Joe Mock
Special to USA TODAY
All rights reserved on text and photos
KANSAS CITY There is a neighborhood not far from downtown Kansas City that is known by the name of its main intersection, 18th & Vine. It was once a prosperous area of Black-owned businesses, where at the local YMCA in 1920, the original charter was signed to create the Negro National League.
Municipal Stadium was on the area’s southern edge. Here the legendary Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues played, featuring Satchel Paige and, in 1945, a young shortstop named Jackie Robinson. On the northern side of the neighborhood was Parade Park, where countless amateur baseball games convened. Frank White, who later earned eight Gold Gloves as the second baseman for the Kansas City Royals, played here while attending a nearby community college.
By 1990, the neighborhood had fallen into disrepair. That’s when former player and manager for the Monarchs, Buck O’Neil, “in his infinite wisdom, said this is where we need to build this museum. And when we build it, we will help resurrect 18th & Vine,” recalls Bob Kendrick, president of the facility that O’Neil foresaw, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.
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| This shot looks at the Kansas City Urban Youth Academy from the north. Directly to the south of the indoor facility is the building containing the Negro Leagues Museum. Their proximity “links the past with the future.” COURTESY OF JAMES MOORE |
The Royals also play an important role in the revitalization of this neighborhood, as team GM Dayton Moore strongly advocated for a baseball academy to be built here. Says Kyle Vena, the Senior Director of Baseball Operations/Administration for the Royals, “Dayton declared that building the academy here was more important than winning the World Series.” Today, the Kansas City Urban Youth Academy sits where so many Black youngsters once played sandlot games at Parade Park.
There are 11 such facilities in what MLB refers to as The Academy Network, with the first opening in Compton, California in 2006. “The academy in Kansas City is one of our jewels,” notes Tony Reagins, MLB’s Chief Baseball Development Officer. These academies “are a really, really important initiative for Major League Baseball. We hope to continue to grow them in the future.”
He adds that one of the strongest aspects of Kansas City’s academy is its location. “Its backdrop is the Negro Leagues Museum, so that links the past with the future.”
“It is great that the baseball gods came together to give us this site, because it’s wonderful for lots of reasons,” notes Steve Boyd, Principal at Populous, the local firm that designed the complex.
Fewer Black faces
It’s no secret that executives at MLB headquarters are concerned about the decline in the number of Black players in the sport. According to a study by the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), in 1975 18.5% of Major League Baseball players were Black. Now 45 seasons later, it has dipped below 8%.
Equally alarming is there’s but one Black running the baseball operations for an MLB team — Ken Williams is the Executive VP of the White Sox. Only one is atop a franchise’s org chart, as Derek Jeter is the CEO and minority owner of the Marlins.
It’s been apparent for a couple of decades that young Blacks have opted for sports other than baseball. “We missed out on an entire generation to other sports,” laments Vena. “Through the ‘90s and beyond, kids all wanted to ‘be like Mike’ and become Michael Jordan.”
Kendrick points to several causes for the decline in African American participation in baseball. In years past, kids flocked to sandlots to play pick-up games of baseball. “That’s now a thing of the past,” he says. “What was once a blue-collar sport is essentially a country-club sport now,” with the high cost of youth travel teams and year-round instruction.
Starting in 1947, Jackie Robinson and many other immensely talented Black players broke through the sport’s color barrier, paving the way for advancements in other walks of life. In some ways, though, this integration of society hurt the business of Black Baseball.
As the Negro Leagues disappeared by 1960, those teams that were so ingrained in the African American community were gone, taking with them role models for Black youth. “It didn’t matter how much money Satchel Paige or Buck O’Neil made. They lived in the same neighborhood as us, and the stadiums were in the heart of urban centers during that era of American segregation,” Kendrick explains. “It kind of died with integration.” This led to fewer Black businesses to sponsor youth teams and fewer Black churches organizing leagues, he says.
He adds that sports are “aspirational, because you have to see yourself in these roles in order to aspire to be there. With the NFL and NBA, (Black youth) see a proliferation of American-born Black faces. Not in Major League Baseball anymore.”
The growing number of Urban Youth Academies is one way the sport is seeking to reverse this trend.
Sound investments
Kansas City’s academy, the newest in MLB’s network, operates with a staff of 24. It features two full-size outdoor baseball fields, a youth field and one for softball. A 40,000-square-foot building houses an artificial turf infield, training facilities and very importantly, classroom space. “This is everything that Buck O’Neil dreamed about, to utilize the park he loved to help kids pursue life-long career opportunities in the sport,” notes Vena.
The outdoor facilities at the academy cost $7 million to build, with funds coming from the State of Missouri, the City of Kansas City, Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association. The Royals then spearheaded a $13 million fundraising campaign to complete the complex.
There were several noteworthy donations. Players from the Royals donated a total of $3.3 million. Garth Brooks, who Vena says has “a special relationship with the Royals,” helped pay for an elevated, state-of-the-art press box. “Garth wanted to expose the kids to in-game entertainment, in case they might want to become a PA announcer or do broadcasting,” explains Vena.
The Royals’ front office has committed $500,000 a year for the next 20 years to cover the administrative overhead so that all additional money raised goes directly to the kids through programming. Quite impressive for a small-market franchise not exactly overflowing with cash.
Populous made their own contribution by discounting their normal architectural fees significantly for Kansas City’s project. “What the academy stands for is something that Populous was happy to contribute to however we could,” notes Boyd, who served as the lead designer for the complex.
