The Wind-up and the Pitch.......
Metro baseball teams have grit, and hope - May. 10, 2009Burbank coach working to rebuild baseball program - May. 01, 2008
Special report: Longest odds
Rich win, poor lose in high school sports - Mar. 24, 2007
Inner-city baseball needs Rays of hope - Oct. 26, 2008
Metro baseball teams have grit, and hope
bpaterson@sacbee.com
Published Sunday, May. 10, 2009
The Metro Conference once churned out championship baseball teams and future stars as if it were an assembly line.
Now it ranks among the weakest in the Sac-Joaquin Section.
Yet, in a sport that laments the decline of African American participation in Major League Baseball, the Metro is believed to have more black athletes playing than any other league in the area.
McClatchy is the most recent Metro team to win a section baseball championship – in 1998 – beating Vallejo and future New York Yankees pitcher CC Sabathia for the Division I title. None of the five Sacramento City Unified School District teams and the one Twin Rivers district team – Grant – that comprise the Metro Conference has come close to playing for a section banner since.
That's not expected to change this season, even though Rosemont, McClatchy and Burbank have qualified for the D-II playoffs that start Wednesday.
Among the problems plaguing the Metro:
• Burbank's baseball diamond was in such disrepair, the team was forced to move its practices and home games to off-campus sites.
• McClatchy, winner of the past two league titles, had only 10 players on its regular-season varsity roster and started the season with just 12.
• Grant, despite having won the California Interscholastic Federation Open Division football bowl championship, didn't play even one nonleague baseball game and ranks as one of the section's bottom feeders (maxpreps.com ranks it No. 143 out of 158).
• Hiram Johnson hasn't fielded a junior varsity baseball team in several years, so freshmen and sophomores have no choice but to play up, even those with no previous baseball experience.
• When Sacramento High held tryouts, nearly half the players didn't have baseball gloves.
Myriad reasons are cited for the Metro's sagging baseball fortunes, from stagnant budgets and indifferent district support to persistent eligibility issues and lack of youth feeder programs.
Fifth-year McClatchy coach Mike de Necochea, who played baseball for the Lions in the early 1980s, was shocked when so few players tried out this season. After all, the Lions were 27-3 in Metro games the previous two seasons.
"We had one senior who quit and then another, a junior, got miffed and quit after I benched him," de Necochea said. "Kids today are a little more sensitive than when I played."
Second-year Hiram Johnson coach Roney Johnson, The Bee's Player of the Year in 1999 for Woodcreek and a sixth-round draft pick of the Colorado Rockies, said he couldn't believe the lack of skills when he took over the program last season.
"I was teaching kids how to play catch all over again," Johnson said. "We were doing things they should have learned in Little League."
Rosemont, the Metro's showcase program with an unbeaten league record and No. 17 ranking by The Bee, is the only Metro baseball program that fields a freshman team and one of two that runs a year-round program.
"Watch our teams play and you can see the kids aren't spending enough time on the diamond," said Rosemont coach Paul Martinez. "It shows in the lack of instincts."
It also shows in the record. The Metro is a combined 14-32 in nonleague games.
Burbank coach Alex DuPaty says only four of his 13 varsity players have been in the program for four seasons.
"We have too many kids who miss a year or two," DuPaty said. "It's hard to get back what you miss skill-wise. Right now I have three freshmen starting and that's because they've played continuously and have the baseball instincts that some of my older players lack."
De Necochea says the talent pool in his area has clearly declined, and some top baseball players within his boundaries opt for other programs, especially private schools.
"I have one kid on the bench," de Necochea said. "I bet you Chrsitian Brothers has 20-plus on its roster (24, according to maxpreps.com)."
Burbank's DuPaty says the larger, more challenging issue for high schools such as his is player eligibility.
"There are some really good baseball players walking around our campus, but they aren't eligible," DuPaty. "We lose kids every year to grades."
First-year coach Greg Norris has had the same battle at Sac High.
"The three kids I had with any baseball savvy were ineligible right off the bat," Norris said. "They played one game, then had to sit."
While it is uplifting to see a large number of African Americans playing baseball in the Metro – 13 of Sac High's 15 players and 12 of Burbank's 13 players are African American – many lack the skills and knowledge of their suburban counterparts.
Burbank pitcher-infielder Miles Freeman, one of the Metro's standout players and an African American, is one of the few who has played the game continuously since his Little League days.
