Dodgers help keep RBI program alive and well
Two dozen boys wearing Dodgers shirts invaded the dugouts and started pulling on their baseball cleats.
It was early on a cool, sunless Saturday morning in July at Watkins Park in South Los Angeles and some of the teenagers had been waiting since 8 a.m. for the Dodgers youth clinic to end.
Now it was time to play — really play — and as their families unfolded lawn chairs and laid out picnic blankets, the boys jogged toward the outfield to get their arms loose.
While they warmed up, about 40 children walked to a Dodgers-themed festival behind the left-field fence. They had their eyes checked for free, took pictures with Dodgers alumni and had the former players sign their gloves.
“This was his dream,” said Tiffany Rubin, who organized the day for the Dodgers’ Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) program. “For days like this to happen, this was his dream.”
Rubin was talking about John Young, RBI’s founder, who died at 67 in May from complications related to diabetes. Young bounced around professional baseball for 10 years, then returned home to Los Angeles with the goal to popularize baseball in the inner city and set young players down a productive path in life.
We need to get more minorities playing baseball all the time. I think RBI has done a great job of that.
— Orioles center fielder Adam Jones, who played in the San Diego RBI program
Eleven players showed up to his first tryout at Algin Sutton Park in 1989, but his organization rapidly grew and caught Major League Baseball’s attention shortly after. Twenty-five years ago, MLB took RBI under its wing and spread the program to St. Louis, Kansas City, New York. It now has some 230,000 participants playing in 300 baseball and softball programs across the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Curacao and Colombia.
A handful of RBI alumni play professionally, including Dodgers catcher Yasmani Grandal and Baltimore Orioles third baseman Manny Machado. Every year, the RBI World Series is played in a major league park.
Since the Dodgers adopted the Los Angeles RBI program in 2014, the program has swelled from 1,400 participants to 4,000 in 2015, and now 6,000 across 35 locations this summer.
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“It means a lot to just get kids out on the field, keep them out of the streets and that sort of thing,” said Orioles pitcher Yovani Gallardo, who played RBI baseball in Fort Worth as a teenager. “It’s just part of the game now, people know that RBI can give kids a chance to play, and that’s a great thing.”
Gallardo was 16 when his team made a run to the RBI World Series. The regional final was at Angel Stadium that year, and he championship game was at Minute Maid Park in Houston. Gallardo can still recall the gem he spun that pushed his team into the championship game, where it lost to a team from Los Angeles when he was ineligible to throw any more pitches.
He also remembers the goal rattling through his head during the four-hour trip home to Fort Worth:
Don’t let that be the last time I play in an MLB stadium.
“Being there was so exciting, and something I never forgot,” said Gallardo, 30 and in his 10th big league season. “RBI gave me something to work toward, something I could put my finger on.”
But Gallardo is quick to point out that RBI isn’t about its major league alumni, a select few. The program is built around baseball and advanced with the help of professional players, but its main focus has always been to teach life lessons through baseball.
At first, Young required a “C” grade-point average to play in his Los Angeles league. When RBI expanded, MLB required players to have a 90% school attendance. Young’s original code of conduct emphasized off-the-field initiatives the MLB felt had slipped out of youth sports over time.
“One thing we still talk about today when talking about the RBI program and its goals and initiatives is that we’re looking to develop major league citizens,” said Thomas Brasuell, who has directed RBI for MLB for more than two decades. “... Those 200,000 kids who play each summer, we can do something to make them become major league citizens.”
A handful of programs are sponsored by major league teams, all are overseen by the MLB, and they seek to offer participation at an affordable price.
The Dodgers don’t allow their affiliates to charge more than $25 a player, and there is no extra payment required for clinics, college tours or travel to tournaments.
The Dodgers also provide uniforms and equipment for each team, and offer grants to help cover umpire and maintenance fees. A parent of a 16-year-old player at Ted Watkins Park called RBI “very realistic” in terms of time and money. Another parent called the July clinic “a great event for what’s offered in the area in the summer.”
“We can definitely get 10,000 kids to play the game of baseball,” Rubin said, “but the main focus of RBI is to use baseball as a hook to bring kids to this program that we think is about life, too.”
“Through baseball and softball we can help change the perception of the inner city, and the experience a lot of these kids have growing up that maybe aren’t ideal. The sport is what gets them here, and then it’s a lot more from there.”
Shortly after 10 a.m., the sun peaked out from behind the scoreboard and a tall teenager smacked a home run over the center-field fence. As he briskly rounded the bases, a small boy hopped off a park bench and moseyed toward the worn baseball. He fished it out of the grass, put it in the pocket of his baggy shorts and walked away smiling.
Then the pitcher toed the rubber, eased into his windup and the game continued. So does the cause.
“We need to get more minorities playing baseball all the time,” said Orioles center fielder Adam Jones, who played for an RBI team in San Diego. “I think RBI has done a great job of that, but whatever we can do to keep doing that is a good thing. It’s a very good thing.”
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