Baseball’s minor leaguers pursue their dreams below the poverty line

Fox’s ‘Pitch’ is fiction, but a female MLB pitcher isn’t that far-fetched

Ginny Baker made history as the first female MLB pitcher when she took the mound for the San Diego Padres last month — or so one radio listener in Canada thought when she mistook the Fox show “Pitch” for reality.  The baseball insiders who have successfully worked to make Baker, portrayed by actress Kylie Bunbury, believable say the story could move from fiction to real life sooner than expected. “I think it’s aspirational, but is that a realistic possibility? I personally think so,” Chris Tully, MLB’s executive vice president of media, told the Post this week about the prospects of a female pitcher making it to the big leagues. The story needed to be realistic for MLB to sign on to executive produce the show, Tully said. It’s the first fictional project the league helped produce since “Moneyball,” the 2011 film starring Brad Pitt. “We view scripted entertainment, whether it’s television or movies, as being an extension of our efforts to find platforms on which to connect to existing fans or to reach new fans,” Tully said. “In terms of what attracted us to this particular project, well, the stars kind of aligned.” Tully said that, because of the longstanding relationship between the league and the network, MLB was immediately interested when Fox approached with the show. But there were a few requirements the project had to meet before MLB would move forward. One of the most important was the plot be authentic, and in this case — thanks to headlines made by Little League pitching phenom Mo’ne Davis in 2014 — the idea of a female MLB prospect didn’t seem far-fetched. “I think [the plot] reinforces a pre-existing notion that . . . all the teams from the various communities around the globe that enter teams into the Little League World Series are doing so to win and they’re putting their best available players out on the field,” Tully said. “The same is true with Major League Baseball. It’s right in line with the idea of authenticity.” Molly Knight — a former ESPN reporter who works as a consultant with the show to ensure the plot stays true to the majors — agrees, although it took some convincing to bring her aboard. “When I first heard about the plot, I’m like, ‘Okay, what?’ ” she said. “I’m a hardcore feminist, nothing against our gender, but just the way that we’re built physically, throwing a ball at 95 mph is not realistic.” But that’s not what Baker does. Baker doesn’t rely much on fastballs, she instead focuses on screwballs, a trick pitch that Knight says could one day land a woman on an MLB roster.  Knight said current MLB players she’s spoken with about the project believe a player like Baker could make it to the big leagues in real life. “What I like about this show is she is not like some superstar phenom that comes up and mows everyone down. She’s just called up to replace an injured fifth starter and she’s just trying to hang on and she’s bad in her first start out. She’s awful,” Knight says. “She’s just trying to tread water and keep her spot, which I think is the reality. . . . Most of these guys that get their chance and get called up they don’t know if it’s going to be their only chance, if they’re going to get sent back down [to the minor leagues] the next day and never given another shot.” Even the details of the set design are true to life. Knight says the show’s replica of the the Padres clubhouse almost unnerved her. “The first time I set foot in there, I was freaked out. I felt like I should have my reporter’s notebook,” she said. “Everything, the lighting, the temperature, even the huge Costco-sized Listerine bottle they have in the fake bathroom — it was eerie.” Viewers can thank MLB for that. One of the stipulations the league had going into this project was that it not only be authentic in the telling of the story, but also in the visuals. When possible, the show filmed at real MLB stadiums, including the Padres’ Petco Park and the Los Angeles’s Dodger Stadium. It uses real MLB logos and team names. Other scenes are filmed on sets, some of which Knight helped to create. On her suggestion, for example, the show’s production staff built a replica of the stadium’s family room, where the players’ wives and children watch the games. Sportscasters and journalists appear in the show, including Fox Sports’ Colin Cowherd, Joe Buck, Katie Nolan and John Smoltz.

Major League Conflict

“If you were 12 and your parents told you you could either play baseball all day, every day, and maybe make millions of dollars, or go to school, what would you do?” The question, from Trevor Martin, one of the directors of the new documentary “Ballplayer: Pelotero,” isn’t necessarily rhetorical. That’s the choice presented to many preteens in the Dominican Republic, where Martin and co-directors Ross Finkel and Jonathan Paley spent nine months filming kids with dreams of playing in America’s big leagues. Major League Baseball, for its part, dreams of finding cheap, young talent. Cheaply. Dominican kids can be offered professional contracts at age 16 (though few are). Players who aren’t signed by 17 are considered washed up and their market value drops precipitously, the movie suggests. “MLB [says] it’s 16, and 16 it is,” Martin says. “When you offer big bonuses to a very small amount of kids who happen to play like professionals and have the bodies to play like grown men, it gives you a perverted reason to go to the normal kids who develop at a normal rate and say, ‘You weren’t ready at 16, so now you’re worth $10,000 instead of $2 million.’” The film, opening locally Friday, follows two Dominican phenoms, Miguel Angel Sano and Jean Carlos Batista, who are at that crucial age — or are they? Because 16 is the magic number, the temptation to lie about a player’s age is strong, and accusations of fraud from MLB are not uncommon. When a player can’t prove he is who he says he is — which isn’t so easy in a country where public records can be sketchy — he’s slapped with a one-year ban on playing for MLB. So, his price drops. “It’s definitely a cynical business strategy,” Martin says. The film emphasizes that Sano and Batista are each the best hope for their impoverished families, a situation that’s all too common in the Dominican Republic. “We met kids down there whose parents encouraged them to drop out of school and play baseball. Their parents had a sit-down with them and said, ‘Well, son, you can either go to school and be a motorcycle taxi driver or cut cane, or you can play baseball and maybe win the lottery.’”

‘Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life in the Minor Leagues of Baseball’ by John Feinstein

