By John Klima
Daily Breeze
July 9, 2006

This is the first in a series of stories analyzing how baseball as an industry and a culture has regressed when it comes to developing African-American players.

Lou Johnson was bouncing around the dugout. "You know how Henry Aaron used to run?" he asked. "Like this!"

All of a sudden, the 71-year-old Johnson seemed to no longer have sore knees. He practically pranced as he imitated the player they called Hammer. Johnson raised his arms close to his body, clenched his fists and pointed them down, and jogged a few feet with small, bouncy steps. He looked more like the Easter Bunny than he did the all-time home run king.

"Henry ran like that," Johnson said. "Some guys run like hell. Everyone's got their own way of running. When Hank hit and ran the bases, it was different. People can build it up and say (stuff) the way they want to."

Johnson is playful, but there is sorrow to this joy. He took a breath when he returned to the bench and thought over a question that plagues baseball. In an era when the game tries to cleanse itself of performance-enhancing drugs and distrust, while it promotes itself as the international game, baseball as an industry and as a culture has regressed with a radical blackout harkening to the days of separate but equal.

"It's hard to comment on that," said Johnson, who played for the Dodgers in the 1960s. "Everything changes but the sun and the rain. I will say this: baseball has not progressed much, not in terms of playing, but in terms of signing players."

Baseball's lack of African-American players has not gone unnoticed, from the veterans of the game to the common fan to the First Fan.

On a visit to the White House in June, Hall of Fame outfielder and San Diego Padres vice president Dave Winfield said he was sitting in the Oval Office with President Bush, who, Winfield said, on an unsolicited note, broached the topic of baseball's blackout and asked what can be done to get more African-Americans playing baseball.

"He understands all of it," Winfield said. "People are thinking about it, they are discussing it. The President, he talked about it, he's concerned. He's talking as a baseball fan. I thanked him for doing his part to uplift the game."

D'Arby Myers represents the future.

The 17-year-old center fielder graduated from Westchester High last month, just weeks after the Philadelphia Phillies drafted him in the fourth round. Myers was born in Los Angeles in 1988, but when he begins his baseball career, he will have much in common with Johnson, who was born in Lexington, Ky. in 1934 and began his professional baseball career in 1953.

"You don't have many guys to look up to when you're a little guy," Myers said. "When you see one of your own, it's completely different."

Be it 71 or 17, some things haven't changed. Much like in Johnson's era, it's not that African-Americans can't play baseball exceptionally well, it's that there are a lack of opportunities on the way to getting signed in professional baseball, much less the major leagues. The problem permeates baseball, from the big leagues to the little leagues and draws questions from the Commissioner's Office to the Oval Office.

In the summer of 2006, 50 years after Jackie Robinson played his final season in the major leagues, baseball faces a new dark age. The sport that uses the image of Robinson to sell itself as the game of change hasn't changed much in Myers' lifetime, and in many ways, has declined.

It is a taboo topic in the major leagues, where the memories of the Al Campanis "Nightline" incident in 1987 are still fresh among executives.

"Not sure I really want to get into the powder keg of minorities in the game," one baseball executive wrote in reply to an e-mail query. "That one is a bit touchy and one I would rather stay away from."

From high school to the major leagues, the blackout is in effect. Said one African-American major leaguer who wished to remain anonymous: "It's going back to the way it used to be in the old days."

The Campanis incident illuminated baseball's cultural tendencies and led to a generation of African-American managers and executives. It also helped lead to the formation of baseball's first initiative to recruit African-American athletes, the Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) program, a patchwork effort that began in Los Angeles in 1988. RBI eventually led to the recently opened and MLB-funded Urban Academy in Compton.

The end result is a game where African-American stars are few, and while baseball prides itself on the quality of the game enhanced by international competition, the same question that was asked in the days of the Negro Leagues can be asked today: How much stronger would the game be if young African-Americans were invited to play baseball?

The numbers are no secret.

Three decades after blacks made up nearly 30 percent of major league rosters, they now make up 8.5 percent -- less than half the 17.25 percent of 1959, the first year every team was integrated.

What may seem a rapid downward spiral of participation has origins that go back at least a generation and has been observable for more than a decade. After making up 27.5 percent of teams in 1975, blacks represented less than 20 percent in the '90s and 15 percent or less since 1997.

While college baseball has experienced unprecedented growth in the past 20 years, African-Americans, who once populated the college game with future big league stars, have vanished from the landscape. Among the 240 players represented on the eight teams at last month's College World Series, a count of the rosters reveals only four everyday African-American players. The NCAA reports that blacks make up only 6 percent of Division I baseball rosters this year.

The last great generation of black stars, players such as Eric Davis and Darryl Strawberry, who entered the game in the late 1970s and early '80s, were players signed on the basis of how they played in high school and in sandlot games. That structure has now been replaced by an expansive system of travel baseball, an expensive undertaking that has prohibited many African-American kids from playing.

The average cost for equipment, dues and insurance for travel ball is estimated to be between $1,500 and $3,000 per player by many amateur baseball coaches.

Some in the African-American community suggest junior college and four-year college coaches shy away from recruiting black players because they fear developing their skills and accepting the social, economic and family responsibilities that often accompany an inner-city athlete.

"There are coaches who do not want black kids infiltrating their programs," said Charlie Porter, a veteran South Bay coach and umpire.

"The prevailing mentality is 'Why should I recruit a black kid if I don't need him to win?'"

Others believe the problems rest with the players themselves.

"These kids don't want to work at the game," said Chicago White Sox scout Tommy Butler, a Compton resident for 37 years. "I've been a black man for 66 years and I'm telling you -- you can't blame a coach for not taking a kid who doesn't know how to play the game."

Professional baseball is not the place to learn.

Major League teams, which once desired scouting and signing high school players because they believed they had higher upside than college players, now view many raw prep players as cost-prohibitive risks. When they do draft elite high school players, they are chosen from the talent pool provided by the travel team and showcase circuit.

Instead, they opt to draft from the college ranks, from which there are virtually no African-American players.

During the 2006 season, only six African-American players out of 288, less than one percent, were listed on the rosters of the eight L.A. Area Division I baseball programs.

Five of the eight schools -- Long Beach State, USC, Cal State Fullerton, UC Irvine and Pepperdine -- did not have any African-American players.

When Myers was seven months old in June of 1989, 13 of 26 players selected in the first round of the baseball draft were African-American, including college stars Frank Thomas, Tom Goodwin and Mo Vaughn.

Three African-American high school players from the first round of that draft, Charles Johnson, Calvin Murray and Willie Greene, went on to play in the major leagues.

As Myers waited for his fourth-round phone call last month, only one out of the first 30 players selected was black. In the first round, 15 white players from four-year colleges were drafted. The one black player, Virginia right-hander Jeremy Jeffress, was a high school player.

\ The cycle has been born. As a result, baseball has lost many pure athletes. As RBI founder John Young said, "This is why the United States produces players like Matthew LeCroy and the Dominican Republic produces players like Albert Pujols."

How did baseball come to this point? How can it fix a system that economically denies an entire segment of athletes and loses them to football and basketball? How can it, in the truest parlance of the game, 'make an adjustment?' There are no easy solutions, and even the most common solution, money, doesn't address the social damage. While the game trumps the arrival of young stars like Delmon Young and Lastings Milledge, it fails to mention that baseball attracts only the African-American players with enough affluence to support an amateur baseball career.

