recalled most clearly was how much he learned from Tom Belcher.

“Tom taught me a lot about baseball, about coaching, and about how you treat people. I was just a kid and I was a long way from home. Tom, and the camp, and the people in Chandler, they made me feel welcome. That’s not something you forget. From Tom I learned that you build a team by making the weakest player feel like they belong.”

It was good to meet Didi, he’s a remarkable young man. I think Tom Belcher would be very proud of him.

That’s all for now. Mike.