Imagine: From your childhood on, you are better at the work you love than almost anyone else. Before you are old enough to drink alcohol, you are offered money — sometimes a great deal of money — to pursue that work, with a good probability that the work will someday bring you wealth and fame. Then, fate intervenes — in the form of injury, illness or the slowly dawning reality that, while you are better than almost everyone else, enough people are better still that you are consigned to a role just outside, and a universe apart from, that inner circle. This is the world that John Feinstein, one of our best-known sportswriters, explores in his new book about the 2012 season of baseball’s International League, one of the two AAA leagues, just below the majors. The book, “Where Nobody Knows Your Name,” focuses on eight men — players, managers and an umpire — each of whom, he writes, “defines the struggle of people who are extremely good at what they do — but _not_ as good as they want to be at given moments.” Their stories vary: Pitcher Scott Elarton was a major league star for a season or more until injuries and alcohol left him jobless. John Lindsey spent his entire working life in the minors. (Lindsey, Feinstein tells us, “played more minor-league games without a major league call-up than any player in history.”) Managers Charlie Montoyo of the Durham Bulls and Ron Johnson of the Norfolk Tides embrace their roles as mentors to once and future big leaguers, while understanding their players’ discontents. “If you don’t like it here,” Johnson says, “do a better job.” With many of us counting down to opening day, this is a fitting time for a book whose subtitle might well be “hope springs eternal — every spring.” If you follow baseball, you’ll be struck by the players who appear in these pages, hoping — sometimes desperately — for another chance. Here is Mark Prior, the onetime Chicago Cubs ace (he was on the mound in that infamous 2003 playoff game when Cubs fan Steve Bartman reached for a foul ball and doomed the Cubs’ World Series hopes), now six years removed from the majors, pitching for Pawtucket, hoping for an unlikely return to the big time. Here is Dontrelle Willis, 2003 rookie of the year with the world champion Florida Marlins and a 2005 Cy Young contender, plagued by injuries and an anxiety disorder that sent him to seven different teams, fighting for a bullpen role with the Norfolk Tides. More-committed fans may remember the heroics of Scott Posednik, whose home run won a World Series game for the Chicago White Sox, or Dan Johnson, whose two-out, ninth-inning home run on the last day of the 2011 season led to the Tampa Bay Rays’ astonishing capture of a playoff spot. But the bulk of Feinstein’s book, as its title suggests, is about players all but unknown, even to the most obsessive baseball fans; players such as Rich Thompson, who got one major league at-bat for the Kansas City Royals in 2004 — and then went 2,645 days and 3,711 minor league plate appearances before getting another chance to hit in the majors. “Like every kid who dreamed of playing baseball for a living,” Feinstein writes, “he never envisioned eleven different minor-league stops and fourteen seasons riding buses from one small town to another and then one midsize town to another.” This is one of the themes Feinstein hits repeatedly — sometimes to diminishing effect. Major leaguers fly on charters and sleep in five-star hotels, while minor leaguers travel on buses and sleep in more modest accommodations. The pay disparity is so great that even a short stay in the big leagues can boost a minor leaguer’s paycheck substantially. Minor leaguers don’t exactly root for a major leaguer to be injured, but that’s the most likely way they’ll get a shot at the bigs. The noise in a major league park makes the comparative silence at most minor league games unsettling. “You can’t make ten thousand people sound like forty thousand people,” says Danny Worth of the Toledo Mud Hens — as do several others. And there are at least half a dozen instances of the same thought, offered in almost the same words: Maybe I’d rather be playing for a major league team, but I’m being paid to do work that I love. Further, some sections of the book seem like filler: Do we really need a lengthy account of how Jamie Farr’s Klinger character In “M*A*S*H*” made the Toledo Mud Hens famous by wearing their cap onscreen? Still, Feinstein — a Washington Post columnist and author of two dozen sports books — is too good at what he does not to offer some arresting stories. The travels and travails of Chris Schwinden, journeying late into the night, fighting plane cancellations and car breakdowns to get to yet another temporary minor league home, shows the price to be paid for following a dream. So are the stories of a broadcaster and an umpire, finally realizing that their aspirations to reach the major leagues are doomed. Because it lacks the kind of powerful personal story that drove Michael Lewis’s “The Blind Side” (doomed young man turned pro football star thanks to a larger-than-life heroine), “Where Nobody Knows Your Name” will not appeal to a broad audience. But if you find yourself waiting for ESPN or MLB.TV to start covering the Grapefruit league, Feinstein has provided a welcome pregame companion. **Jeff Greenfield** is a five-time Emmy Award-winning broadcast journalist and the author of 13 books, including, most recently, “If Kennedy Lived.” **WHERE NOBODY KNOWS YOUR NAME** **Life in the Minor Leagues of Baseball** By John Feinstein Doubleday. 368 pp. $26.95

Ginny Baker made history as the first female MLB pitcher when she took the mound for the San Diego Padres last month — or so one radio listener in Canada thought when she mistook the Fox show “Pitch” for reality.  The baseball insiders who have successfully worked to make Baker, portrayed by actress Kylie Bunbury, believable say the story could move from fiction to real life sooner than expected. “I think it’s aspirational, but is that a realistic possibility? I personally think so,” Chris Tully, MLB’s executive vice president of media, told The Post this week of the prospects of a female pitcher making it to the big leagues. The story needed to be realistic for MLB to sign on to executive-produce the show, Tully said. It’s the first fictional project the league has helped produce since “Moneyball,” the 2011 film starring Brad Pitt. “We view scripted entertainment, whether it’s television or movies, as being an extension of our efforts to find platforms on which to connect to existing fans or to reach new fans,” Tully said. “In terms of what attracted us to this particular project, well, the stars kind of aligned.” Tully said that, because of the longstanding relationship between the league and the network, MLB was immediately interested when Fox approached with the show. But there were a few requirements the project had to meet before MLB would move forward. One of the most important was for the plot be authentic, and in this case — thanks to headlines made by Little League pitching phenom Mo’ne Davis in 2014 — the idea of a female MLB prospect didn’t seem far-fetched. “I think [the plot] reinforces a pre-existing notion that … all the teams from the various communities around the globe that enter teams into the Little League World Series are doing so to win and they’re putting their best available players out on the field,” Tully said. “The same is true with Major League Baseball. It’s right in line with the idea of authenticity.” Molly Knight — a former ESPN reporter who works as a consultant with the show to ensure the plot stays true to the majors — agrees, although it took some convincing to bring her aboard. “When I first heard about the plot, I’m like, ‘Okay, what?’ ” she said. “I’m a hardcore feminist, nothing against our gender, but just the way that we’re built physically, throwing a ball at 95 miles per hour is not realistic.” But that’s not what Baker does. Baker doesn’t rely much on fastballs; she instead focuses on screwballs, a trick pitch that Knight says could one day land a woman on an MLB roster.  Knight said current MLB players she’s spoken with about the project believe a player like Baker could make it to the big leagues in real life. “What I like about this show is she is not like some superstar phenom that comes up and mows everyone down. She’s just called up to replace an injured fifth starter and she’s just trying to hang on and she’s bad in her first start out. She’s awful,” Knight says. “She’s just trying to tread water and keep her spot, which I think is the reality. … Most of these guys that get their chance and get called up, they don’t know if it’s going to be their only chance, if they’re going to get sent back down [to the minor leagues] the next day and never given another shot.” Even the details of the set design are true to life. Knight says the show’s replica of the the Padres clubhouse almost unnerved her. “The first time I set foot in there, I was freaked out. I felt like I should have my reporter’s notebook,” she said. “Everything — the lighting, the temperature, even the huge Costco-sized Listerine bottle they have in the fake bathroom. It was eerie.” Viewers can thank MLB for that. One of the stipulations the league had going into this project was that it not only be authentic in the telling of the story but also in the visuals. When possible, the show filmed at real MLB stadiums, including the Padres’ Petco Park and Los Angeles’s Dodger Stadium. It uses real MLB logos and team names. Other scenes are filmed on sets, some of which Knight helped create. On her suggestion, for example, the show’s production staff built a replica of the stadium’s family room, where the players’ wives and children watch the games. Sportscasters and journalists appear in the show, including Fox Sports’ Colin Cowherd, Joe Buck, Katie Nolan and John Smoltz.

