Diana Dailey Moss, a Willow Glen resident and Spanish teacher at Harker Academy, has been in Quillota, Chile, since last July on a Fulbright Teacher Exchange to teach English.

Moss was having difficulty motivating a few of her students to learn English, so she thought getting them to practice the language through an American sport such as baseball would be a fun solution.

When Moss' husband Brian and son Kevin came to join her in the summer of 2005, they brought along a bag full of baseball equipment they had collected from friends and residents for her students to use.

That same summer, Moss met the U.S. ambassador to Chile, Craig Kelly, at an English conference she attended.

"Kelly is a huge baseball fan, and when he heard about the bag of equipment Brian brought, he told me about his efforts to begin Little League baseball in Chile," Moss said in an email. "He helped start an entire league in Santiago."

So when Moss' friends and fellow Little League parents, Mary Anne and William "Tink" Bowles, came to visit in February, Moss asked them to bring a few extra mitts to aid with the ambassador's efforts.

"Diana asked me and my husband to ask around and try to collect used baseball mitts for her students," said Mary Anne Bowles. "We went to garage sales, Goodwill and asked friends. My sons even bought some gloves at Play it Again Sports."

The Bowleses were able to gather 20 mitts ranging from lefty gloves to pitchers' mitts for the students in Chile.

"While the Bowles[es] visited us, we held a baseball clinic for the students at my school, Colegio San Ignacio de la Salle, in Quillota, a city two hours north of Santiago," Moss said in an email. "We had a big group of parents and students come out and had a fabulous time."

Bowles said it was important to show the Chilean people that Americans are good people, too.

"The kids got to see us struggle with our Spanish, so that they could see that others besides themselves struggle with language, too," Bowles said. "It was a worldwide experience, and sports are a worldwide language."

Bowles' husband, Willow Glen Little League's coaching coordinator and safety officer, agreed.

"We went out there and did the American thing, then the Chilean thing," he said. "I think baseball is an avenue to bring people together from the community, or in this case from different countries. There's no politics involved."

Using the American pastime as a way of bonding with another culture was important, he noted.

"Not only did we show them how to play our game, we showed interest in soccer, their game," Bowles said.

Bowles' sons and Moss' son helped teach the Chilean students how to play the game. After the game, the Mosses delivered the bag of equipment to the American Embassy in Santiago.

Michael Lehman, manager of the Willow Glen Orioles, donated some gloves, bags and equipment to the Chilean students. Lehman said people like the Mosses and the Bowleses demonstrate how Willow Glen looks beyond Silicon Valley when it comes to reaching out.

"Kids are so innocent; they don't see all the difficult things in life," Lehman said. "If they are influenced positively--for instance, with baseball--they can create a balance."

Individuals can still make donations of gently used equipment to the Little League in Chile at the snack shack or the scorers' booth at Bramhall Park, corner of Willow Street and Camino Ramon, on game days. For information on times and dates, visit www.wgll.org.