He considers baseball his first love even though he's been recruited to play football at Army. But baseball isn't as popular among his classmates at Burbank or other Metro schools.
"Everyone around here is into football and basketball," Freeman said. "They take those sports a lot more serious."
Norris says the top athletes at Sac High are bypassing baseball.
"I see great athletes on the football field and the basketball court that could really help us," said Norris, a three-sport athlete as a prep in Rochester, N.Y. "I think part of the problem is kids are specializing in sports so much now."
Although it may never return to its glory days, there is hope for the Metro.
Among the positives:
• The River Cats, in partnership with Sutter Health, have refurbished baseball fields at Johnson and Grant, and bidding is under way to build a new city/school district sports complex at Burbank that will include a lighted football stadium and two synthetic-turf baseball diamonds.
• Although it finished second this season, McClatchy should be back in the Metro title hunt in 2010 because of a talented freshman class de Necochea says might be the school's best in years.
• Norris plans to start an offseason baseball program at Sac High and is pleased with his players' attitudes despite a five-win season.
"The kids are really good kids," he said. "We're still having fun."
METRO CONFERENCE AT A GLANCE
School League W-L Overall W-L Rank*
Rosemont 15-0 19-8 59th
McClatchy 11-5 15-12 97th
Burbank 8-7 11-15 115th
Johnson 7-9 8-13 122nd
Sacramento 3-13 5-18 139th
Grant 2-12 2-12 143rd
*Sac-Joaquin Section rankings by maxpreps.com.
This story is taken from Sacbee / Sports
Burbank coach working to rebuild baseball program
Published Thursday, May. 01, 2008
Alex DuPaty recalls the words.
"Baby steps, Alex."
That's what a fellow coach told the 46-year-old pied piper of baseball after he completed his first season at Burbank High School, leading the team to a 1-20 record.
Other coaches in the Capital Athletic League – so impressed by DuPaty's sincerity, passion and commitment – overlooked that dismal record and voted him the 2006 CAL Coach of the Year.
They saw that his impact went far beyond wins and losses and that the victory was just one mark of advancement for a team that hadn't won a game in either of the previous two seasons.
The baby steps have become a more confident stride now, a little unsteady at times, but a sure sign that DuPaty and his team represent something of a miracle, considering the odds against them.
The Titans have won 23 games the last two seasons, and at 6-6 in the Metro Conference, which they rejoined last season, they have a shot at their first playoff berth since anyone connected with the team can remember.
That's a dramatic rise from just a few years back.
"Participation was so bad that there was serious talk about dropping baseball," said John Heffernan, Burbank's athletic director.
A lack of youth programs feeding into the high school, limited funds and facilities, student disinterest and competition from football and basketball helped make baseball a minor sport in the school's south Sacramento neighborhoods.
Minorities, especially African Americans, have more or less abandoned the sport, a decline affecting college and major-league baseball as well as high schools.
DuPaty says he is sensitive to the issue. He's African American, as are his assistants, Rod Thompson and Reggie Mosley, a third-round pick by the Giants in 1982. All were teammates at Laney College in Oakland, and they grew up loving baseball.
So they have become ambassadors for the sport at Burbank.
DuPaty said he left his private-sector job and took a 50 percent pay cut to become a campus monitor and coach. He said the move allows him time to connect with his players, hustle up program funding and scour the campus for raw talent.
He convinced the school's administration to buy new uniforms and has tapped several sources for free labor and money to buy equipment, refurbish the infield and install a batting cage. Among the contributors is Los Angeles Angels pitcher Jon Garland, whose sister, Kerri Garland, coaches Burbank's girls basketball team.
DuPaty has varsity and junior varsity programs, though the numbers remain thin: 13 varsity players, including seven African Americans, and 11 JVs. Most have limited playing experience.
They work mostly on fundamentals. The result is Burbank is in third place and could get the Metro's third Division II playoff berth, despite shortcomings that often are exposed by better teams.
Tuesday, the Titans made six errors and several mental mistakes during a 14-2 loss to first-place McClatchy. Burbank players dropped fly balls, missed easy grounders and threw to the wrong bases. But there were occasional gems – a nicely executed stolen base or a McClatchy runner thrown out on the basepath.
"We have a lot of kids with talent but without baseball knowledge," DuPaty said. "Sometimes they struggle to make the right decisions in pressure situations."