Minor league baseball players’ lawsuit alleges that MLB isn’t paying them minimum wage

Minor league baseball players have filed a class-action lawsuit against Major League Baseball in U.S. District Court, alleging that the league is violating federal law requiring fair wages and overtime, thus forcing “many minor leaguers to live in poverty.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday NBC News has more:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday According to NBC News, Major League Baseball denied all the charges in court documents filed in late May, arguing that baseball is more of a pastime than a job. “If a judge agrees, it could mean that the team owners — like the owners of water slides in summer and Christmas displays in winter — are exempt from the need to pay a federal minimum wage. Baseball player, in other words, is no more a career than mall Santa,” NBC’s Tony Dokoupil wrote. The U.S. Supreme Court has long held an interesting view of baseball’s place in society, which could complicate the minor leaguers’ argument. The minor leaguers are alleging a number of violations in their lawsuit: — “MLB’s longstanding exemption from the United States’ antitrust laws allows it to openly collude on the working conditions for the development of its chief commodity: young baseball players.” — “MLB continues to actively and openly collude on many aspects of minor leaguers’ working conditions, including, but not limited to, wages, contract terms, drug testing, and discipline. For example, while major leaguers’ salaries have increased by more than 2,000 percent since 1976, monr leaguers’ salaries have, on average, increased only 75 percent since that time. Meanwhile inflation has risen by more than 400 percent over that same time period.” — “Through this collective exercise of power, MLB has suppressed minor leaguers’ wages in violation of federal and state law. Most minor leaguers earn between around $3,000 and $7,500 _for the entire year_ despite routinely working over 50 hours per week (and sometimes 70 hours per week) during the roughly five-month championship season. They receive no overtime pay, and instead routinely receive less than minimum wage during the championship season.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday — “Worse still, the Defendants have conspired to pay now ages at all for significant periods of minor leaguers’ work. Consisten with MLB’s rules, the Defendants do not pay minor leaguers their salaries during spring training, even though the Defendants require minor leaguers to ofter wok over fifty hours per week during spring training.”

Normalized relations between Cuba and United States could have ‘drastic’ impact on MLB

President Obama’s move to normalize relations between the United States and Cuba will resonate through baseball. The trickle of dazzling talent that already flows from the baseball-crazed island could turn into a geyser, a stream of available players that would force Major League Baseball to frame and police how teams acquire Cuban players. The political thaw would also eliminate the dangerous back channels of defection. The impact on the sport could be immense and, in the words of one team official, “drastic.” Even with a political blockade between Cuba and the United States, players born in Cuba have shaped the game. White Sox designated hitter Jose Abreu earned last year’s American League Rookie of the Year. Tigers outfielder Yoenis Cespedes has won the past two Home Run Derbies. Outfielder Rusney Castillo signed a $72.5 million contract with the Boston Red Sox. Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Yasiel Puig received a nickname – “The Wild Horse” – from no less of an authority than Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully. A new burst of talent may arrive from Cuba’s highest level into the majors and the upper levels of the minor leagues in the United States. Scouts would flock to youth tournaments in an attempt to discover teenaged players with huge potential and sign them on the cheap. Within a few years, baseball academies may spread across the island covered in the logos of major league teams, same as the patchwork of diamonds clustered around barracks-style dormitories strewn over the Dominican Republic. On the day President Obama announced his intention to end the 53-year standoff, the league still waited for the situation to develop. Multiple high-ranking team officials declined comment, underscoring the topic’s sensitive nature. “Major League Baseball is closely monitoring the White House’s announcement regarding Cuban-American relations,” the league said in a statement. “While there are not sufficient details to make a realistic evaluation, we will continue to track this significant issue, and we will keep our clubs informed if this different direction may impact the manner in which they conduct business on issues related to Cuba.” The changes could come fast, because baseball prepared for this day. One Latin American scouting director, who has worked with Cuban baseball players since 1990, said he already has plans for the logistics of how to scout players on the island and the optimal place to build an academy. “I know what I would do,” he said. “I would just have to get approval from ownership.” Latin American talent already saturates the sport, and the potential for a system in which teams can openly acquire talent from Cuba will only bolster the region’s influence. The Dominican Republic, with a population of roughly 10.4 million, accounted for 9.7 percent of the players on major league opening day rosters, according to MLB figures. The talent pool in Cuba, the scouting director said, is “on the same plane” as the Dominican Republic. The country has a population of roughly 11.3 million. Within a decade or so, baseball could see a demographic turnover of its talent pool of 10 percent or more. “It would be a huge boon for the U.S.,” the Latin American scouting director said. “It would be another island that’s fertile. Then it’s gets confusing.” Major League Baseball would need to determine what set of rules it implements for teams acquiring Cuban players. The league would hope for Cuban officials to allow it to use the same set of rules that apply in other Latin American countries: players over 23 would be considered free agents, and signing bonuses for players under 23 would be subject to spending limits per team. But the Cuban government, as raised by Ben Badler of Baseball America, may provide complications. Cuba could put in place a system in which MLB teams bid for the right to sign top Cuban players, similar to the posting system used by Japan’s top league, except the money would flow to the government as opposed to a private league. Cuban baseball already has made a lasting impact on the major leagues. Of the 186 players born in Cuba to reach the majors, 25 appeared last season. Their achievements created a Cuban golden age. Livan Hernandez lifted the Florida Marlins to the 1997 World Series and threw the first pitch upon baseball’s return to Washington. The Cincinnati Reds’ Aroldis Chapman throws more 100-mile-per-hour fastballs than any pitcher alive. Outfielder Jorge Soler is at the core of the Chicago Cubs’ rebuilding efforts. But as more players defected, the stories of how they arrived turned grimmer. For years, Cuban baseball players morphed into a dark cottage industry, a black market unto themselves, their talent inviting danger as it created opportunity. Smuggling and secrecy have imperiled defectors’ safety, robbed them of money and chiseled at their dignity Shadowy figures rubbed up against the baseball apparatus – prior to his arrival in the United States, Puig famously spent weeks in Mexico under the watch of men associated with the Los Zetas drug cartel. In 1999, pitcher Danys Baez snuck out of the Pan Am Games in Winnipeg without telling his family, friends or teammates, fearful of consequences. “You can’t tell anyone,” he said. For years, the Cold War chill between the U.S. and Cuba left some of the most talented players in the world alone and vulnerable to exploitation. Now there is a real chance doors will open. Lourdes Gourriel, one of the top players still in Cuba, may now play in the majors without sacrificing his safety. His father, also named Lourdes, and his older brother Yulieski never had the chance. After Wednesday’s announcement, those kinds of missed opportunities may soon disappear. **Related news**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Obama moves to normalize relations with Cuba    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

MLB looks to protect pitchers from line drives, prompting a debate

For generations, baseball pitchers and hitters have stood their ground, each physically vulnerable to what the other can do with a ball or a bat. Baseball moved to protect hitters with helmets years ago and now may take action to protect pitchers after incidents this season. During the regular season, Oakland A’s pitcher Brandon McCarthy was drilled in the head by a line drive. In the World Series last week, Detroit Tigers pitcher Doug Fister shrugged off a drive to the noggin and stayed in the game, prompting conversation about whether pitchers should wear helmets or Kevlar liners under their caps. And, over the weekend, McCarthy’s Oakland A’s teammate, Bartolo Colon, was hospitalized after he was hit in the mouth in a minor league game in the Dominican Republic. Major League Baseball weighed in on the matter during the Series, with senior vice president Dan Halem telling the Associated Press after the Fister incident that addressing safety was on “a fast track. Hopefully, we can come up with something. We’re making progress.” The guinea pigs are likely to be minor leaguers, with Halem saying, “We think it’s possible for 2013 in the minor leagues.” Judging by tweets from players in the Nationals’ and Orioles’ organizations, minor-leaguers aren’t thrilled by the idea. Baseball officials plan to discuss ways of protecting pitchers at the annual winter meetings. Should pitchers be made to wear some sort of protective liner or helmet? Follow us: @CindyBoren | @MattBrooksWP **More** Fister stays in World Series game McCarthy hospitalized after being hit in head McCarthy tweets about threesomes after release from hospital