As part of the $3.3 million donated by Royals players, longtime catcher Savador Perez made his own sizable gift to the academy: $1 million. Because of this, the outdoor youth field is named in his honor. “Perez is a great guy to honor by putting his name of this field,” says Darwin Pennye, who had a five-year career in pro baseball, and is the Executive Director of the academy in Kansas City. “Perez is an incredibly talented player, and is everything you could ever ask for in a teammate. And, you know, we might just have the next Salvador Perez here at the academy right now.”
The academies aren’t the only initiative supporting urban youth being subsidized by MLB. Because of the importance of developing Black players, MLB and the Players Association announced a $10 million commitment to The Players Alliance on September 21. The mission of The Alliance, a nonprofit comprised of over 100 current and former Black big leaguers, is “to create increased opportunities for the Black community in every aspect of our game and beyond.”
Now that The Alliance has the funding from MLB and MLBPA, “we can collectively bring our voices together and really go out there and make change,” organization president Curtis Granderson told the MLB Network.
“The Players Alliance and the Academy Network are certainly aligned,” notes Reagins. “I think both the MLBPA and Major League Baseball can do a better job in changing the narrative. At the end of the day, if we want our country to be better, our athletes to be better (and) our society to be better, we have to invest in our young people.”
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| The indoor portion of the Kansas City Urban Youth Academy includes a full size infield where batting practice can be taken. Shown (from left) are Morrie Carlson, Manager of Tours at Kauffman Stadium and volunteer in the academy’s mentoring program, academy Executive Director Darwin Pennye, and Jonathan Rosa, the academy’s Assistant to Baseball Operations. |
Raising Major League Citizens
The objective of the 11 academies goes beyond converting young inner-city athletes into Major Leaguers a decade from now. While acknowledging the need for more Black players, Reagins explains that “it’s probably more important that we develop the ‘major league citizen.’ A lot of the young people aren’t going to make it to the Major Leagues, but they can go back to their communities and share what they’ve learned amongst their peers and family members.”
Adds Steve Arocho, Senior Director of Communications & Youth Engagement at MLB headquarters, “The academies aren’t just to make a pipeline of pro players. They’re to make communities better.”
While the facilities are in place to maximize a young player’s athletic talents, Pennye points out that the academy’s “first job is to determine the basic need of every kid here. Then you can address the whole person.”
This is why 10,000 square feet of the indoor facility is devoted to classroom space, training rooms, individual study areas, meeting space and the kitchen for a concession stand. This way, the young people may become interested in becoming a trainer, broadcaster, sportswriter, coach, groundskeeper, umpire, work in the entertainment or hospitality aspect at games or become a member of an MLB team’s front office. Royals employees regularly volunteer to be mentors at the Academy, teaching the young people about career opportunities in the business of baseball.
In addition to mentoring, all of the academies provide tutoring and homework assistance to help the young people stay in school. “We see the kids grow four-fold,” says Pennye. “There’s the physical component, the social component, the academic component and the spiritual component.” Emphasizing these characteristics certainly goes a long way toward developing Major League Citizens.
And these Citizens aren’t restricted to just one gender. “Our academies are open to both boys and girls,” emphasizes Reagins. “If girls want to play softball, that’s great. If they want to play baseball, that’s great, too. We allow them to continue training with boys and other girls who want to play baseball. So young ladies have an opportunity to engage in the diamond sport of their choosing and get quality instruction and get an opportunity to achieve their dreams.”
Vena relates that “the first baseball game ever played on the academy’s Field 1 was a high school district playoff game. And the very first batter in that game was a female.
“The goal since the inception of the academy here is to use baseball and softball to unite families, to bring together communities, to cause rural, suburban and urban kids to come together through sports. The way the world is full of division today, what brings people together is sports,” says Vena. “It’s bigger than us.”
Success stories
In its first decade and a half, MLB’s Academy Network is already paying dividends. Outfielder Aaron Hicks and catcher Kyle Higashioka were major contributors during the Yankees’ playoff run. They both played at the original academy in Compton.
“The academy was great because it gave me a place with professional-caliber coaches and facilities to work out and play against top quality competition,” Higashioka tells USA TODAY Sports. “If you need any sort of equipment, they have a store room where they can provide it. I also played on the Urban Youth Academy Barons team in the California Collegiate Summer League during the summer between the time I got drafted to when I signed. That was a great chance to stay sharp playing in a wood bat league before shipping off to pro ball.”
He adds that even though he now lives in Oregon, he made a trip back to Compton to speak to the young people at the academy.
Malachi Moore, who hails from Compton, made his Major League debut as an umpire this season. He umpired at the academy, and returns there in the offseason to teach umpiring. “Everybody thinks the pathway to a baseball diamond is being a player. Sometimes you can get there other ways,” quips Reagins about Moore.
Pennye loves to talk about two success stories at the academy in Kansas City. One is C.L. Stacker, who came to the academy as a teenager. The academy refined his skills to the point where he was offered a scholarship to play baseball at Kansas Christian College. In fact, he signed his letter of intent at the academy. However, just 30 minutes later, Stacker suffered a gunshot wound to his abdomen when he intervened on behalf of a relative in a domestic dispute. “He recovered, but the old C.L. would’ve wanted to get even,” notes Pennye. “The new C.L. is on track to graduate college.”
And then there’s Elijah Rush. He started playing as a youngster in MLB’s Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) program. He arrived at the academy as a 17 year old “with no goals in life,” says Pennye. “We helped him establish a path to go to college while working here. He’d take a bus an hour each way to get here. He’s now a student athlete at Kansas City Kansas Community College and works at Kauffman (Stadium) as a bat boy and clubhouse attendant.”
Says Vena, “We need to turn that one Elijah Rush into five Elijah Rushes.”
Mock covers sports facilities for USA TODAY publications
An edited version of this article appeared in USA TODAY Sports Weekly on 10/21/2020. It appears here by permission.