It leads to a painful conclusion.

"Baseball is no longer the American sport as much as it used to be," Chicago Cubs manager Dusty Baker said. "It's the truth."

Baker absorbed the legacy of black baseball's past. When he played American Legion baseball in Sacramento, his coach was Spider Jorgensen, a former Dodger who shared a locker with Jackie Robinson. When Baker came to the Braves, Satchel Paige made him carry his fishing poles and told him stories.

Aaron watched over Baker in the young outfielder's formative years. When Baker was traded to the Dodgers, he befriended players such as Johnson and Jim Gilliam who, once in St. Louis, brought him to lunch to meet Negro League legend Cool Papa Bell. Baker said he believes baseball will cycle forward again, but there is work to be done.

It's easy to imagine Myers as a player similar to Bell, a fast center fielder signed as a leadoff hitter. Johnson, who was signed by Yankee scout Bill Dismukes, a former submarine pitcher in the Negro Leagues, spent 12 years in the minor leagues. He first played in more than 100 games, at age 30, for the 1965 Dodgers. He finished with a lifetime average of .262 and the nickname "Sweet Lou," which followed him into retirement.

Johnson, who still does work for the Dodgers' community relations department, was a basketball player at a small college in Kentucky. He was a right-handed hitter and a solid player. Would he get a chance today?

"No way," he said. "I'm a different kind of player. I was a small, right-handed hitting outfielder, who also played basketball at a small college. Today, they wouldn't even look at me."

In the pursuit of the finished product, has baseball pushed away the African-American athlete? It's a challenge to find baseball people who will confront the issue, no matter the color of their skin.

"Probably best if I just do a little more than my part and stay in the background," the executive said. "Any other subject I am ready and willing to go."

"It's not right to put it on the young guys coming up," the African-American major leaguer said. "If they talk, they'll get blackballed. Maybe it's a bad word for this, but it's the truth."

It has been 50 summers since Robinson left baseball, but the question is the same. How do you solve a problem that so many people are afraid to discuss?

COMING OF AGE
Part Two: D'Arby Myers is leaving no doubts despite having to prove himself at Westchester, in his neighborhood and on the field.

By John Klima
Daily Breeze
July 10, 2006

This is the second in a series of stories that analyze how baseball as an industry and a culture has regressed in terms of developing African-American players.

D'Arby Myers once was stopped by a police officer because he was walking around with his baseball bat, but that was the least of his troubles on the road to becoming a professional baseball player.

Last spring, an Internet rumor spread that Latino gangs were going to attack African-American high school students in Los Angeles. Many students at predominantly black Westchester High stayed home. Myers had a baseball game, so he went to school. There were police cars everywhere. Myers, a 17-year-old black center fielder, looked conspicuous when he carried his bat.

It's not the only time Myers was singled out as a black youth playing baseball. He said it's been a part of his life from the start, as a black player in the age of the blackout.

"Baseball, this is my nature, you know?" Myers said. He was holding a pair of new baseball cleats. The only child of a single mother, Rita Wallace, he chose a pair of good cleats over designer shoes. He carried his Nikes like they were gold and didn't mind that he wore generic white sneakers.

"If these were Kobe Bryant shoes, nobody would look at me funny," he said of his baseball cleats. "That's how it is. That's why I can't wait to go out and play baseball at the next level, because I know it will be different."

The problem as to why fewer blacks are playing today is often examined from the major league level. But the problem has roots at the community level, where players such as Myers, especially those from modest economic means, are subject to questions as to why they play baseball in the first place.

"I got it both ways, from other black kids and from adults," Myers said. "In Little League, I couldn't play my last year because it was so bad. There were black guys who wouldn't let me practice, and the only thing I could think of was (it was) because I'm good and it's out of jealously. I really can't tell you the correct answer.

"Then I saw them change in high school, saying, 'I knew you would be good.' Then why, when I was a kid, when you were having batting practice, was I sitting on the bench? That really hurts, you know? Then, I would go play with other teams, and I would be the only black kid on the team. It wouldn't get any better. People would just look at you differently."

One African-American who did appreciate Myers was the late Ellis Williams, a bird dog scout and baseball coach.

Myers, who couldn't afford to play on travel ball teams, showed up one winter afternoon at San Fernando High because he heard there might be a pickup game. There was, but the players weren't kids. They were minor leaguers getting ready for spring training. Myers, who was playing Pony League, showed up in shorts and cleats with his aluminum bat.

Williams met him with skepticism.

"What position do you play?" he asked.

Myers told him center field, like his idol, Ken Griffey Jr.

"Get to right field!" Williams barked.

"Those guys had wives and babies," Wallace said. "I said, 'This is my baby.' "

Myers remembers it well. "These guys are talking about their wives and girlfriends, and all I could say was, 'My mom dropped me off.' "

He said he immediately recognized the speed of the game, the strength of the arms, the speed of the legs. The first ball hit to him was a high fly. Myers snagged it in the glove his mother bought off the shelf for him five years earlier.

Unlike others, Williams let Myers hit. When the youngster began to walk to the plate, holding his aluminum bat, everyone on the field laughed. Williams put a wood bat in Myers hands for the first time and let him face an Asian pitcher in his early 20s, throwing fastballs the likes of which are not seen in Pony League.

"It was a huge bat," Myers said. "It felt like a tree in my hands."

But the swing and the flight of the ball erased any doubts Williams had. Myers, who hadn't even started high school, hit a double into the left-center gap.

In 2001, Williams brought Myers to John Young, the former scout who used the fallout from the Al Campanis "Nightline" episode in 1987 to help him launch the Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) program in 1989. As a scout in Alabama in the early 1980s, Young had forged a relationship with a young Bo Jackson.

The RBI program was the genesis of the Major League Urban Academy that opened earlier this year in Compton.

Young had seen future major league outfielder Coco Crisp come through the program. In Myers, he again saw a prospect.

"Ellis had a phrase for players like D'Arby," Young said. "He called them 'freaks of nature.' He said, to be a major league superstar, you have to do something better than anyone else.

"I've seen D'Arby do everything you want a player to do. I've seen him throw. I've seen him run. I've seen him at 13 hit a ball out of Minute Maid Park in the championship game of the RBI World Series. People, meaning some scouts, say 'He can't hit.' I say he hasn't played enough to hit. And power is an extension of hitting. He has such great respect for the game, and he loves it."

Young, who played briefly in the major leagues in 1971, sacrificed a potential career as a baseball executive to run RBI. He did so despite baseball people he trusted and respected warning him that such an undertaking would consume him. He did so, he explained, out of a need to contribute to his race. Yet he would learn that, like Myers, he would endure criticism within the black community for his baseball ambitions.

He traded his career so players like Myers could have one.

"I've never seen a player with D'Arby's kinds of skills, who loves the game, not make it, and make it big," Young said.

As Myers entered his senior year of high school baseball this past spring, he no longer needed RBI, much less pickup games against minor leaguers. He would soon make the decision to become one himself.

Meanwhile, Young examined the future by looking at the past.

HOW BASEBALL IS LOSING THE INNER CITY
Part Three: Baseball has a "disconnect" with an area that used to be a breeding ground for the sport's stars.

By John Klima
Daily Breeze
July 11, 2006

This is the third in a series of stories analyzing how baseball as an industry and a culture has regressed when it comes to developing African-American players.

They called themselves "The Three Amigos" and turned out to be as prophetic as they were practical jokers.