As MLB honors Jackie Robinson, a push for real progress in African American involvement

Friday is supposed to be the second holiday on the baseball calendar, trailing Opening Day by chronology but not by importance. On Jackie Robinson Day, every major leaguer wears the only number retired across the game – 42, a remembrance and reminder of the man that broke the color barrier. Speeches will be made. Players will pay their respects. And the games will go on. The arrival of this day, though, has now become an annual exercise in examining baseball’s failure to attract and retain African American players. The numbers, for more than a generation, are stark: nearly 19 percent of major league players in 1981 were African American; last year, that number had fallen below eight percent. So tick off the list of issues hobbling baseball: it’s too expensive, not cool enough, almost non-existent in the inner city, a rich person’s suburban sport – on and on. “It bothers me,” said Tony Clark, the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association. “It bothers me when there appears to be a lack of opportunity. It bothers me when there appears to be a lack of support. It bothers me when we do the same things and acknowledge the same problems, but we don’t affect change.” Clark, then, is trying to do just that, and – as both the first former player and first African American head of the players’ union – he has a perspective and platform that are both unique. Earlier this year, he sent a proposal to his counterparts at Major League Baseball, something called the “Career Preparation Project.” The idea, broadly, is to provide educational opportunities for players who eschew college in order to go into pro ball out of high school, as well as to provide career options for players who transition out of the game when they’re done playing. And in doing so, Clark hopes – no, he believes – it would help open the sport to so many young African American athletes who have been shut out too frequently over the past three decades. “Every year, as we continue to have the conversation about the lack of diversity and lack of opportunities, you find yourself watching and seeing that the same things are being said,” Clark said in a phone conversation this week. “There are new ideas and new programs being developed, and they make nice press events. But substantively, they don’t change anything.” Clark believes his proposal has substance, and he believes it because he lived it. Growing up in San Diego in the 1980s, he didn’t take baseball terribly seriously, at least in part because baseball wasn’t going to provide him an education. Instead, he pursued basketball, which got him a scholarship to the University of Arizona. Make what you will of the NCAA and how high-level college athletics exploit the players. If an athlete is, in fact, focused and motivated, he could use basketball or football to get an education. Baseball, which has far fewer scholarships, doesn’t afford kids as many chances. Indeed, a player who is drafted and signs out of high school is unlikely to ever get an education, whether he makes the majors or peters out in Class A. To change that, Clark’s proposal includes an element called “Baseball U.,” in which the league and the union would work with a variety of colleges to tailor programs that fit the schedules and abilities of a wide array of players. No one would be forced to enroll, but if even one player decided to choose baseball over basketball or football because they could continue to pursue an education, Clark would consider it a success. “For me, education is everything,” Clark said. “Education is what allows you to make good decisions. Education is what affords you the opportunity beyond the game of baseball, to continue to have a successful career. That component was huge. Having it be part of the conversation is huge.” The idea includes, too, ways to support players after their careers on the field are over – ways to enter the business side of the game, to become a scout, to learn about baseball analytics, to become an entrepreneur. And each of those components would include a diversity element, identifying minority players – not just African Americans, but those from other countries, too – and tracking them through each level of the minors, providing support by beginning the post-career conversation while their careers are ongoing. This wouldn’t be free, and it couldn’t be a one-time commitment of cash from either the union or the league – something approaching $10 million. And this comes in a year when the collective bargaining agreement between the union and the league expires. There are myriad issues that must be haggled over. Maybe this could be one on which there’s agreement? If not about the particulars just yet, then the concepts? Baseball, as a sport, has had a scattered approach to addressing the decline in participation by black players, a reality for which there is widespread blame. “I don’t feel like I’ve upheld my side of the bargain,” Clark said. But forget, for now, the blame and who should share in it. There is currently a critical mass of stars for African American kids to look up to – Andrew McCutchen and Adam Jones, Dee Gordon and Prince Fielder, Justin Upton and David Price, an assortment of positions and skills and personalities that should show any kid, of any race, that they could excel in this sport. Yet will we arrive at April 15, 2017, and watch every player on every team pull on jersey No. 42, and look back instead of forward? “I know we didn’t get here overnight, and I know there are no quick fixes,” Clark said. “I know when we’re fundamentally talking about a culture change, a significant shift in philosophy, a significant commitment and level of engagement, that that kind of shift is going to require time. “I’d like to sit here and say that next April 15 there will be this many people in the program. But I tell you: If there’s one person that suggests anything that we’re doing has made a difference for them, I’ll count it as a positive, because it’s going to have to happen once before it happens twice.” Indeed, there had to be Jackie Robinson before there was Larry Doby, and there had to be Larry Doby before there was Hank Thompson, and there had to be Hank Thompson before there was Tony Clark and Andrew McCutchen and so on. Maybe in a decade, we’ll take April 15 to not only remember and appreciate Robinson, but to revel in how baseball rebuilt itself from the brink of extinction in an entire segment of American society.