Senior third baseman-pitcher Jose Sanchez and junior pitcher-utilityman Miles Freeman are exceptions. Both are three-year varsity players who have played the game for years.
Both say DuPaty is on the right track, but they agree the program remains far from being competitive with the suburban teams they used to play in the CAL.
"A lot of those guys have played together since they were 5 years old," Freeman said. "You can't help but develop good chemistry."
Sanchez, a former Florin Little League All-Star, said opportunities to play are less available than for suburban players. He said many playing fields in his neighborhood are in disrepair and he must go miles from home to find a batting cage.
"There used to be one near me, but it closed down," Sanchez said.
Many of their former Little League buddies no longer play, and Freeman, a quarterback on the Titans' Metro Conference champion football team last fall, says baseball is taken less seriously than football and basketball on campus.
"In football, you work so hard that when you lose, you want to cry because it hurts so much," Freeman said.
DuPaty says getting the players to be serious about schoolwork also is a huge challenge. Three starters, all hitting .400 or better, were lost to bad grades last week.
"At times, it seems as if you want it more than the kids," he said. "That's when it hurts."
And that's when DuPaty thinks of the words: "Baby steps, Alex."
-end-
This story is taken from Sacbee / Our Region / Education
Special report: Longest odds
Rich win, poor lose in high school sports
Bee Staff Writers
Published Saturday, Mar. 24, 2007
Winning, the losers are told, is not what matters. Sports are just for fun, after all. Losing builds character and discipline. It teaches you to deal with adversity.
Those words are like mantras at the region's lowest socioeconomic schools -- where statistics show athletes face the longest odds of winning -- their repetition increasing as the losses pile up.
They contradict the common view of sports as the great equalizer. And they offer little solace to the Highlands High Scots late in the fall soccer season, as the boys team loses 3-0 to another of the worst teams in the region.
The North Highlands school is among the region's poorest -- those with more than 40 percent of their students qualifying for a government lunch subsidy. The soccer team doesn't even have matching uniforms.
On this day, team members don't seem to be having much fun at all. Nobody smiles or laughs when the ball skips between their goalie's legs, putting them further down the hole. They don't seem to be enjoying themselves at halftime as assistant coach Dan Sisneros calls their performance "pathetic" and says he has "better things to do."
At the end of the game, they walk away downtrodden, losers again. They'll fail to score a goal in more than half their games through the fall season and win only once, underlining an unwritten rule of high school athletics: The rich win; the poor lose. A harsh truth for anyone, but especially for teenagers.
"We've really perpetuated this idea that sports can be a way to climb out of an economic hole," said Maureen Smith, who teaches sports sociology at California State University, Sacramento. "Maybe (winning) has much more meaning ... because of that idea that this is your way out."
In the last school year, poorer local high schools lost more than two of every three games they played against wealthier public and private schools, according to a Bee data analysis of more than 12,000 games played by more than 20,000 athletes from about 180 schools in the Sac-Joaquin Section of the California Interscholastic Federation, stretching from Nevada County to Merced.
The 45 poorest public schools, which educate a third of those students, were less than half as likely to win major division championships as the 44 wealthiest public schools.
It's true not just for soccer, but for all the major sports: volleyball, football, baseball, softball and basketball. Throw in traditional club-type sports such as water polo, tennis, golf and swimming -- where a competitive edge often comes through private training -- and the odds stack up even higher.
Though the discrepancy can be blamed on many factors, experts and officials say, it mostly comes down to this for the players themselves: Grow up in a poor area and you're unlikely to have the infrastructure and support needed to reach your full potential. You are set up to lose.
You probably don't play on an expensive club team outside of school, like many of your opponents. Your mom can't afford the $150 monthly membership at the private strength-training club the guy lined up against you has joined. Like a lot of poorer kids, you may have a weight problem holding you back. Your coach doesn't have a big staff like his peers at the wealthier school; in fact, your coach might take the first opportunity to leave for a winning team. You might not have the minimum grades required to play or you may just not be motivated to go out for a team with a history of losing.
And there's a real chance you've never hit a forehand winner, tried the breaststroke, learned the offsides rule in soccer or visited a driving range.
According to the Highlands Scots' head coach, Eddie Rios, his team members are drawing a devastating conclusion from their repeated losses. It's a lesson, he says, that permeates the school: We're not supposed to win.
"They settle for second-best," Rios said, "because they can't see themselves as winners."