John Young was the youngest of the bunch when he returned to scout Southern California in the mid-1980s. A former minor league player who grew up in inner-city Los Angeles, he had reached the major leagues with the Detroit Tigers in 1971 and then played in the minor leagues until 1978.

When he completed his playing career, he intended to become a basketball coach and the athletic director at Alabama State University. He had a job offer for $18,000 per year, but the Tigers offered him a position scouting the South for $6,000 a year.

Young didn't want the job at first, but he found that a good scout could climb swiftly through the baseball ranks. Young also felt an obligation to the black community. He had mentors along the way, and when he came home to Los Angeles in 1985, he believed it would be easy finding African-American talent in the heart of Los Angeles, the same area that had produced him.

But when he went back to his old neighborhood, he felt what he called a "disconnect," and was stunned to learn that a blackout had occurred. Sandlots had been replaced by blacktops. Instead of kids dreaming of being the next Willie Mays, they wanted to be the next Magic Johnson. To make matters worse, baseball was shifting to a preference of drafting college players instead of high school players. It added up to a dilemma that baseball as an industry and as a society is still struggling with today.

Young turned to his mentors, a pair of wise-cracking and cynical jokers. Bob Zuk and Cliff Ditto were sharp white scouts in their 60s. Zuk, who had befriended Young in the South, had made a name for himself partly by signing black hitters from the inner city. He had signed Willie Stargell out of Oakland and George Hendrick and Ellis Valentine from Los Angeles.

"I remember saying, 'Damn, Bob, you signed everyone from my neighborhood except for me," Young recalled. "Bob said, 'John, sometimes the best players are the ones you never sign at all."

Ditto, who signed Ozzie Smith and Tony Gwynn, told Young something that he never forgot: "We used to sign six players a year from the inner city. Now we're lucky if we sign one every six years."

The major leagues were still populated with African-American stars. The severity of what Ditto, who died in 1989, warned had yet to be seen. But Young understood Ditto's warning.

When the Al Campanis "Nightline" incident rocked baseball in 1987, Young and scout Damon Oppenheimer, who went on to become the scouting director for the Yankees, researched the demographics of major league players and determined that teams favored signing college players over high school players.

The days of signing high school players such as Stargell and Eddie Murray were giving way to a generation of teams that wanted college players, such as Smith and Gwynn. Indeed, the mid-to-late 80s saw the last of the great African-American college players, and when Westchester High outfielder D'Arby Myers was born in 1989, there would be few impact college players like Frank Thomas and Mo Vaughn in the future.

The Dodgers had taken the Branch Rickey principle of quality through quantity and pioneered player development through Latin American academies, helping further the exodus of scouts away from urban areas. Athletes who once saw fortune in baseball, now believed it could only be found in football and basketball.

"Football and basketball became priorities No. 1 and No. 2 in the inner city," said Chuck Porter, a former Morningside High and Compton College coach and longtime South Bay umpire. "Baseball became the stepchild."

The rise of college football and basketball, where the NCAA allows 85 and 13 scholarships, respectively, compared to baseball's 11.7, helped to drastically reduce baseball's talent pool in the inner city.

Professional baseball had no answer.

"Back in our day, football and basketball weren't paying unless you were a superstar," said Chicago Cubs manager Dusty Baker, who wanted to play basketball and football at Santa Clara, but signed with the Atlanta Braves in 1967 because he needed to support his single mother and four siblings. "Now you got linemen and defensive backs getting paid.

"If you can go to college and end up signing for a mega bonus and get some education out of that, why wouldn't a kid take that? You mean to tell me Jason Kidd and Allen Iverson couldn't play baseball if they had wanted to?"

The immediate gratification and lure of a large signing bonus is most sharply seen in the difference between football and baseball.

For example, quarterback Alex Smith, the top pick in the 2005 NFL draft, signed for $49.5 million and a $24 million signing bonus.

Baseball's top pick, Justin Upton, signed for a $6.1 million bonus.

While baseball's Latin American pipeline began to produce a stream of future Hall of Fame players, the game neglected the inner city.

"We spend, our clubs, between $50 and $60 million a year developing ballplayers in Latin America," said Jimmie Lee Solomon, MLB's vice president of operations, who led the effort to build MLB's first Urban Academy in Compton, which opened in March. "We have some groups of people right here in our own country that we still haven't impacted like we should."

Said Baker, who hit only .229 as a high school senior but went on to hit 242 major league home runs: "If you go to Latin America, you'll see baseball is still the No. 1 sport there. You'll see kids playing in the street."

So many factors went wrong at once for the black baseball player that when Young proposed the Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) program to then-commissioner Peter Ueberroth in 1988, he had no idea what he was getting into.

What began as a project that he added to his scouting job soon became a full-time obsession. While he continued to make the program work with a nominal budget, his once-promising front-office career vanished. While he tried to help black players go to college, he drew criticism from many in the black community who believed that Young was out to use RBI to make himself a prominent figure more than to help young black players.

"When you talk about the black athlete and the inner-city athlete, you're talking about two different people," Young said. "I don't think a lot of baseball people recognize that. When we first started the program, the black stars of the time -- Thomas, Vaughn, Barry Bonds, Barry Larkin -- were college guys. It's a matter of economics and family. You got a kid without a parent, you got a problem."

Young threw himself into the problem and immersed himself in a quest in which he learned a difficult lesson. The blackout is a problem that no individual can fix alone.

WORDS OF CHANGE
Part Four: Al Campanis' statements in 1987 helped begin to alter baseball's landscape.

By John Klima
Daily Breeze
July 12, 2006

This is the fourth in a series of stories analyzing how baseball as an industry and a culture has regressed when it comes to developing African-American players.

"No, I don't believe it's prejudice. I truly believe that (African-Americans) may not have some of the necessities to be, let's say, a field manager, or perhaps a general manager." -- Al Campanis on "Nightline," April 9, 1987

The ramifications of the former Dodger general manager's words continue to shape baseball nearly 20 years later and are still the standard by which progress is measured. Among the pivotal changes that came following his statements was the start of the Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) program, founded in 1988 by John Young. And, in December of that year, one life was beginning and another one was continuing. Westchester star D'Arby Myers was born, and Dusty Baker found a new beginning when his playing career ended.

"We were all shocked when that happened," said Baker, who is in his fourth year managing the Chicago Cubs. "Al Campanis was probably one of the fairest upstairs guys to minority players. But, if it hadn't been for that, I honestly believe I wouldn't have gotten the shot to be where I am."

Baker's run of seven popular seasons in Los Angeles, where Campanis had been the general manager, ended in 1983. After playing for the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland A's, Baker was no longer a productive hitter. He retired in 1986, certain that he had been pushed out.

"I was kind of bitter when I left baseball," Baker said. "Usually, when people of color got out of the game, there weren't jobs waiting."

That winter, the Giants convinced Baker, who was working as a stockbroker, to become their first base coach. He accepted and eventually became the Giants manager for 10 years, winning National League Manager of the Year honors three times.

Baker was at the fore of a generation of African-American managers, such as Cito Gaston, Hal McRae and Don Baylor.

"I think a lot of us, directly or indirectly, got hired because of Al Campanis," Baker said.

"But if (blacks) had said anything similar to what Mr. Campanis said, I don't think there would have been the uproar or the necessity to try to prove differently from what Al said."