How a five-foot, three-inch dynamo helped change high school basketball

_Bijan C. Bayne is the author of “Martha’s Vineyard Basketball: How a Resort League Defied Notions of Race & Class” and “Elgin Baylor: The Man Who Changed Basketball.”_ Hit cable-TV shows about the drug trade. The death of Freddie Gray and subsequent unrest. Racially biased law enforcement. These are the images that flood the mind these days when we think of urban Baltimore. What about close-knit families? Inspiration? Educational excellence? What about hope? In “The Boys of Dunbar,” Alejandro Danois gives us a portrait of a Baltimore where these qualities predominate. His tale of the basketball exploits of a handful of high school students in the 1980s shows young men motivated by their coach and other recreation leaders to dream beyond the hardship of their geography. Thirty-five years ago, U.S. high school basketball began a transition from a regional sport marked by limited national recruiting, a few popular national champions, a lack of funding for travel and only a few players known outside their own regions. East Baltimore’s Dunbar High School was one of several area schools, including DeMatha Catholic High School in Hyattsville, Md., that helped inspire change. Unlike DeMatha, which first gained national attention in February 1965 after ending the 71-game winning streak of New York City’s Power Memorial High School and its 7-foot-1-inch center, Lew Alcindor (now Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), Dunbar was a public school, located in economically challenged East Baltimore. Danois provides historical context for the decline in shipyard and factory employment, and the associated despair and drug sales, that hardened East Baltimore and other segregated sections of the city into often dangerous areas made famous by TV series such as “Homicide: Life on the Street” and “The Wire.” The book primarily focuses on the Dunbar Poets’s 1981-82 season under veteran coach Bob Wade, an early 1960s graduate of the school. Wade employed rigorous endurance training and imposed strict academic standards on his players. He also familiarized himself with the boys’ off-court life at home. The least likely Poets player was Tyrone “Muggsy” Bogues, a 5-foot-3-inch leader who faced derision and low expectations each time Dunbar faced a school that had never watched the diminutive dynamo in action. Bogues grew up in Baltimore’s huge Lafayette Courts housing project, which became the feeder community for Dunbar High School sports. The 1980-81 Poets were a formidable team, though they lost a triple-overtime city title game to the Catholic school Calvert Hall. Coach Wade thought the addition of Bogues made Dunbar a squad without weaknesses. Bogues was a tireless sparkplug of the fast break and could not only disrupt opposing playmakers but also submarine big men and wing players in double-teams that resulted in steals. The author introduces us to the compelling family stories of the ’81-’82 Poets. Bogues, who was inspired to play by his older sister Sherron and another player at Dunbar, David Wingate, was too embarrassed to tell schoolteachers that his occasional tardiness was because he had to get his mom, who used a wheelchair, settled, downstairs and fed before he left for school. We learn about rail-thin Reggie Lewis, the quiet sixth man whose mom, Inez, had her first heart attack at age 17 and was diagnosed with a heart murmur and leaky valves, and about his brother Jon, who had a hole in his heart. Their teammates included jumpshooter Gary Graham, whose big brother Ernie had starred at the University of Maryland before succumbing to drug abuse; 6-foot-7-inch scoring machine Reggie “Russ” Williams; and center Tim Dawson. In early practices there were heated rivalries, with Bogues and Williams, who grew up as teammates for the nearby Lafayette Recreation Center, on one side and Wingate, who was from the crosstown Cecil Kirk Recreation Center, on the other. Wade wisely allowed the beefs to play out, and the boys evolved into a cohesive unit known for disciplined offensive patterns, a suffocating full-court press spearheaded by Muggsy and high-flying finishes. But 1981-82 was a different season in the high school game. Dunbar, not considered by national and some local media as Baltimore’s premier team, faced stiff challenges. The team was scheduled to play a tournament in Harlem and other competitive games across the country, and had to face the nation’s No. 1 ranked school, Camden (N.J.) High, which starred 6-foot -8-inch Billy Thompson, widely regarded as the top prospect in the country. In 1981, recruiting, ranking, scouting and elite tournaments were becoming more national in nature. Highly rated teams traveled out of town to test their mettle early in the season or in preseason scrimmages. USA Today, a new publication, ranked the top 25 boys programs each week. Sports Illustrated devoted more attention to high school ball. The McDonald’s All-American Game near Washington brought in the top 12 U.S. players to face the D.C. area’s best. Danois’s narrative takes readers aboard for spirited team bus rides and inside Wade’s grueling practices: He had the Poets carry bricks in each hand and wear sand-filled backpacks to increase their strength and stamina. The author also takes us inside the apartments of the ballplayers as family issues arise, and courtside for thrilling games against schools favored to defeat the upstart team with the tiny point guard. Former players recount the year, as do recreation leaders, opposing coaches, players’ relatives and Wade. The result is a work that expertly re-creates not only a season but the mood of a growing sport. The Harlem trip opened the players’ eyes to a side of life even they had not witnessed. Danois reveals the care and support of the players’ parents and extended families, and how the boys inherited a work ethic and respect for others. On the street, grown-ups approached the players, telling them how much their accomplishments meant to a city struggling with hard times. Everywhere, the boys were buoyed to keep up the good work and put a positive face on “B’more.” In Danois’s crisp telling, the Poets demonstrate their confidence and will on the court, and Bogues exerts his dominance. Though Dunbar had fine teams before Wade arrived, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington and Detroit were considered the hotbeds of boys high school basketball. The boys of Dunbar forever changed that map. Their winning season also changed their lives. Bogues, Williams, Wingate and Lewis went on to college stardom and pro careers, though Lewis died of a heart attack as a Boston Celtics star at age 27. Their high school exploits set the stage for nationally televised games, recruiting websites, powerhouse urban and suburban AAU and travel teams, camps and tournaments sponsored by sneaker companies, and high school kids going directly to the NBA, until that league changed its policies concerning eligibility. What unfortunately has not changed are the unemployment, dilapidated housing, inefficient public-transit system and police abuse that thrust Baltimore into recent national news. By Alejandro Danois Simon & Schuster.   260 pp. $26

Derek Jeter thinks baseball has fallen behind ‘sexy’ NFL and NBA

Derek Jeter has largely stayed out of the public eye since ending his 20-year Yankees career in 2014, but he hasn’t lost his appreciation for baseball. In fact, he wants to eventually own a team and help “the game grow” and take back some of the ground he thinks it has lost to football and basketball.  “Baseball, you sort of get lost, because you have to go play in the minor leagues for a little bit,” he continued. “So I think kids in this generation are into instant gratification.” There’s little doubt that the popularity of college football and basketball helps the NFL and NBA, as top players, even after just a year at the college level, arrive at the pros already with national recognition. By contrast, far fewer people follow college baseball, which shares talent with minor league systems that incorporate players straight out of high school and foreign countries. In Jeter’s case, he was talented enough to be the No. 6 overall pick by the Yankees in the 1992 draft, but it still took him three years to reach the major leagues. Of course, from that point, he went on to have one of the all-time greatest MLB careers, going to 14 all-star games, winning five World Series titles and finishing sixth in hits with 3,465.  “The thing that I’m interested in is helping the game grow,” Jeter said. “I think that baseball is starting to take somewhat of a backseat to some of the other sports, and in my mind, I think this is the greatest sport in the world.” “Baseball, in my opinion, mimics life,” Jeter noted. “It’s every day. It’s 162 games, plus 30 games in spring training, plus the postseason. There’s a lot of work that goes into it.”

The problems with baseball today

Major League Baseball is to blame for its own failure to appeal to the youth market [“Behind the curve,” front page, April 6]. The impressive salaries of baseball players are supported by prohibitively high ticket prices for games. Taking the family to a regular-season game is a serious financial investment. Attending Washington Senators and Baltimore Orioles games was a huge part of my developing an affinity for the game, but it did not set my father back a big chunk of change to take me and a few friends. Baseball games take too long. Games used to be finished in 2½ hours. Also, postseason games start and end too late for many younger spectators to enjoy the whole game. There’s plenty of drama in the postseason, but how many younger fans get to see it? Baseball has created a model geared to older, more affluent fans while driving away the next generation, who will soon have to take the place of current fans in order for baseball to remain a viable institution in years to come. ****Daniel W. Keiper** , Falls Church**

Against all odds, this Little League team reached the divisional championship. The final score doesn’t matter.

