All-black travel baseball team from Pine Hills covers bases – Orlando … – Orlando Sentinel
On a field with an all-dirt infield and a slightly askew scoreboard in left-center field, Frank Scott liked what he saw.
Black boys faced each other in shallow right field, tossing a baseball back and forth from a short distance. On a sunny morning recently, they had gloves on their hands and smiles on their faces, thankful for what Scott has provided them.
An opportunity.
“I was just going out there playing on raw talent,” said Scott, recalling his younger days. “I wish I had somebody to teach me the fundamentals, the proper mechanics of throwing and catching, things like that.
“I do see myself out here. I see some things I learned. I see some things I didn’t have that if I would have had, I would have been a little more successful.”
Along with his brother, Corey, Scott founded the Elite City Grays, an all-black travel team from Pine Hills. In a time when blacks are lacking in baseball at all levels and in any capacity, the brothers have started something rare.
“The other team’s parents look at us and go, ‘Wow, where is this other team from?”’ said Sherrod Miller, a 13-year-old first baseman and pitcher who attends Lakeview Middle School in Winter Garden. “We tell them, and they’ll try to bring their son over here to play with us. They’ll be surprised that we can actually play. We have competition, though. Good competition.”
The Grays, named after the Homestead Grays of the old Negro Leagues, started with an 11-and-under squad last year. The program plans to field 16-and-under, 14-and-under, 10-and-under and 9-and-under team and possibly one for 13-and-under boys this fall. The Grays are holding tryouts this weekend at Windermere Prep.
Scott said the monthly costs are usually no more than $70 a month, a fraction of most travel teams, but will increase as players get older because of tournament fees. About 12 players are on each team. Some could not throw a baseball properly in the beginning, and others, such as Howard Middle School eighth-grader Quajae Harvin, are old pros.
Harvin began playing about nine years ago.
“[My black friends] really don’t follow it,” said Harvin, who plays three infield positions and pitches. “They are more football and basketball. I’ve heard that maybe they think baseball is a white sport, things like that.”
Frank Scott said that perception is inaccurate.
“A reason that they turn away from baseball is because they don’t get that instant success out of baseball,” said Scott, a former baseball coach at Mount Dora High. “Football, you go out there, and if you’re athletic and you’re not scared to hit somebody … Baseball is so technical.
“It’s not that they don’t like it. It’s just that when they get to 10 or 11, they don’t have those fundamentals in order to be successful. All of these kids, once you start them at an early age, they love it.”
All four of Frank Sr. and Earline’s children played baseball at Evans or Oak Ridge high schools. Only Frank Jr., who went to Evans, kept going in the sport. The former middle infielder played two years at what is now South Florida State College in Avon Park, then moved on to Florida A&M.
Scott played professionally in Indiana for the Evansville Otters of the independent Frontier League.
“On a baseball field, it came easy to him,” said Frank Scott Sr., a former baseball coach at Evans. “He was a small guy. When I say easy, don’t get me wrong. He couldn’t throw the ball. He couldn’t juice it up there, but he hung in there. He never gave up.
“I have a grandson. He is a better ballplayer than Frank coming up, but he just didn’t have the drive. He didn’t want it like Frank did.”
Now Frank wants it for the Grays.
Scott said the Grays won a tournament this summer at the Seminole County Sports Complex in Sanford.
Several Grays players participated recently in the Elite Development Invitational at Historic Dodgertown in Vero Beach, where former major-leaguers such as Marquis Grissom and Dmitri Young provided instruction. Hylan Hall, who plays for Ocoee High and is a pitcher and shortstop for the Grays, attended the Breakthrough Series for promising young players at the Pittsburgh Pirates‘ spring-training facility in Bradenton in June.
“It was different because they were treating us like basically we were in the major leagues,” Hall said. “We had curfews. We had to get up. There was a lot of working on the field. It was great. It was a lot of competition that I never saw. There was a lot of coaches and pro scouts out there.”
The invitational and Breakthrough Series are collaborations between USA Baseball and Major League Baseball or its players association. They’re looking for players everywhere, including Pine Hills.
The community in unincorporated Orange County is bordered roughly by Clarcona Ocoee Road on the north, State Road 50 on the south, Pine Hills Road on the east and Hiawassee Road on the west. As of 2014, its population of more than 64,500 residents was nearly 74 percent black, according to USA.com.
Because so many of Pine Hill’s youth become lost boys. the impact of an all-black baseball team can be significant.
“It’s almost the same as our black kids seeing that we have a black president,” said Carla Jackson, Quajae’s mother. “There is hope. You can aspire to be something bigger and greater. When the naysayers say that you can’t do it, we had someone who did do it, and I am going to strive to do it.”
Scott’s mission is to give black youths from his community a running start in the national pastime.
And beyond.
“We want to use baseball as that carrot to motivate kids to get them to college,” Scott said. “Eventually, we want to have a learning-training facility where kids can come when they are starting at 8, 9, get top-of-the-line training for baseball, getting those fundamentals.
“When they get older and get to high school, we’ll be able to give them the support they need — SAT prep, ACT prep, tutoring, mentoring. We want to get them to college.”
In baseball terms, that would be a home run.
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