Moore or Less
Every column in this series is written in service of one idea: that a kid from a fishing barangay on Bohol Island deserves the same shot at an extraordinary life as anyone born into better circumstances. That is not a tagline. That is the mission.
Developing Elite Prospects. Creating Pathways Out of Poverty.
The Bohol Coconuts Baseball and Softball Club was built around two convictions. First, that Bohol Island has the talent to produce elite-level teenage baseball prospects capable of competing at the highest levels of the sport. Second, that the children who need this program most are not the ones whose families can already afford to invest in them.
The “Building the Coconuts” docuseries launching June 23, 2026 was created to fund that mission directly. Every column Merv Moore writes is a piece of that story.
A full-time, structured program training physical skills, baseball IQ, and character — built to produce players who can compete anywhere in the world.
From scholarships and academic support to vocational training and family income programs, the Coconuts are building a ladder — not just a field.
The talent is in the DNA. The Philippines won the first Asian Baseball Championship in 1954. The Coconuts are building the ecosystem that the next generation deserves.
Everyone said build an elite baseball academy in the jungle with no corporate sponsor and no guaranteed paycheck. They were probably right. It probably is impossible. Merv Moore explains exactly why he is doing it anyway — and why the kids waiting on that field are worth every impossible obstacle.
This one is not for the sponsors or the investors. It is for the Filipino kid reading this on a cracked phone screen somewhere in a province, with dreams they have never said out loud because they are not sure they are allowed to have them. Merv Moore wrote this one directly for that kid.
Inside a Filipino home with five or six kids, a quiet calculation is being made — which one gets the investment. Merv Moore describes the wound that moment leaves in the children who were not chosen, and explains why the Bohol Coconuts program was designed from the ground up around the poorest kids first, not the easiest ones.
What does elite training actually look like for a Filipino teenager? Merv Moore goes beyond the highlight reel to explain the three things the Bohol Coconuts program trains simultaneously — physical skills, baseball IQ, and character — and why the forty-seventh ground ball of a session matters just as much as the first.