For the 11- and 12-year-olds competing in their first D.C. Little League Championship on Monday night, the game was about balls and strikes, jumping out to a big lead against a heavily favored opponent and watching the other team slowly climb back. But for the dozens of parents, coaches and fans anxiously cheering the team known as JMS, reaching the climax of the divisional tournament inspired more iconic descriptors. “Symbolic,” some said. “Seminal.” Kimberley Edwards, whose son Donovan wore number 5 on the back of his purple jersey, said the game was “history-making.” Some of the parents call the boys “the sandlot team,” because it includes top players from three separate leagues — Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, Mamie Johnson and the Senators Satchel Paige. Hence, the JMS moniker. They will go down in Little League history as the first all-black team to compete in the D.C. championship in its 30-year history. Their opponent was the tournament team from the mostly white Northwest Little League, which had appeared in the championship game seven of the past eight years. Almost all of the JMS boys live east of the Anacostia River, with the majority playing for the Mamie Johnson Little League. Two boys live on Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, a Navy-Air Force military installation in the city’s southern tip, which offers no opportunities to play competitive baseball after age 11. Many of them could hardly swing a bat when they first formed a tournament team three years ago, parents said. “Inner-city baseball is moving up, and that’s a good thing because competition should be throughout this city, not just in one section,” said Andre Lee, president of the Senators Satchel Paige Little League. “Baseball is baseball. It doesn’t have a color barrier to it.” The team was coached by Keith Barnes, 45, who in 2014 founded the Mamie Johnson league in Ward 7, east of the Anacostia River, a historic dividing line between the city’s haves and have-nots. It has struggled at times to raise money to cover equipment and fees that are little more than an afterthought to more affluent families. “Football is king in D.C.,” said Barnes, who grew up in Richmond and played college baseball at Virginia State University. “We’ve been trying to grow baseball in the African American community. We just want to give kids other options.” His league is named for one of only three women to have played baseball in the Negro leagues. On Monday night, Johnson herself was at the game to witness a different chapter of history. She wore a white Washington Nationals jersey and snacked on pizzelles, perched on a lawn chair with a prime view of home plate. It was the first time the 81-year-old had seen the team play, but that didn’t keep her from feeling a sense of ownership. “They’re mine!” she said with pride. Parents and others who have followed JMS credit Barnes and the other coaches with the team’s rapid ascendancy, recalling that the boys did not win a single game during their first season. They said the predominantly white leagues have a longer history of coaches who played in college and then return to mentor young boys. “We in the inner city, we don’t have the kids that go to college on baseball scholarships and come back,” Lee said. Beneath the shade of a blue tent, JMS parents cheered from their lawn chairs and passed out clappers and cowbells. Most wore matching team T-shirts with their sons’ names and numbers on the back. Nicko Wescott, whose son Ayden threw 85 pitches during the game, offered up homemade chocolate chip cookies. “Being unnoticed, and then all of a sudden people notice you, it’s all about that respect,” said Stephen Makle, whose son Amir has been on the team since its inception. “Being visible in the community — your actions have to speak up.” At the end of four innings, JMS was ahead 6-0. The winner of the game would go on to the regional tournament, with a chance to eventually advance to the Little League World Series. But in the final two innings, Northwest’s bats came to life. By the bottom of the sixth, Northwest was up 7-6. JMS had one more chance. But it was not to be. After the last out was made, players from Northwest hoisted the championship banner and their parents raced to the diamond to snap photos. Within minutes, the JMS tent had been packed up. Parents hugged their boys, many of whom held back tears. The score may not have reflected it, those on the sidelines said, but history had already been made. “I told them everybody was out there cheering for them, rooting for them,” Barnes said after the game. “Just keep playing.”

Chris Rock answers the question, ‘Why don’t black people like baseball anymore?’

Chris Rock describes himself as “an endangered species.” In what way? As “a black baseball fan.”  When Rock was a young man in New York, the 1986 Mets won the World Series with a roster studded with black stars such as Dwight Gooden, Darryl Strawberry and Mookie Wilson. But he noted — amusingly, of course — many ways in which things have changed: Unfortunately for the people who run baseball at its various levels, Rock didn’t provide any ways to reverse the current trend of apathy. All the comedian could suggest was, “Maybe if baseball gets a little hipper, a little cooler, just a little more black, the future can change.” But it certainly didn’t sound like Rock thought that could, or would, happen. And the slow death of the sport is a prospect that many would not find amusing at all. Here is video of the “Real Sports” segment:

Rick Ankiel hired as Nationals’ newly created minor league ‘life skills’ coordinator

