Oliver Marmol shows humanitarian side during offseason

St. Louis Cardinals minor league manager Oliver Marmol, who will be managing Palm Beach in 2015, is showing his humanitarian side during the offseason.

Two months after the State College Spikes were playing for the New York-Penn League championship, Marmol is bringing baseball to Cristo Rey, an Nicaraguan town that is high in poverty. It’s admirable of Marmol to do what he can in helping children in underdeveloped countries. According to Jennifer Langosch’s feature story on the manager, this “bloomed out of a February 2011 trip to Guatemala, during which Marmol and his wife, Amber, made an eight-day stay at an orphanage.”

The Marmols were inspired by their 2011 trip to the point that a promised was made three years ago that half of the money earned by Marmol’s baseball instruction business, O.MAR Performance, is given away.

"“We live in an industry in baseball where everything we’re told is about how we’re supposed to make much of ourselves, to build our brand, to make people know us more,” Marmol explained. “After going on these trips, it just makes me think a lot less of myself. I really don’t care how people perceive it. There are so many more important things going on out there, and if I can just think less of myself and make more of other people and their needs and how I can help and aid them, then that’s worth it.“We want to decrease to make sure we’re increasing other peoples’ lives.”"