"I remember, racism was accepted," Young said. "The N-word was dropped all the time. I remember the winter meetings in the late '70s. There would be four black people at the entire thing. There was a writer in Boston who said that the most uncomfortable black man is the black man around baseball people at the hotel bar. Things like that are not accepted now, but they were accepted when I came into the game."

In 1991, then-Commissioner Fay Vincent hired Jimmie Lee Solomon, a Harvard Law-educated Washington D.C. attorney, to serve as MLB's liaison to the minor leagues. Solomon, an African-American, eventually rose to become baseball's Vice President of Baseball Operations and led the effort to build the recently opened MLB Urban Academy in Compton.

"You want to be totally, brutally honest?" Solomon said. "Campanis' statements were one of the best things that ever happened to baseball. It shined a light, a very public light, on something that was rampant. That thought process was rampant, but very wrongheaded. It made baseball look at itself. It made baseball want to be better. It made baseball want to represent the American pastime as just that, which it did not, because it presented only opportunity for one group."

While baseball made public strides, Young made an under-the-radar move when he proposed RBI to then-Commissioner Peter Ueberroth in 1988. The program started with a shoestring budget, but the Campanis incident gave Young the platform he needed. The RBI program became the forerunner to the Academy.

Myers played two seasons of RBI, when he was 13 and 14. It was his first exposure to elite travel baseball, a system many young black athletes do not the have financial resources or incentive to join.

"I didn't have travel ball until then," Myers said. "I remember seeing (Angels' 2006 first-round pick) Hank Conger, and he had been playing club ball since he was nine or 10. I didn't have a trainer telling me, 'Do this right, do that right.' I was out there, doing the best I could. I really taught myself a lot."

The true irony of the Campanis incident rests in the fact that several baseball people, including Baker, believe Campanis was fair to minorities. Respected veteran scout George Genovese, 84, who signed black players such as Leuzinger High's George Foster, Gary Matthews and San Pedro native Garry Maddox, knew Campanis for four decades.

"He was not a person who was bigoted in any way, shape or form," Genovese said. "It didn't make a difference if the player was green, red or yellow. He was a scout. Could he play? That's all he wanted. Al was a baseball man. The color of a man's skin meant nothing to him."

Campanis, who played with Jackie Robinson at Montreal in 1946, died at 81 in 1998 and probably never imagined the impact his words had on the game, for the better instead of the worse.

Said Young: "I think what it did was flush out a lot of feelings that were persistent in the industry. It made people aware of just where we were in terms of racial relations. Coming off that helped RBI get started. It really awakened a lot of people."

Campanis was fired immediately after he made the statements on "Nightline." But perhaps the scout in him would find solace in the fact that, no matter his true feelings, his words helped Baker discover a new career, helped Solomon attain his position and helped Myers begin to find his way to professional baseball.

IN SEARCH OF GUYS LIKE BO
Part Five: Former scout John Young started the RBI program to give more disadvantaged youths like Jackson a chance to play baseball

By John Klima
Daily Breeze
July 13, 2006

This is the fifth in a series of stories analyzing how baseball as an industry and a culture has regressed when it comes to developing African-American players.

The best athlete John Young ever saw play baseball was Vincent Edward Jackson.

In the winter of 1979 in Alabama, Jackson unexpectedly came to a tryout camp. Young's patience was nearing an end, but he was soon rewarded.

"I had 150 kids out there. Half of them were in overalls and the other half were barefoot," Young said. "There was not a drop of talent among them. It started to rain, so we had to get them off the field. When it stopped raining, he was about the 30th kid to throw from right field to third base.

"The ball was waterlogged, but it literally drip dried when he threw it. I mean, it was a seed. Then we ran him and let him hit. He was the best baseball player I've ever seen. That was Bo Jackson."

Young suddenly felt enlightened.

"I thought, 'This is the sweetest find in the history of scouting,' " Young remembered.

Young struck up a relationship with Jackson and his mother, Florence Bonds. Young said Jackson told him his goal was to play college football and win the Heisman Trophy. At the time, Jackson was a junior in high school. He fulfilled his goal six years later.

Young won Jackson over when he told him to play college football if that was what he really wanted. Jackson told Young not to waste a draft pick on him because he would play both sports at Auburn, though few believed he would follow through.

Unbeknownst to Young, one of his mentors and competitors, Bob Zuk, had called Jackson and his mother the night before the draft and pretended to be Young. When Young then called on draft day, she was unusually cold.

"She said to me, 'You're not John Young, and furthermore, you don't even do a good imitation of John Young!' I will go to my grave saying Bob Zuk called Bo Jackson and talked to him for an hour about not signing with the Tigers."

Zuk, who died in 2005, never came clean. Young told the story at Zuk's funeral as a warm reminder of his mentor.

Young has a nagging cough that often interrupts him. At 57, he can retrace the steps of his own career, and it seems to speed by like Jackson's first throw from right field.

A Los Angeles native who played at Mt. Carmel High, Young signed with the Detroit Tigers in 1969 and reached the majors in 1971. He played in the minors until 1978, then became a scout for the Tigers.

Young gravitated toward Zuk, whose ability to judge hitting was among the best. Zuk was grudgingly given respect, but he was also despised by many scouts. Zuk called himself a loner and detested scouts who bragged about signing players that they really didn't.

Young later learned that another reason Zuk wasn't liked in baseball was because during the 1960s, Zuk, a white scout, gave black players equal bonus money to that of their white contemporaries. That influenced Young, an African-American.

After the Al Campanis incident created the opportunity for Young to propose the Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) program in 1988, Zuk warned Young that the problem was greater than anyone imagined.

Torn by his own conviction, Young couldn't resist the challenge.

"I just didn't see the commitment from the baseball world to do anything about the problem," Young said. "I was very conscious not to use RBI as a vehicle to advance my career in baseball. Not that I'm a saint or anything, but to be honest, my poor management skills, my ability to micromanage, and my inability to really delegate just consumed me."

With the minimal community relations budget he had from Major League Baseball, Young observed the growing trends of player development. The rise of college baseball and the demand for Latin American talent had cast aside the kind of ballplayer he had once been.

"To play competitive baseball, you have to play travel ball. That's all there is to it," Young said. "High school baseball isn't going to do it. A lot of families build their work and vacation schedules around travel ball. An inner-city kid, his family doesn't have the money to do that, if he has a family at all.

"A suburban family might spend $3,000 a year on a kid and call it an investment. They'll assume their kid will get drafted or get that $20,000 scholarship. That's not the same mentality that exists in the inner city. So what RBI does for the talented athlete is to allow him to compete at the travel-ball level without having to pay."

Outfielder Coco Crisp became RBI's first impact major league player. He played at four South Bay high schools and two colleges in six years, but he was playing for RBI's Los Angeles Grays in 1996 when he started turning heads.

"Looking back, it was a good part of my life in terms of growing," Crisp said. "I needed somewhere to play."

RBI, whose mission is to serve disadvantaged youths, has 90,000 teenagers participating in 200 baseball programs worldwide, according to Jimmie Lee Solomon, MLB's Vice President of Operations.

Crisp, Philadelphia shortstop Jimmy Rollins and Florida pitcher Dontrelle Willis are major league RBI graduates. More than 100 RBI players have been drafted, including a high of 31 players and No. 1 pick Justin Upton in 2005. A total of 13 RBI graduates were chosen this June.

Despite such success, Young didn't find many fans in the black community, which claimed that Young wanted to use RBI to promote himself.