A losing attitude spreads
Losing becomes a habit. At Highlands last year, the Scots lost 106 of their 149 games in the major sports -- almost three in four.
It's a familiar story at a majority of the area's poorest schools. When your school expects you to lose, when you expect to lose, guess what happens?
"It's frustrating when we don't have confidence in a lot of matches," said Patricia DeMille, a senior on the Valley High volleyball team, which went 4-12 in the fall. "When we get down, we stay down. We don't know how to pick ourselves up again."
Kids who would be heroes at winning schools like Grass Valley's Nevada Union or Roseville say they sometimes find themselves treated with indifference at their own poorer schools.
"It's supportive only if you are winning," said Robert Rogers, a Florin senior and one of the region's best wide receivers. "If you are not winning, a lot of people don't want to come (to the games)."
All of this Rios, the Highlands coach, already knows. But he knows something else, too: The teams that beat him, with their fit, club-trained players and full rosters, come from schools that don't likely have more raw talent. If not for economic hardship, he says, his team would win.
"There is a tradition of good athletes" at Highlands, he adds, "just not good teams."
Rios' team members seem surprised when things go their way. They follow good plays with a blunder: a great pass, then a missed goal.
During one game, a Highlands player ran down a rival and stole the ball. Assistant coach Sisneros shouted praise. "Nice, nice. That's the way to cover," he said.
The player passed the ball off quickly, too -- to an opponent.
Poor grades derail promise
No one has to tell the athletes at Sacramento's Hiram Johnson High they don't have the same advantages as some of their opponents. They are reminded of it nearly every week -- in major sports, they lost 36 of last year's 40 matchups with wealthy schools.
Yet early in the fall season, the Warriors' football team members let themselves hope as they prepared for their homecoming game against another poor team. A victory could point them toward the playoffs.
That morning, class was let out for a pep rally -- the first in at least five years. In the gym, Coach Jack Garceau announced players' names. They stepped forward to cheers.
Later, a procession led the team to the stadium: first, a horse ridden by former student Amanda Rodriguez, dressed in an Indian outfit; then a cheerleading squad and 10-student band.
Finally came the players, screaming through their face masks: "Let's do this. Let's go, baby. C'mon. Our field, baby. Our house."
With two wins under their belt, Johnson already had matched or beaten its victory total for each of the last four seasons. The crowd had grown along with the team's improvement.
During last year's games "we could hear crickets, it was so quiet," said running back Houston Roots. "We're building now. It's coming along."
For homecoming, though, something would literally be missing. Some of the best players would be not on the field, but in the stands; some had dropped out of school entirely. Eligibility for high school sports requires a C average, according to section rules, and many potential players couldn't hack it.
Poor grades force coaches at the less well-off schools to turn away up to half of those who try out, they say. About half of Johnson's students tested below a basic knowledge level on the state's standardized language arts test, for instance -- a showing far short of state average. Students who lack such skills are prime candidates to flunk class.
"We have kids walking the halls who could be studs on the field but their grades aren't there," said John Fleming, the Johnson athletic director.
So, with just a few more players than positions, the Johnson Warriors took the field against the Burbank Titans. That was when their grand hopes of winning began to die.
Burbank scored touchdowns on its first four possessions. Johnson couldn't move the ball on offense. On the sidelines, the Warriors tried to remain motivated. Curtis Dao, a junior, was the most animated. "We don't have to sleep out there, kid," he urged, as Burbank went ahead 14-0.
By halftime, the Titans were up 27-0. The Warriors were distraught.
As the players tried to regroup, the student body staged a halftime parade. Six pickup trucks and a stretch limousine filled with students circled the dirt track surrounding the football field.
The festive mood, already dampened by the score, soon turned ugly. Late in the third quarter, with Johnson trailing 41-0, a fight broke out near the concession stands. Over the loudspeakers came an ominous message: "Please exit immediately. No fans are allowed to watch the rest of the game."
While school officials and police escorted fans to the parking lot, the game resumed. In the fourth quarter, Johnson finally scored a touchdown.
But by then, no one was left to cheer.
Revolving door of coaches
Empty stands are a familiar sight for Brian Mitchell, who coaches one of the worst teams in the region.
Going into the fall season, the Encina High girls volleyball team in the Arden area had not won a single set for three years, let alone a match -- 120 straight losing sets. It won a few sets this year, but still not a match.