The Nationals announced their minor league staff on Thursday but with an innovative and newly created position that brings former player Rick Ankiel back into the organization. Ankiel will serve as the Nationals’ minor league “life skills” coordinator, a mentorship role. Ankiel, 35, overcame an upbringing that included his father landing in prison for drug use. Ankiel was once a St. Louis Cardinals’ top pitching prospect and reached the majors at 19 in 1999. He finished second in National League Rookie of the Year voting the next season before his pitching career unraveled. He painfully and publicly lost his ability to pitch and eventually resurrected his career as an outfielder, reaching the majors again as a position player in 2007 with the Cardinals. He played for the Nationals from 2011 to mid-2012, making some of the most memorable, jaw-dropping outfield throws ever seen in Washington and becoming a beloved teammate. Ankiel retired after a trying 2013 season with the Astros and Mets.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Last spring training, the Nationals and Ankiel talked informally about his future as a coach or mentor in the minor leagues. They talked again in the fall and began formalizing a role. The Nationals believe Ankiel’s experiences on and off the field, as well as his personality, can help young prospects and minor leaguers. “His life experiences and people that have touched him along the way and helped him overcome these things is very unique,” said Doug Harris, the Nationals’ assistant general manager for player development and pro scouting. “He’s not a psychiatrist. He’s not a psychologist. Dealing with the everyday issues in professional baseball, the high and lows aren’t easy. Any family troubles off the field, he can be a confidante. He’ll command respect.” Ankiel will roam the minor leagues beginning in spring training. He may throw batting practice one day but he isn’t expected to offer technical hitting or pitching instruction. He may shag fly balls with players in the outfield but only so he can chat with them. He will be in the clubhouse but only so he can connect with the many different players. “Baseball is a game of failure,” Harris said. “Anything you can do to help players deal with failure helps the organization. Learning how to deal with those emotions, the highs and lows of the season, helps.” The Nationals aren’t creating Ankiel’s position out of a need to address any specific issues. Instead, they believe Ankiel can help coaches and managers, who are also often confidantes for players. The Nationals will still have a sports psychologist available, but Ankiel can be a less formal venting place. Ankiel’s background instantly adds credibility for players, too. Ankiel learned how to handle the pressures of the game from famed mental performance coach Harvey Dorfman, who helped him during his on-field struggles and has also worked with Roy Halladay, Brad Lidge and Greg Maddux.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Other than Ankiel, the Nationals made few changes to their minor league staff for 2015. Most minor league affiliates will return the same coaching staffs as last season. The most notable change was the promotion of Paul Menhart from Class AAA Syracuse pitching coach to minor league pitching coordinator. Spin Williams, formerly the pitching coordinator, was elevated to senior advisor for player development. Both are well-respected coaches who have helped players struggling with their deliveries. “[Menhart is] an excellent technician and in deliveries,” Harris said. “He does a great job of developing pitches. It helps us get his hands on 150-200 players a year as opposed to fewer.” Williams will serve as a mentor to Menhart while still helping pitchers across the entire organization. The Nationals added Bob Milacki, a former pitching coach in the Phillies and Pirates systems, as Syracuse’s pitching coach. They also hired Tommy Shields, a Fairfax native who spent the past three seasons managing in the Royals’ minors and is a former minor league infield coordinator, as the Nationals’ co-field coordinator. Shields, who will split the field coordinator duties with Jeff Garber, fills the position left vacant by Tony Beasley. Michael Barrett, a former major leaguer, will take on a larger role as catching coordinator across the minors while still managing the Nationals’ Gulf Coast League team. Jerad Head, a former Nationals farmhand, was added as an additional coach during extended spring training and for the GCL team.  **CLASS AAA SYRACUSE**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Manager – Billy Gardner Jr. Pitching – Bob Milacki Hitting – Joe Dillon Athletic Trainer – Jeff Allred Strength & Conditioning Coach – Brett Henry  **CLASS AA HARRISBURG**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Manager – Brian Daubach Pitching – Chris Michalak Hitting – Mark Harris Athletic Trainer – Eric Montague Strength & Conditioning Coach – Tony Rogowski  **CLASS A POTOMAC**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Manager – Tripp Keister Pitching – Franklin Bravo Hitting – Brian Rupp Athletic Trainer – TD Swinford Strength & Conditioning Coach – Mike Warren  **CLASS A HAGERSTOWN**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Manager – Patrick Anderson Pitching – Sam Narron Hitting – Luis Ordaz Athletic Trainer – Don Neidig Strength & Conditioning Coach – Gabe Torres  **SHORT SEASON CLASS A AUBURN**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Manager – Gary Cathcart Pitching – Tim Redding Hitting – Amaury Garcia Athletic Trainer – Darren Yoos Strength & Conditioning Coach – RJ Guyer  **ROOKIE LEVEL GULF COAST LEAGUE**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Manager – Michael Barrett Pitching – Michael Tejera Hitting – Jorge Mejia Coach – Jerad Head Athletic Trainer – Kirby Craft Strength & Conditioning Coach – Edwin Jimenez  **ROOKIE LEVEL DOMINICAN SUMMER LEAGUE**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Manager – Sandy Martinez Pitching – Pablo Frias Hitting – Jose Herrera Coach – Emiliano Alcantara Coach – Michael Moscat Athletic Trainer – Miguel Cabrera Strength & Conditioning Coach – Santo Del Rosario  **COORDINATORS**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Co-Field Coordinator – Jeff Garber AND Tommy Shields Pitching Coordinator – Paul Menhart Sr. Advisor, Player Development – Spin Williams Hitting Coordinator – Troy Gingrich Catching Coordinator – Michael Barrett Outfield/Baserunning Coordinator – Gary Thurman Coordinator of Instruction – Gary Cathcart Rehabilitation Pitching Coordinator – Mark Grater Medical and Rehabilitation Coordinator – Jon Kotredes Strength and Conditioning Coordinator – Landon Brandes Life Skills Coordinator – Rick Ankiel Minor League Equipment Coordinator – Calvin Minasian

Baseball America ranks Nationals farm system No. 13

For more than a year, the Nationals have behaved like a contending team. Before last season, they spent years rebuilding the farm system, stocking it with talent from the draft. The climb from the cellar of the Baseball America farm system rankings, known as the prospect bible, culminated with a brief No. 1 overall ranking last April. Then, the Nationals, on the brink on competing in the National League East, started trading away some prospects for the final pieces on the major league roster.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The constant ebb and flow of prospects has landed the Nationals’ farm system smack in the middle of the Baseball America’s new 2013 rankings released Wednesday morning. The Nationals’ minor league system is ranked No. 13, behind the Chicago Cubs and ahead of the San Diego Padres. The loaded St. Louis Cardinals finished atop the rankings, followed by the Seattle Mariners and Texas Rangers. The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim are dead last. (If you’re wondering: the Philadelphia Phillies are No. 24 and Atlanta Braves are No. 26.)    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Under General Manager Mike Rizzo, a former scout and scouting director, and the Lerner family, the Nationals dedicated themselves to spending in the draft like few others teams in the sport and it made a difference at the major league level. Six years ago, the Nationals ranked No. 30 in the prospects rankings. With a combination of good fortune, smart scouting and a willingness to spend a lot on signing bonuses, the Nationals drafted and signed top prospects Bryce Harper, Stephen Strasburg, Anthony Rendon, Alex Meyer, Brian Goodwin, Matt Purke and Sammy Solis — all before the new draft spending limits were put into place last year. Last winter, Rizzo traded away four of the team’s best prospects to the Oakland Athletics for Gio Gonzalez. Then he traded away a top catching prospect, David Freitas, for catcher Kurt Suzuki in August. And this winter, he shipped away top pitching prospect Meyer for the leadoff hitter they long desired, Denard Span. Amazingly, Rizzo flipped Michael Morse with one year remaining on his contract for three minor leaguers, including A.J. Cole, the right-handed pitching prospect who was the centerpiece of Gonzalez trade with Oakland. Because Harper has now reached the majors and Meyer is now with Minnesota, the Nationals’ rankings took a hit. But considering how the organization has behaved recently, 13th overall isn’t a bad spot to land. Last year’s revised rankings, after the Gonzalez trade, had the Nationals at No. 12 and in 2011 at No. 13. The Nationals minor leagues are still stocked with talented infielders, catchers and outfielders. (Rendon was ranked the 30th best prospect.) The pitching ranks were thinned by trades but the addition of Cole helps, and the future lies with the recovery of injured prospects — Solis, Purke and last year’s top pick, Lucas Giolito. Here are the publication’s updated top 10 Nationals prospects, with Cole at No. 4 after being re-acquired:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University 1. Anthony Rendon, 3B (30th overall) 2. Lucas Giolito, RHP (67th) 3. Brian Goodwin, OF (70th) 4. A.J. Cole, RHP 5. Matt Skole, 3B 6. Nate Karns, RHP 7. Christian Garcia, RHP 8. Eury Perez, OF 9. Sammy Solis, LHP 10. Matt Purke, LHP

Bernie Sanders wants the U.S. to stop having the highest child poverty rate among rich countries. Here’s how you can do it.