"The man means well but he never surrounded himself with good help," veteran Chicago White Sox scout Tommy Butler said. "It was a situation where he was like George Steinbrenner. Nobody knew his daily plans. He didn't tell anyone. He kept it all to himself. That's why RBI is good, but it could have been better."

Butler said Young's strengths are in fund-raising and administration, not teaching. He agrees that Young, like Zuk, was a loner to his detriment.

Charlie Porter, a coach and umpire in Los Angeles for 35 years, said Young relied on local baseball people to begin RBI, but did not share credit.

"John's intentions are good, but he wants to take full credit," Porter said. "He's not a bad person, but he doesn't know how to work with others, especially in the inner city."

Said Young: "If they want to know, yes, the criticism hurts."

Young remains driven by a strong conviction to help young African-Americans, but remains torn. Like Zuk, he is a loner.

"When I first started, I tried to save everyone," Young said. "A lot of people view RBI, because it's Major League Baseball, as unlimited resources. It's not."

Young said he does not want credit for any of the players RBI has helped. He said he has been burned in the past by several coaches whom he believed were using RBI to advance their careers.

"Somewhere along the line it changed," he said. "I started RBI with the idea of getting more kids to the big leagues. It became about getting more kids into college and helping more kids stay out of jail. That's why I lost my baseball career. But at the same time, I don't need sympathy."

Young's cough is persistent because he has congestive heart failure. Doctors told him he needed a heart transplant within six years. That was nine years ago.

"There's no martyr in me," he said. "I don't think RBI gave me a heart condition."

But it has slowed him down a step. He hopes to work for a major league team again, but recognizes it's a longshot. Young became a social worker more than a scout, a trade he alone made. But deep inside his failing heart, he watches closely, hoping once more to find another baseball player like Bo Jackson.

"Awareness is RBI's greatest legacy," he said. "When I think of the players who have gone to college or gone to the big leagues, awareness is what I'm most proud of."

URBAN BASEBALL ACADEMIES A TOUGH SELL IN U.S.
Part Six: Jimmie Lee Solomon, the son of a rancher, is trying to harvest hope. But he knows what works to develop talent in Latin America won't necessarily work in America

By John Klima
Daily Breeze
July 14, 2006

This is the sixth in a series of stories analyzing how baseball as an industry and a culture has regressed when it comes to developing African-American players.

Two days before the opening of the Urban Academy he helped shepherd into fruition, Jimmie Lee Solomon sat in the seats behind home plate and watched workers apply the finishing touches to the field at Compton College.

As men pushed wheel barrows full of dirt and sod, Solomon allowed a satisfied smile. Though he has become one of baseball's most prominent African-American baseball executives, he never lost his connection to the land.

"Thompsons, Texas," Solomon said of his hometown. "It was a small farm town 35 miles southwest of Houston, about 200 people. When I grew up, it was cotton, rice and hay, things like that. We made our living off the land."

But Solomon, the oldest of five siblings, decided this would not be his path. He did farm chores before taking the bus to school, and when school was out, his late father, Jimmie Lee Sr., waited for him in his GMC truck. The young Solomon came home and worked until dark every day for years.

"This was good for my preparation in life," he said. "But it also made me know that this was a life I did not want to live."

Solomon found his escape in athletics. He admired Muhammad Ali and was a football player and a track athlete in high school. He earned a scholarship to Dartmouth College and later graduated from Harvard Law. After a successful legal career in Washington D.C., Solomon was hired by then-Commissioner Fay Vincent as baseball's liaison to minor league clubs in 1991.

As baseball sought to tackle the steady decline in black players, it was Solomon, the former football player who says he played "only four or five games of Little League" who provided more direction.

After a conversation with veteran baseball executive Sandy Alderson, a fellow Dartmouth College and Harvard Law graduate, Solomon said he decided that baseball needed to replicate the successful Latin American academy process.

"I mimicked it," Solomon said. "When this whole idea was coming through my mind, I thought, 'Why is it that so much money is spent in the Dominican and in Venezuela? Why aren't we spending that kind of money here?' "

Though the Urban Academy represents hope, it does not solve one of baseball's biggest obstacles: player control. In Latin American academies, players involved in the program can be signed by the parent organization because amateur draft rules do not apply overseas.

Latin American players can also be signed at age 16 and in some cases, they sign with agents as early as age 13. Some agents run their own academies. The agent then sells the player to a team, which often puts the player in its own academy.

Domestically, baseball doesn't spend money on urban black athletes largely because they are too raw, and unless they have been in the travel ball system, they are considered financial risks. Solomon's Urban Academy aspires to solve this, but the scouting, player development and drafting systems are not presently conducive to helping inner-city black players enter professional baseball.

Solomon dreams of individual teams building their own domestic academies, but acknowledges that baseball would have to change its draft because teams will not spend money to develop players who would then be subjected to the open market in the draft.

"It doesn't make any sense for a team to build an academy, develop all these players, and then they go into the open market," Solomon said. "That's why the Latin American academies work. You own all those players. From a player personnel point of view, from a business point of view, why would you start an academy in the States?"

Solomon said baseball has explored ways to change the draft, but in the last Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) which narrowly averted a work stoppage in 2002, the topic was pushed to the backburner. The CBA expires on Dec. 19 of this year.

An international draft entails clubs accepting more financial responsibility to expand scouting coverage across the globe. Club owners already heavily invested in Latin American academies would likely oppose a draft to strip them of the players they developed. It would be as if the Montreal Expos had signed and developed Vladimir Guerrero in their academy, seen his value soar, and lost him to the New York Yankees in the draft.

"A large part of this lies with the relationship between the Players' Association and ownership," Hall of Fame outfielder and San Diego Padres vice president Dave Winfield said. "This is something we need to address."

Unless Major League Baseball decides to build academies in major cities, a timely and costly process, individual clubs are unlikely to spend money to develop players that can be drafted away from them. Solomon, for example, spent five years searching for a site before settling on and getting approval from the city and community college district to develop the parcel of land behind the football field at Compton College.

Baseball's best hope for teams to invest in urban academies like the test model in Compton is to establish a worldwide draft. Until then, many baseball officials believe the key is to use the new academy to produce players to prove to teams that it can be done.

"Until there's a world draft, which will eventually come, getting players into the Urban Academy and to the big leagues is the only way it will happen," said Darrell Miller, the Academy's director of operations.

As Solomon watched workers scramble to till the land, the son of a rancher sounded very much like one himself, one whose first chore of the day is done, but knows there is more work to do.

"I'd love to see at least one major league team have an Urban Academy," Solomon said. "I'd like to see (black) numbers go back up to where they were in the 1970s. Part of this lies in making clubs understand that this will help the fan base grow. We need to impact these communities. It's like fruit. All you have to do is walk right over and pluck it. That's all you gotta do."

Dream Draft

Today it would be considered far-fetched for one team to land three African-Americans who became standout major leaguers in the same draft year, but that's exactly what happened in 1968. In the years when there were both January and June drafts, more players were afforded an opportunity to sign.

In January 1968, the Giants got Garry Maddox of San Pedro High with their second-round pick and George Foster (Leuzinger/El Camino College) with their third-round pick. In June, the team got Gary Matthews from San Fernando High with its first-round pick.

