Losing the recruiting battle
Blue-chip recruiting that takes place in high school football and basketball is nearly impossible in baseball because of the game’s nature, Bertman said.
The mechanics of quality baseball players also take a while to observe, Bertman said. Unlike football and basketball, a coach cannot look at a videotape to judge a player’s skills. Instead, major Division I college coaches visit “Area Code” tournaments across the nation designed for recruiting.
“These tournaments are made up by professional baseball scouts so only the best kids are invited. It’s a coach’s dream,” Bertman said.
Many of Bertman’s black baseball players came from Area Code games or their equivalence. Former LSU outfielder Albert Belle, who played professionally in MLB, was spotted at the Louisiana High School All-Star Game, Bertman said. Center fielder Cedrick Harris, who played on Bertman’s 2000 national championship team, came from Area Code Baseball.
While Area Code Baseball may be a dream for college coaches, the opportunity to compete in such leagues proves difficult for players outside the scouts’ scopes. The Area Code organization offers free camps to teach techniques, but tryouts are limited only to invited players. According to the organization’s Web site, a player earns an invite with the recommendation of a scout.
College baseball’s limitation to 11.7 scholarships, which are mostly partial scholarships also adds to the problem. As a result the inner city youths focus more on basketball and football where full scholarships are offered, Bertman said.
The NCAA ethnicity report for the 2002-03 season showed that 43.8 percent of Division I football players were black, while 57.9 percent of men’s basketball players were black. Football programs may offer 85 full scholarships, while basketball offers 13. These two sports also make millions of dollars in revenue, while baseball puts NCAA programs in debt.
“Black youngsters and black adults in the community don’t see college baseball as the way to go,” Bertman said.
Young black athletes also see basketball and football as a quicker way to turn professional with the emergence of Michael Jordan-like players in the NBA and Michael Vick-like players in the NFL, said RBI founder John Young.
“Everyone wants to be like Mike now,” Young said.
Southern University avoids recruiting at Area Code events and their equivalents because it cannot offer the financial benefits like major colleges, Cador said. The historically black school uses a series of contacts throughout the country to find raw talents with great heart. Cador never considers these offers risky because college athletics to him is more than winning games.
“The risk thing is what people use when they don’t want to give people an opportunity,” Cador said.
Southern affords those same opportunities to a handful of white players even though they dominate the sport nationally.
“We’re not going to be racist like some of those people and deny the kids opportunity,” Cador said. “People will never make me believe that there’s not racism that plays a factor in why there hasn’t been more African Americans [in college baseball]. They will not take them because of the color of their skin.”
 
Saving a lost cause
With expensive equipment and upkeep, baseball compares to golf, tennis or swimming, Bertman said. Blacks also make up less than 6 percent of NCAA athletes in those sports.
“Baseball is a country club sport,” Bertman said.
When asked about increasing the number of black college baseball players, Bertman referred back to the “country club” analogy.
“Maybe a solution isn’t necessary like swimming, golf and tennis. Nobody seems to care,” Bertman said.
But Bertman pointed to the Reviving Baseball in the Inner City program, the only group focused on the problem nationally.
When former Major League Baseball player John Young became a scout, he returned to his stomping grounds in South Los Angeles where baseball ruled during his childhood. He found an inner city population disenchanted with baseball — and education.
“When I’d go to scout the games, I noticed the inner city leagues were inferior,” Young said in a telephone interview. “I quickly realized that we had lost a generation-and-a-half of inner city baseball talent.”
Many children came from single parent households, and some became involved in street gangs. Saddened by the outlook, Young looked deeper into the situation. An intense study of the 1987 Major League Baseball draft showed that most draftees attended four-year colleges.
The inception of Reviving Baseball in the Inner Cities (RBI) began. Young desired to restock Major League Baseball with black American players, but he also wanted to emphasize the value of a college education. Baseball plus academics equaled success, Young said.
The Los Angeles Dodgers and MLB helped fund the program, and in 1989 the program’s inaugural season saw 180 participants in the nation’s second-largest city. RBI’s success started a nationwide epidemic in MLB cities.
St. Louis picked up the program in 1990, while 10 other major cities joined the crew by 1995. Now more than 200 cities are affiliated with the program. RBI funds both boys baseball and girls softball from age 8 to 18.
The RBI program builds character while unifying the community, Young said.
RBI instituted a national component into its program in 1993 by hosting its first World Series. It gives inner city children a competitive traveling tournament it would not have otherwise.
The program followed with a national education objective in 1997 and partnered with the Boys and Girls Club of America. The organization created a curriculum for RBI that reinforces the importance of education. It also addresses the issues of alcohol, tobacco, illegal drugs and HIV/AIDS prevention.
“Our success stories have a consistent theme,” Young said. “Someone in the child’s life — whether it’s the mother, father, aunt, uncle or grandparent — has provided support throughout the program.”
 
Other states fighting the battle
Other little league programs exist in Louisiana, but only three — Napoleonville, LaPlace and New Orleans — take advantage of RBI funds. These three cities provide baseball opportunities to approximately 625 inner city children, but New Orleans’ black population equals nearly 500,000 itself.
But even the states with similar total populations and smaller black populations support more inner city children than Louisiana.
Four other states — Alabama, Colorado, Kentucky and Minnesota — share common population characteristics with Louisiana but also utilize the RBI program more effectively.
These states all have a total population between 4 million and 5 million. But the black population of Alabama (25 percent) most resembles that of Louisiana (32 percent).
Five cities in Alabama house RBI programs of some sort with more than 1,300 participants. The Boys & Girls Club of South Central Alabama runs a RBI program for 325 children in Montgomery, Ala. The city is half the size of Baton Rouge but supports more children in the RBI program than the New Orleans chapter.
Colorado’s black population spikes at 3.8 percent, but the state is home to three RBI programs with more than 11,000 participants. Denver almost doubles the population of New Orleans but supports almost nine times the inner city children with its RBI program.
Kentucky’s black population reaches only 7 percent, but the state has two RBI programs with more than 2,600 participants.
Similarly, Minnesota’s black population is 3.4 percent, but the Boys & Girls Club in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area runs a RBI program with more than 3,000 participants. The metropolis doubles the size of New Orleans but supports more than 20 times the RBI participants.
The Minnesota Twins and the metropolis community support the program, unlike Louisiana, and have for the past 10 to 12 years, said RBI organizer Stoney Hays. The community must have a strong base before supporting such a league, but basketball and soccer still challenge the program to market baseball as another option.
“It’s like pulling teeth,” Hays said. “But the Boys & Girls Club and the community baseball parks make it a priority.”
The Minneapolis chapter also supplies gloves, bats and other equipment to the children it supports, Hays said. It gives the children a sense of importance.
“When you run a program like this, it has to be done right,” Hays said. “It can’t be scrub club.”
Once the children feel a sense of belonging and importance, the Boys & Girls Club teaches them the importance of education and life lessons — the underlying objective and most successful component of the program, Hays said.
“Baseball is a game that teaches discipline and patience,” Hays said. “Every one of our accomplishments come because of a healthy partnership between the community and our kids.”
Despite the program’s success, many inner city communities like those in Detroit and Chicago continue in a downward spiral, Cador said. But southern cities like Houston and Atlanta continue to provide consistent, talented players from the inner cities, Cador said.
“When one city dries up, we’ve been able to go to another one,” Cador said. “But how long can we sustain this type of merry-go-round type of system?”