CINCINNATI — Before the American League and National League All-Star managers announced their starting lineups at a media conference on Monday, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred took the podium to announce a new $30 million partnership with the MLB Players Association to foster participation in youth baseball around the United States. Manfred, who has decried the growing perception of baseball as a “country club sport” reserved for those with the increasing resources necessary to play it competitively, reiterated a commitment he made in the earliest moments of his commissionership to make the game more available to the country’s underprivileged youth.
“It’s really important to create opportunities for people to play in underserved areas,” the commissioner said. “It’s part of baseball’s legacy, and part of baseball’s obligation going forward. Defraying the costs of elite play — elite play is important, but it is also costly. And we need to do a better job of making sure that all kids have an opportunity to participate in that type of play.”
Though Major League Baseball makes more revenue than ever before, television ratings warn of an increasingly old fan base, and youth participation has dwindled nationally. In February, Pirates star Andrew McCutchen offered an eye-opening perspective about the financial challenges inherent in playing competitive amateur baseball in the United States.
A few miles from downtown, at a converted public park in Cincinnati’s Bond Hill neighborhood, the Reds operate the city’s Urban Youth Academy, a stunning complex featuring four gorgeously maintained baseball and softball fields — one of them complete with a 400-seat grandstand and press box — and a 33,000-square foot indoor training facility named “The Joey Votto Training Faciilty” after the Reds’ first baseman and one of the academy’s biggest donors, modeled after the big-league team’s spring training complex in Arizona. The Reds operated UYA programs at an unused public high school from 2009 until last summer, when they opened the new, $7 million complex built on donations from the team, the league, local contractors, and community sponsors like area giant Proctor and Gamble.
“Baseball is a part of the fabric of this city, probably unlike any other,” said Charley Frank, the executive director of the Reds’ Community Fund and an integral part of the day-to-day operations of the Cincinnati UYA. “Baseball matters. As a lot of other communities start to move to lacrosse or soccer, Cincinnati has sort of held the line a little bit — probably more so than a lot of other markerts. There’s just something unique about the Reds and the Reds’ connection to this city, that once the Reds started to get involved in funding and opportunities, and these sorts of amenities, we’ve been very warmly received.”
The facility offers too many programs to count, the vast majority of them free for participants, with only occasional for-fee tournaments and camps run to defray maintenance costs on the facility. They include both baseball and softball training for area kids of all ages, opportunities for high-school programs to use the complex’s fields, weight room, batting cages and full-scale indoor turf infield, and educational and vocational programs operated out of the center’s four classrooms.
Youth players train inside the Joey Votto Training Complex (USA TODAY Sports)
On a drizzly Sunday morning this week, a group of about 50-60 youth players did calisthenics inside under the tutelage of academy director and former Proctor and Gamble executive Bill Daggy. Last week, a team from Philadelphia including Little League World Series star Mo’Ne Davis visited the complex for exhibition games. Programs even include training in baseball broadcasting, where students get the opportunity to call games at the park’s fields.
“I’d love to see an alumni base build up of kids that have come through the program and have broken the cycle of poverty, or become the first kids in their family to go to college and graduate college,” said Reds COO Phil Castellini. “Or become the next Cincinnati Red — the next Barry Larkin, the next Junior Griffey. That’s always a goal. But on a percentage basis, it’s going to be far more about improving the kids’ lives permanently and getting them on to the right track than it is about developing professional ballplayers. That’s really what it’s all about.”
The Cincinnati UYA is the fourth such program opened in the mainland United States, following similar ones in Compton, Calif., New Orleans, and Houston. Playing fields recently opened at a UYA in Philadelphia, with an indoor facility under construction. MLB is also developing academies in San Francisco and Miami, and the Nationals operate programs in Washington, D.C. The investment Manfred announced Monday likely ensures more to come.
J.P. Crawford, a shortstop in the Phillies’ system and one of baseball’s most promising prospects, honed his baseball skills at the Compton academy, which has also produced Major Leaguers like outfielders Anthony Gose and Aaron Hicks.
“I decided to go there when I was 11 or 12, and just loved it there,” Crawford said after the 2015 MLB All-Star Futures Game on Sunday. “They’re real nice people, and they taught me a lot about the game — fundamental wise, and just playing wise. I met a lot of my good friends there. It was a great experience, and I’m glad I went there.
“It keeps people out of trouble: Some of those kids came from bad areas, and with the Urban Youth Academy, you get them to stay away from that and keep them on a different path.”
The growth of the Cincinnati UYA owes a lot to current and former Reds players who have donated time and money to the operation. Painted replica jerseys of Votto, Jay Bruce and Brandon Phillips hang over the complex’s largest field, the indoor space is lined with massive banners featuring the names and pictures of prominent Reds players who have helped the academy, and team legends like Joe Morgan and Frank Robinson helped the Reds partner with the league to secure the necessary funding to revamp the park.
A field at the Cincinnati UYA (USA TODAY Sports Images)
“You know what? I’m not surprised,” Castellini said when asked about the Reds players’ involvement. “Frankly, it helps there to be a tangible asset for them to have invested in, and now a place that they can go. And all players — even if they just come out to participate in the Rookie Success League, or the RBI tournaments we have out there — it’s a place where they know what it’s about, they know what’s happening out there, and they can see where their investment is going and the job it’s doing.”
And the job it’s doing, Frank said, seems to be working. The facility, open seven days a week, has seen attendance “through the roof” for the games, programs and tournaments it hosts. The Reds Community Fund helps provide some 800 local teams with funding, equipment and supplies, and all those clubs have access to the UYA complex. Through a partnership with the University of Cincinnati, tutoring is available four days a week for academy attendees, with undergraduate and graduate students from the university offering classes to help develop critical thinking.
But though everyone involved stressed that personal development for the city’s youth trumps baseball training as the academy’s main goal, Frank admitted that the UYA can not yet offer the level of coaching enjoyed by players in expensive Select programs around the country. Though the facility has become the headquarters of the Reds Community Fund, its baseball staff includes only two full-timers: Daggy, and former Reds farmhand Cameron Satterwhite, the academy’s co-director. A roster of 23 volunteer and contracted baseball and softball coaches staff the facility’s programs, but Frank hopes to add more and better trained coaches as the Academy grows.
“We’re beginning the hands-on training that a lot of select programs receive, but we’re probably not there yet,” Frank said. “I think that’s where our next big growth spurt is. We’ve gone from temporary digs to state-of-the-art amenities, and we’ve added some terrific coaches. We have some that are phenomenal mentors.
“We hope that within 3-5 years, the level of training that our kids receive on the field comparable to what Select players get elsewhere,’ Frank said. “But hopefully, a lot of the other opportunities they’re getting from us in terms of educational and vocational training are better.”
Manfred has said on multiple occasions that MLB recognizes participation in childhood as the biggest determinant for lifelong interest in the game. So extending baseball to underserved populations like the ones targeted by the Cincinnati UYA represents not just important community outreach, but an important factor in keeping the game alive among young fans.
“The No. 1 goal that we have is just to get more kids connected to the game, and get those kids to college,” Frank said. “We want to also create baseball fans for life. There’s a whole generation of fans that basically have been lost in the urban core, in this city and most other major metro markets.
“I’m not going to say we want to get a player from our academy signed to a pro contract in the first ten years, because it’s just as important to us to send a young man or a young woman to college on a scholarship. We see this as being one of the very integral pieces to get the urban core engaged again, not just with the Reds, but with the game.”