Matthews' son, Gary Jr., made the American League All-Star team this year. Foster was 1977 NL MVP when he hit 52 home runs for the Cincinnati Reds. Maddox was a lifetime .285 hitter who won eight Gold Gloves as a center fielder. Matthews was a lifetime .281 hitter over 16 seasons. The signing scout for all three was George Genovese, who has signed nearly 40 players who made the major leagues, and is still scouting today.

Once-fertile talent base for blacks, baseball

Inner-city Los Angeles was once a fertile area for African-American baseball talent. The years 1970-1975 represented the peak, when scores of players were drafted and played minor league baseball. A list of some notable inner-city L.A. high school players who became productive major league hitters:

(Name, High School, Graduation Year) Bobby Tolan, Fremont 1963

Also a standout high school pitcher, he stole 193 career bases, including 57 for the 1970 Reds. A lifetime .265 hitter.

Willie Crawford, Fremont 1963

Rushed to Dodger Stadium as a 17-year-old rookie in 1964, he had his best season in 1973 when he batted .295 with 26 doubles, 14 home runs and 66 RBIs.

Reggie Smith, Centennial 1963

Seven-time All-Star was a lifetime .286 hitter. Longtime Dodger finished with 1,876 hits, 295 home runs and 1,016 RBIs.

Bob Watson, Fremont 1965

Belted 184 career home runs for Astros, Yankees, Red Sox and Braves from 1966-1984.

George Hendrick, Fremont, 1968

Did not play any high school sports but went on to play 18 years with the Cardinals and the Angels among others. He hit .278 with 267 home runs and 1,111 RBIs.

Al Cowens, Centennial 1969

The runner-up in voting for the 1977 AL MVP award, Cowens enjoyed the prime of his career with Kansas City. The right fielder also won a Gold Glove in 1977. He was a .270 career hitter.

Chet Lemon, Fremont, 1972

'Chet the Jet,' lifetime .273 hitter, starting center fielder for 1984 World Series champion Tigers.

Ellis Valentine, Crenshaw, 1972

Had speed, power and strong arm. Hit .278 with 123 home runs, 1975-1985

Eddie Murray, Locke, 1973

3,255 hits, 504 home runs. First-ballot Hall of Famer.

Ken Landreaux, Dominguez, 1973

Starred at Arizona State, traded for Rod Carew, played 1981-1987 for the Dodgers and batted .268 lifetime. He twice stole 30 bases in a season.

Lonnie Smith, Centennial, 1974

He twice stole 50 bases in a season and was a lifetime .288 hitter from 1978-1994 for Phillies, Cardinals, Royals, Braves, Pirates and Orioles.

Hubie Brooks, Dominguez, 1974

Starred at Arizona State before hitting 149 lifetime home runs for the Mets, Expos, Dodgers, Angels and Royals, 1980-1994.

Ozzie Smith, Locke 1974

Hall of Fame shortstop went undrafted out of high school and then won 13 Gold Gloves in the majors.

Chili Davis, Dorsey, 1977

Switch-hitter signed as a catcher and was converted to an outfielder. He hit 350 career home runs from 1981-1999 for the Giants, Angels, Twins, Royals and Yankees.

Chris Brown, Crenshaw 1979

He hit .317 in 1986, but he never regained that form and finished his six seasons as a career .269 hitter.

Darryl Strawberry, Crenshaw, 1980

The top overall pick in the draft underachieved in the major leagues with a storied history of personal issues. He still hit 335 career home runs, drove in 1,000 runs and batted .259 from 1983-1999 for the Mets, Dodgers, Giants and Yankees.

Eric Davis, Fremont, 1980

Eighth-round pick as a high school shortstop, the outfielder went on to hit .269 lifetime with 282 home runs and 349 stolen bases. He was a two-time All-Star and three-time Gold Glove winner. His 1987 season with the Reds included 37 home runs, 100 RBIs, 120 runs and 50 stolen bases in 129 games.

FORMER ANGEL DIRECTS BASEBALL'S NEW LABORATORY
Part Seven: Darrell Miller hopes to use Compton's Urban Academy to renew the African-American community's interest in the sport

By John Klima
Daily Breeze
July 15, 2006

This is the seventh in a series of stories analyzing how baseball as an industry and a culture has regressed when it comes to developing African-American players.

Darrell Miller stood in center field days before the opening of the Major League Baseball Urban Academy in Compton. The foul poles weren't up. The concrete on the dugout floor was still wet.

He used to wear catching gear. Now he wore a yellow hard hat, acting as the project manager of a construction site that was about more than building a pristine complex in the heart of a community that had the highest murder rate in the country last year, a city known more for gangs and rappers than for balls and strikes.

For Miller, a former backup catcher and scout who spent parts of five seasons with the Angels and is better known for the basketball careers of his sister, Cheryl, and brother, Reggie, this is a destination along an unexpected path.

"If you'd have asked me when I was playing ball if I was going to come out here and do something like this, I'd have said, 'You're full of (it),' " Miller said.

The Urban Academy opened this spring and is fielding its first travel team this summer. To Major League Baseball, it represents more than a four-field facility. The $9 million complex represents a classroom, a marketing tool, a trade school, a baseball diamond and a bridge to a community that baseball lost.

"The academy is going to be a laboratory," said Dave Winfield, a Hall of Fame outfielder and San Diego Padres vice president. "They need to be successful. They need to be creative. They need to do some things baseball hasn't done in a while."

Miller was hired as operations director for the academy, essentially making him Jimmie Lee Solomon's foot soldier. It was Solomon, Major League Baseball's vice president of operations, who devised the concept and led the effort to find a suitable location, and dealt with the legal framework to broker a deal and develop the land.

Many in the African-American community are closely watching the development of the academy.

"I want to see it succeed," Winfield said. "I believe it can succeed because they are looking at what we should do and what we should provide, not only for the kids who attend, but for the community."

The academy is a baseball facility before it is a social band-aid. To be seen as a success, Miller knows the academy must produce major league players despite the social obstacles.

"You have five major freeways within a mile," he said. "If I'm a scout, this is a great place. That's what we want to do. We want to bring all the talent here so that it's one-stop shopping. You want to see players? Here they are."

For D'Arby Myers, 17, the academy came too late.

"It would have helped having a place like that," said Myers, who played at Westchester High and grew up in Los Angeles near Hamilton High. "I may not have grown up in Compton, but I still couldn't go out at night."

But it is the question of how to develop players from an inner-city population lacking in economic resources, family stability, educational consistency and baseball knowledge that has often divided the black community.

"Everyone has an idea of what needs to get done," said John Young, the RBI (Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities) founder. "But no one has a cohesive idea."

Winfield said baseball cannot afford to mismanage the academy and that communities must be able to put aside past differences.

"Some of these things I'm working on myself," he said. "It's got to come from the right people at the right time to make something happen. I'm not going to let some things I have in mind get lost in the shuffle and not implemented."

Young said he struggles to find coaches who are interested in kids before their own career advancement. Winfield laments the lack of black men who understand baseball. Miller points out socio-economic factors that stem from the disintegration of urban America.

"The level of teaching baseball has fallen off," said Winfield, a former three-sport star. "Baseball is more difficult to teach and coach than football and basketball. Thirty years ago, all the men taught, talked and had played baseball. Now, if you grab the men in an urban area, they didn't necessarily play baseball, so they certainly can't teach it."

Miller said the academy will provide training for coaching, umpiring, field maintenance and other baseball vocations.