Mitchell, the school's athletic director, is passionate about his athletes, but he admits he knows little about volleyball. Without Mitchell, there would be no team, however; he was the only one willing to coach. He tried to make up for shortcomings by watching volleyball training films and asking a former student player to give clinics.
"I've been doing all kinds of stuff," said Mitchell, who also coaches boys basketball and track.
Poorer schools have trouble attracting and keeping good coaches. And, at the high school level, consistent coaching can make a real difference.
"A coach that has been there a long time is able to tell the junior high coaches, the freshman coaches, the JV coaches, what kind of plays they are going to run and the system they are going to run," said Pete Schroeder, a sports sociology instructor at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Each year, the Sac-Joaquin athletic section names several model coaches -- typically rewarding veterans with a history at one school. Only five of the 38 model coaches named during the past six years came from the poorer schools.
Coaches tend to give up after a year or two of losing, Schroeder said. The rare ones who succeed at a poorer school, he added, often leave for stronger programs at wealthier schools.
Mike Dimino led the Hiram Johnson Warriors football team to some of its most successful seasons six years ago. He is now at Del Campo, one of the wealthier schools in the region, and leading them to winning seasons.
Though Dimino said he left Johnson for other reasons, he acknowledges that it's easier to raise funds at Del Campo and he doesn't have to cut as many kids for poor grades.
"The academics here," he said, "without a doubt there is a stronger support system and everything."
A disparity in athlete fitness
It would be easier for coach Mitchell to do his job if all the Encina volleyball players showed up for the first practice ready to dive for a save and run down a chip shot. But, just as bad grades shrink the pool of potential athletes, so does poor fitness.
When Mitchell's girls face off against a wealthier team, they're clearly in worse shape -- some are overweight, and jumps above the net for a big spike are rare.
Students at the 15 least successful athletic programs in the region are more than twice as likely to be in poor shape -- failing at least half of the state's six physical fitness standards -- as students at the 15 most successful programs in the region, The Bee's analysis of state data found.
At the most successful schools, about 1 in 7 ninth-graders are out of shape; at the worst, that distinction affects roughly 1 in 3. That's the situation at Florin High, a poor school in south Sacramento, where last year a third of ninth-graders failed at least half of the fitness standards.
The results were on display this fall when Florin's football team faced off against Jesuit High. The Jesuit guys were big. Eight of their 10 leading tacklers weighed more than 200 pounds -- mostly muscle, not fat. On the Florin side, only three of the team's 10 leading tacklers topped 200 pounds.
The Florin Panthers lost 31-14; in their previous five football games against Jesuit, Florin had been outscored 202 to 69.
"They're obviously a lot bigger and play physical," Florin coach Mike Morales said after the game. "We were trying to get them with speed, but they're fast, too."
For the past year, Morales has tried to bulk up his players. But he gets them for only about 45 minutes a day at the end of school. They train in a 500-square-foot weight room with a lot of old equipment. In the fall and winter, Morales packs in 50 or so kids.
Morales, in his second year as coach, says he cannot always give them the individual attention they need.
"It's still developing," Morales said. "It's hard to watch 50 or 60 guys when you've got one or two coaches."
Wealthier schools tend to have more coaches available at more times. At Nevada Union, for example, the football program alone has 26 coaches for three teams.
In addition, better-off kids get private strength workouts at places like Sports Specific Training in Rocklin. Run by ex-high school football coach Steve Kenyon and former San Francisco 49ers linebacker Dan Bunz, training at SST starts at $129 a month and draws kids as young as 12.
"Our talent pool is ... the kid who aspires to be an elite athlete and they have the parental support and financial backing," Kenyon said. "A lot of kids in lower socioeconomic areas would love to train at places like here. But they can't."
Thin budgets, decrepit facilities
Florin's home football games aren't even at home, thanks to substandard facilities. The same is true at Encina, where fans must drive about four miles -- a 15-minute trek on a busy Friday night -- to El Camino High to watch their team play.
Encina's football field is torn up. There are no large bleachers, no scoreboard. The school doesn't have a pool, either. And a huge crack runs through the tennis courts, rendering them largely useless.
Football fields, pools, courts -- all cost money, and the poorer schools don't have much of it.
Though their schools' base state budgets are about the same, poorer schools tend to have demands on their resources that trump athletics. How can Encina justify spending a lot on sports teams when 53 percent of 10th-graders test below basic levels on benchmark English exams -- almost twice as bad as the state average?