"There are a lot of things that have contributed to the inability for inner-city kids to play baseball," he said. "One of them is the deterioration of the city and the disintegration of the family. Little League is predicated on volunteers, fathers and mothers. When that started breaking down, the infrastructure started breaking down and divorces went up, a lot of black kids stopped playing Little League."

The academy will be able to take the RBI concept a step further, Miller said, by giving more players an opportunity to play travel ball.

Young said he is proud to "pass the torch" to the academy.

The academy has to work closely with the RBI program to ensure that the two entities do not steal players from each other. The days of the sandlot are dead; baseball players must be polished before a team signs them, a factor that has cost the sport years worth of urban African-American players.

"You look at the cost of player development," Miller said. "The old adage was to give the guy 1,000 at-bats and let's see what he can do. You didn't just have triple-A, double-A, single-A, you had B, C, and D ball. Everyone got a chance to play and, as a player, you got to play yourself out of a job. These guys have to be pre-developed, and inner-city African-American players haven't had that opportunity."

Winfield acknowledges the rise of travel teams has become important in player development, but he said he believes the academy, as well as many other travel teams and organizations, must be cautious with their players.

"This is the way baseball in America has evolved," Winfield said. "If you don't start getting some specific instruction and playing in these travel leagues, you don't have a chance. I'm not necessarily a proponent. You risk injury and burnout. There's a dark side of that, too."

The cost to play in these leagues, estimated by amateur coaches to be between $1,500 and $3,000 per player, has driven many athletes to pursue college careers in football and basketball because of their "revenue" sport status.

"A big part is helping a kid understand that if he's 6-foot-5, he's got a better chance of a future in baseball than he does in basketball," Winfield said. "At the same time, I can tell you of some name running backs that have blown out (their knees) and told me, 'Man, I wish I had played baseball.' You blow out an ACL in baseball, you can play another 10 years. You blow out an ACL in football, you're lucky if you can play another 10 seconds."

On the day the academy opened in March, Miller was pleased. It rained the night before, but the major league-quality draining system didn't leave a drop of water on the infield grass. Optimism prevailed.

"We cannot fail here," Miller said. "And we won't."

THE CULTURAL DIVIDE
Part Eight: How Major League Baseball's marketing lost the African-American athlete

By John Klima
Daily Breeze
July 16, 2006

This is the eighth in a series of stories analyzing how baseball as an industry and a culture has regressed when it comes to developing African-American players.

One of the most frustrating aspects of baseball's disconnection with the African-American athlete is the idea that Major League Baseball could have curtailed the damage had it better geared its marketing approach toward the culture.

Instead, baseball finds itself trying to devise new ways to make up lost ground.

D'Arby Myers, the 17-year-old former Westchester High outfielder, explained how he saw baseball lose touch.

"At first, I saw the Dominican guys and I always thought those guys were black," he said. "Then they would say their name. And I said, 'Mom, why do they have a Mexican name? And she's like, 'No, he's not Mexican, he's Dominican.' A lot of black kids didn't know that.

"So you'd see guys like Carlos Delgado and Sammy Sosa coming up. You'd think, 'OK, these dudes are black.' Then you'd hear them talk and hear the accent. You'd think, are they joking around on TV? But in that era we had Ken Griffey Jr., and he was my favorite player, but that's really all there was."

About the only thing Myers has in common with Griffey is that he is a black center fielder. Griffey came from big league bloodlines and a private school. Myers came from a single mother household and the public school system.

Myers admitted that he is an anomaly: a young, relatively urban black naturally enthralled with baseball despite growing up during the hip-hop revolution.

"You have Allen Iverson doing a rap commercial," he said. "I don't think you'll see Frank Thomas busting a rhyme anytime soon. You might have some fun, but you won't see (Gary) Sheffield rhyming during (batting practice). Basketball, you run with the ball, with the beat going, and that was basically Nike and Air Jordan. I had guys on my high school team say baseball doesn't market itself the right way, but it's up to you how you interpret the game."

Myers sums up baseball's dilemma: How does a game that relies on tradition and patience attract a population obsessed with popularity and instant gratification?

"For sure, baseball was slow to the draw," said Dave Winfield, a Hall of Fame outfielder and San Diego Padres vice president. "That had an impact and we lost a lot of people in that respect. We need to be more creative in terms of marketing and really reaching people."

The best solution may be to simply produce more black role models, the primary role of the Urban Academy.

"I think the fact that they have gone back to Compton is important," Chicago Cubs manager Dusty Baker said. "It might be a generation or two before you see it, but I have to believe you will see a re-emergence. You can market the game, but what you really need is guys who make it.

"A kid needs to see guys from his neighborhood coming back home making money. Then you start looking for nephews and bloodlines. The young guys get motivated and that's how it starts. But you have those first guys to come back and motivate the others. That's the best advertisement around for an urban kid."

Marketing is not a singular aspect of solving the blackout crisis, said Jimmie Lee Solomon, baseball's vice president of operations, who led the effort to build the Urban Academy.

"It still lacks, I wouldn't disagree," Solomon said. "But we're going to change. We're exposing these kids to baseball at an early age. I think it will make them enjoy the game and our fan base will grow."

Myers believes the solutions aren't simple because of baseball's reliance on tradition.

"The NBA has more of a hip-hop crowd because you can wear those shorts with a white T-shirt and it works," he said. "In baseball, if you wear your hat tilted or your jersey unbuttoned, you can't focus on the game, but that's what sells to black kids. The tradition of the game doesn't match with what they wear. And if you do wear your baseball stuff like that, you'll always hear people complain."

Myers, though, found his method. When he was drafted by the Philadelphia Phillies last month, he was given a new hat. The gold manufacturer's logo sticker was still prominently on the bill of the red hat. When Myers wore the Phillies hat for the first time in public, at a high school sports banquet, he made sure that he left the sticker on.

Asked about why he left it on, Myers smiled and said that, no matter the tradition, he wouldn't wear his first professional hat any other way.

COLLEGES LACK BLACK PLAYERS JUST LIKE MLB
African-Americans have different views on the lack of athletes turning to the sport at the collegiate level.

By John Klima
Daily Breeze
July 16, 2006

When he was coaching a summer team in the early 1970s, Chuck Porter brought a team from South Central Los Angeles to play at Stengel Field in Glendale.

"Here we come, a bunch of black kids with big Afros, and make no mistake, they were not welcoming us with open arms," Porter said.

Talent changes a lot of minds. Eddie Murray played catcher and hit home runs from both sides of the plate. The shortstop was Ozzie Smith, who made a backhanded play deep in the hole and threw a runner out. The right fielder was George Hendrick, who threw a runner out at the plate.

When the game was over, Porter, who coached at Morningside High and Compton College for 15 years, said he was told that his team was the most disciplined they had ever seen.

Today, it's hard to imagine such a sandlot team could exist.

Porter, a longtime South Bay umpire, is outspoken in his belief that college coaches must accept more responsibility to develop black talent.

"I remember one conversation I had with a coach," Porter said. "He said the reason he doesn't try to recruit black ballplayers is because they are not fundamentally sound. He said there were five factors: they come from inferior high school programs, many have academic problems, many are not from financially-steady households, they may have difficulty socially adjusting and they may not feel good about leaving home."

Porter, who is black, believes that coaches will take less-gifted athletes rather than take on potential projects.

"Junior college coaches want to go with what's good for them," Porter said. "If you're not blue chip, they're not coming after you. Maybe a kid just needs one more year to become a pro prospect, but he's not going to get that year at a JC because he's not going to get that chance."

Porter recalled a conversation with a high school coach that stunned him, but at the same time, didn't surprise him. Porter said the coach told him if it's a sport where they need African-American kids to win, they'll recruit them. Porter said the coach told him, "Why do I need to recruit black kids when I don't need them to win?"

Porter believes high school baseball coaches at schools where baseball isn't a premier sport are often afraid to recruit athletes committed to other sports. A common complaint among baseball coaches in predominantly black schools in the South Bay area is that football and basketball coaches are unwilling to share their athletes with any sport other than track and field.

The NCAA allows only 11.7 scholarships in baseball, many of which are divided up. By comparison, football allows 85 scholarships and men's basketball grants 13.

Veteran Chicago White Sox scout Tommy Butler, a Compton resident for 37 years, believes the low number of scholarships force four-year college coaches to avoid recruiting inner-city black players.

"I've been a black man for 66 years, and I'm telling you it's not because these kids are black," he said. "It's because the black kids aren't ready for prime time. The kids don't want to pay the price to work hard and get better. The (college) coaches aren't discriminating because these black kids can't play at the next level."

Butler, a scout since 1975, believes too many high school baseball coaches in the inner city take the job only because it pays. Most inner-city high schools in Los Angeles do not have baseball fields, so they play on football fields.

"Baseball is a stepchild in many of these communities," said Butler, who still scouts inner-city high schools. "Football and basketball are the first and second priorities in these places. School administrators do not care about baseball. There's enough blame to go around for everyone."

Porter believes junior colleges should play a larger role in developing inner-city players, but Butler thinks otherwise.

"Inner-city black kids can't even play at the JC level," Butler said. "So how would they be able to play at the Division I, II or III level?"

Charles "Buster" Staniland is an assistant baseball coach at Oxnard College, where he said there were no black starters in the 13-team Western State Conference this season. A former minor league catcher who played from 1953-1962 and hit 138 home runs, he played in the Deep South when black players were ridiculed.

He believes college coaches, especially junior college coaches, must take more responsibility to step up where high school coaches have left off.

"I know a lot of coaches don't care about that black kid who needs work," said Staniland, who is white. "Bring him to me instead. I'll work with him. I want to do that sort of thing, but I also know I'm in the minority among coaches who feel that way."

SOLVING THE PROBLEM
Part Nine: Joe Morgan went to the commissioner demanding action to get more African-Americans involved in baseball.

By John Klima
Daily Breeze
July 17, 2006

This is the last of a nine-part series of stories analyzing how baseball as an industry and a culture has regressed when it comes to developing African-American players.

Seven years ago, Hall of Fame second baseman Joe Morgan had seen enough or, more precisely, had not seen enough African-American players in the major leagues from his seat in the broadcast booth. With a mixture of embarrassment, anger and urgency, he demanded a meeting in New York with Commissioner Bud Selig.

Looking down at the barrel of a fiery Morgan is no easy task.

"Joe's at that part of his life right now where people respect and listen to him," said Chicago Cubs manager Dusty Baker, who played against Morgan for several years. "Joe's always been straightforward and honest about what he says, especially about something he cares about."

So, inside Selig's Park Avenue office, Morgan, the two-time National League Most Valuable Player and one of the most gifted players of his era, let Selig have it.

"Make no mistake about it, this wasn't a love-fest," Morgan said at the opening of the Urban Academy in Compton this winter. "I had a few things on my mind. Basically, I was talking about the lack of African-American managers and the fact that we were losing African-American players."

Though Selig is a polarizing figure in the baseball world, the proponents of helping restore black players to the major leagues say they believe Selig honestly wants baseball to solve the problem.

"Joe spoke his mind," Selig said. "And we created the Academy to shore up that bridge to the inner city."

As the Urban Academy entrenches itself in its first summer, the numbers of black players in the major leagues have hit an all-time low since the early days of integration. Yet those who are closest to the fight believe baseball has put itself on the right track. Though the battle to cease the blackout is overlooked in the steroid era, it is one subject that baseball sees as a way to redeem itself.

"I will say this," Morgan said. "(Selig) has far exceeded my expectations from when I went in that day."

John Young, the founder of RBI (Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities), believes Selig is sympathetic. Selig came to Young's RBI dinner, where he posed for a picture with D'Arby Myers, a young black outfielder who was soon to begin his professional career.

"I'll tell you what I like about Bud," Young said. "You go by how people treat you."

Selig authorized the Urban Academy, which cost about $9 million to build and $3 million to operate annually. His supporters in baseball say that Selig is sympathetic largely because of his upbringing and, perhaps, because he is Jewish.

Another aspect of Selig's concern is his relationship with Henry Aaron, which began with the Milwaukee Braves in the 1950s.

"Henry and Bud are pretty good friends and I think have a good relationship," said Baker, who played with Aaron. "I think Bud runs some things by Hank to this day."

The Urban Academy already has showed signs of relieving some of the pressure. RBI used to be the only alternative for inner-city African-American kids to play travel ball. The Academy offers more opportunities.

For Young, who sacrificed his baseball career to run RBI, it means an opportunity to pursue a scouting career again. "I can breathe now," he said.

At the very least, the blackout is a problem no longer ignored.

"We have to make the effort to build academies like this throughout the country," Selig said. "We have to get more (black) players into college baseball. We have to get more (black) players into professional baseball."

Dave Winfield, a Hall of Fame outfielder and San Diego Padres vice president, says baseball has put itself back on track.

"People are thinking about it, they are discussing it," Winfield said. "It's not overlooked anymore."

Winfield said he was thrilled when President Bush unexpectedly asked him about the status of the situation when the two met privately in the Oval Office last month.

"(The President) is aware of it," Winfield said. "I thanked him."

Baseball still has years to go before the problem is rectified. Those close to the cause acknowledge that the game is fighting not only against the stagnant tradition of the past 25 years, but against the social, economic and cultural factors that have combined to make the effort one that cannot be focused solely on a baseball diamond.

"We've got to have things about our inner soul that make us people, that make us higher than animals," said Jimmie Lee Solomon, baseball's vice president of operations.

In Myers, who won't turn 18 until December, they have the ideal black player. Raised in the heart of Los Angeles by a single mother, he needed RBI to be scouted. Though some scouts said he was too raw to be ready for professional baseball, Myers knew he wanted to play.

On the night of his high school graduation from Westchester, he took his diploma and signed his first contract.

A week later, Myers was walking the streets of Clearwater, Fla., heading to the team bus to play in his first rookie league game. He got two hits in his first professional game.

Though he was far from home, he had done what few of his contemporaries had been able to do. He got his shot to play professionally and begin to make his run toward the big leagues. Young says Myers has stronger baseball intellect than most people give him credit for.

Myers said that the time will come when baseball needs a new Jackie Robinson, one who represents breaking old barriers in new ways.

"You have to look at what's going to help the game in the long run," Myers said. "A lot of people got selfish. With me, it's going to be different. What am I going to do? In a way, I look at Ken Griffey Jr. I know if, one day, I can provide that to another kid, great. You only get that chance once in a lifetime when you're playing at a high level.

"Whoever it may be, hopefully it is a good person they use. You don't want to look at a baseball player just going off on people. You don't want Ron Artest. You just hope it's the right person, because it's going to happen to someone. You know it is."

Myers works and baseball waits, taking small and steady steps away from the blackout.