The programs' small budgets also reflect a lack of money in the surrounding community.
A school like Nevada Union will draw thousands of paying spectators to each of its home football games. And the football team's booster club raised an additional $250,000 during fiscal 2005 -- a huge figure for a local program.
At Oak Ridge High in El Dorado Hills, each sport's official budget is only a portion of the money they spend. For all sports, the school receives between $75,000 and $100,000 from boosters each year, estimates athletic director Steve White, atop the district's contribution of $95,000 for program costs and about $75,000 for coaching salaries.
"Being a poor school means not having the best equipment, the best facilities, not having coaches stick around as long, uniforms," said sociologist Smith. "It's about social class."
The resulting losses, Smith said, are "evidence about how class really plays out."
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Inner-city baseball needs Rays of hope
By Mark Kiszla
The Denver Post
Posted: 10/26/2008 12:30:00 AM MDT
TAMPA, Fla. — On the morning of a World Series game, as gray clouds churn the sky, you walk from the cemetery across 22nd Street and turn down King Boulevard, looking for any signs of life at the tiny ballparks where the big-league careers of Dwight Gooden and Gary Sheffield were born.
Against the rumble of traffic, the lone sound of activity is a young boy working on his crossover dribble. If baseball has a pulse here in the inner city, it's barely detectable.
From B.J. Upton and Carl Crawford of Tampa Bay to Jimmy Rollins and Ryan Howard of Philadelphia, there's a new generation of African-American stars honoring the legacies of Bob Gibson and Joe Morgan at the World Series. But can they inspire a revival of baseball in a community where young black athletes once dreamed of growing up to be Doc Gooden of the New York Mets instead of hoops superstar Dr. J?
"There is a lot of hysteria in the Tampa Bay area for the Rays in the World Series, but since the crack scene hit this part of town, the number of kids playing baseball is down," says Artis Gambrell Jr., president of the Belmont Heights Little League, whose youth proved they could play ball with anybody in the world during the 1970s and '80s.
"Around here, we don't really come in contact with Crawford or Upton. The Rays play a long way across the bay from Belmont Heights. As far as most kids in this neighborhood are concerned, the World Series might as well be in a different state."
From the lush carpet of infield grass to the bright yellow and burgundy paint covering the dugouts, everything at Belmont Heights is as immaculate as a museum, right down to the giant billboard that proudly declares a half-dozen appearances in the Little League World Series nearly a generation ago.
But this place feels lonely now. Baseball fever? Not here.
Banners celebrating the remarkable, worst-to-first success of the Rays are nowhere to be seen, although there are political signs popping up in yards down the block that promote Change with a capital C.
The number of African-American players in the majors has been on a steep, steady decline for two decades as young black stars have gravitated to other sports. The Houston Astros did not have a single black player in the 2005 World Series. A one-time urban powerhouse program such as Belmont Heights has seen its participation at the Little League level cut in half.
"We lost a generation. I've talked a million times to people over the last 30 years as to why. Nobody knows," commissioner Bud Selig says.
The major leagues are determined to reverse the trend, most notably with an initiative aimed at Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI). The program brings baseball and softball to youth in more than 200 communities around the world.
But television is what puts stars in the eyes of young dreamers. In David Price, Cliff Floyd, Edwin Jackson, Upton and Crawford, 20 percent of Tampa Bay's playoff roster is African-American, 2 1/2 times the current average in the major leagues. They are Rays of hope.
"It's all about the exposure," says Jackson, a 25-year-old pitcher for Tampa Bay. "Growing up, football and basketball were the most popular. Because of the notoriety . . . that's all most kids wanted to play. You have to see people who look like you. You have the RBI program, but once kids see you on TV on center stage, then that changes everything. Everyone wants to be on TV, with his friends and family watching."
Rollins was named the National League's most valuable player in 2007 as shortstop for the Phillies, giving a reason for black kids to want to be like Jimmy rather than Kobe. "If they see you made it," Rollins says, "they think: 'Why can't I give it a shot?' "
From the outfield at Belmont Heights, you can see the skyline of Tampa. Little League made Gambrell believe he could go anywhere as a child coming up through the program two years behind Gooden and two years ahead of Sheffield.
"The goal of baseball in the city isn't to produce the next Dwight Gooden," Gambrell says. "What we're trying to do with baseball is to help give young men a chance to grow up believing they can find success in anything they do in life. You hope this next generation is ready to turn the page and get back into baseball."