But as I’ll show below, the cross-national data show that really reducing child poverty requires a government much larger than most politicians have acknowledged.   The LIS uses the classic relative measure of poverty, which is the most well-established measure in the international social sciences of poverty. This measure defines someone as poor if they live in a household that gets by on less than 50 percent of the median income, adjusted for household size. These high rates of child poverty are troubling because child poverty has clear negative consequences. Scholars have convincingly linked child poverty with greater mortality, poor health, undermined educational attainment and lower adult income. Children who grow up poor are more likely to be victims of crime, to get sick, to experience family instability, and to suffer from a variety of disadvantages.  Both Democratic Party presidential candidates acknowledge that changing that fact — and bringing more children out of poverty — would require greater tax revenue. For instance, Sanders has called for higher taxes and identified Denmark, which has a much larger government, as a country to emulate.    Let’s examine the most recent estimates that the LIS provides for the 19 rich democracies. Above, we see that when government revenue is high, child poverty is low (r=-.66). For instance, in the lower right hand corner, we see the Scandinavian countries, including Denmark, have low child poverty and high government revenue. By contrast, in the upper left corner, we see the U.S., with high child poverty and very low government revenue. Germany and the United Kingdom are in the middle.    What’s more, in the figure above, I draw a horizontal line to identify countries that achieve “low child poverty.” I define “low child poverty” as those that were in the bottom third of the distribution of child poverty rates across the 106 country-years in the 19 rich democracies from 1990 to 2015. This means the country has below 8.2 percent child poverty. I also draw a vertical line to mark the average level of government revenue in those country-years (44.2%). As you can see, there are no countries in the graph’s lower left quadrant. Zero countries have below average government revenue and low child poverty. Apparently, low child poverty doesn’t happen unless a government has above average government revenue.  The benefits that successfully lift children out of poverty include what scholars and policymakers call “universal child cash benefits” — for example, what Germans call “Kindergeld.” Every family with children, regardless of need, receives a cash payment as an investment in the country’s children. Children are also far less likely to grow up poor in societies that heavily subsidize healthcare and childcare, which enables parents to work and prevents illness from bankrupting the family. Child poverty can also be combated by supplying “near cash” benefits like food stamps and housing vouchers, and offering tax credits to supplement low-income parents’ earnings. One clear illustration that these policies work comes from the Blair and Brown Labor Party governments in the U.K, which pledged to end child poverty in a generation. According to the LIS, in 1995, fully 20 percent of the UK’s children lived in poverty; and in 1999, 17.7 percent did.  And there should be no doubt: These policies required substantial government revenue. Let’s redo the figure above with a little more detail, including all 106 LIS estimates for our 19 rich democracies across several years between 1990 and 2015. The figure below labels the countries with two-letter country names (so, for instance, “AU” is Australia, “AT” is Austria, and “SZ” is Switzerland) and two numbers for the year (e.g. “10” is 2010, “95” is 1995). The figure below is more crowded than the one above. But we can see that the correlation between government revenue and child poverty is even stronger (r=-.74), with essentially the same distribution, with most countries in the upper left with high child poverty and low government revenue, or in the lower right, with low child poverty and high government revenue. Only one of our 106 country-years, Switzerland in 2002, deviated from this, with low government revenue and low child poverty. And Switzerland couldn’t sustain it; in every other year we have on record, Switzerland’s child poverty topped 8.2 percent.  For the U.S. to reduce low child poverty, it will require increases in government revenue. Indeed, the experience of rich democracies in the past 25 years suggests that above average government revenue is a necessary condition for low child poverty. Some argue that child poverty could be lower with higher marriage rates, more employment, efficiently targeted benefits, or private charity. But no rich democracy has succeeded with those strategies alone. It takes taxes, in other words, to raise a child.

Review of ‘The Last Natural’: New book on Nationals star Bryce Harper comes up short

In the fall of 2009, the Harper family of Las Vegas took a step that within less than a year proved of immense potential importance for the future of Major League Baseball in the nation’s capital. The Harpers decided that their 16-year-old son, Bryce, a baseball player with astonishing gifts who recently had been featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated as “Baseball’s Chosen One” — a prodigy to rank with basketball’s LeBron James — would bypass his last two years of high school, take a General Educational Development (GED) test and, assuming he passed, enroll at the College of Southern Nevada, a junior college with one of the country’s best baseball programs. Bryce’s mother, Sheri, “found a blog on an Internet site that raised questions of great interest to her family,” Rob Miech writes: “Why don’t American baseball players have the same options as Dominicans, say, or others in the Caribbean and the rest of the world? Those talented youngsters can sign professional contracts at sixteen years of age and begin polishing their skills in major league academies, hastening their paths to the big leagues. Why are U.S. players not afforded that same avenue and are only eligible to be drafted after their senior season in high school or . . . a year after they leave high school?” Beyond that entirely reasonable question, there was more: The working agreement between big-league owners and players was to expire two years later, and it was rumored — and indeed turned out to be the case — that a new agreement would result in significantly lower signing bonuses and entry-level salaries. So Harper passed his GED, signed up at Southern Nevada, and got ready to play baseball for its Coyotes, under coach Tim Chambers, in the 2010 collegiate season. Baseball fans in Washington may or may not remember that Harper had a spectacularly successful season there — although whether it was the “Greatest Amateur Season Ever” is open to argument. Toward the end, he was chosen by the Washington Nationals as the first player in the amateur draft and signed to “a five-year, $9.9 million deal . . . the richest deal ever for a position player, surpassing the $9.5 million pact Mark Teixeira signed in 2001.” Assuming that Harper becomes the dominant Major League player he is expected to be — and his first weeks with the Nationals this spring certainly make that seem likely — the season he spent as a Coyote will become a very small part of a very big story, but it deserves to be remembered. Thus, Miech’s account of that season is helpful. “The Last Natural” is an absolutely preposterous title and Miech, a longtime sports writer, is at best a pedestrian stylist, but the book is useful because Chambers gave him full access to the team throughout the season, including a seat in its dugout: “Chambers had wanted me to witness history. Chambers knew it would be a special season. He knew Harper would dominate. He knew every day had to be chronicled. He knew the makeup and interactions of the rest of his players would be compelling; they were the ones who would protect Harper, and they would be the ones who would correct, guide and temper him, to prep him for his next level.” Those predictions, at least, turned out to be sound. At age 17, playing with and against players several years his senior, Harper did everything that had been expected of him and more: “Harper . . . hit .443, with thirty-one home runs, knocked in ninety-eight runs, and scored ninety-eight times in sixty-six games for the College of Southern Nevada. With 225 total bases in his 228 trips to the plate, Harper . . . slugged an incredible .987. All but his batting average were school records.” The Coyotes were “one of the best teams in the country,” coming within a whisker of winning the junior-college national championship, and Harper was central to their success. Doubtless the Coyotes would have been among the country’s elite teams without Harper on their roster, but with him they did indeed, as Chambers had predicted, become something special. Harper seems to have had a lot of fun as the season unfolded, although he was under considerable stress from beginning to end. Some of that was self-imposed — “if Harper did not do something thrilling almost every time he stepped to the plate, in his mind something was terribly wrong,” with the result that he was susceptible to unseemly tantrums — but most of it came from outside. Ryan Scott, like most others on the team, “couldn’t comprehend how Harper could handle all of the attention, demands and expectations that had been heaped upon him at such a young age.” Scott said: “But he comes out every day and does his deal, and it doesn’t really faze him. People here haven’t experienced that. But he’s been on that level before. He knows what he’s doing. He’s pretty experienced in that field, handling it. He’s pretty humble for a kid in his situation.” In truth, “humble” is an adjective that not many would be inclined to apply to Harper, who tends to be described as “cocky” and “brash” and even “arrogant,” yet there is considerable evidence to the contrary. He has been the center of attention almost all his life, and many of his teammates seem to think he has handled it with aplomb. Elsewhere, Scott said, “he’s confident, there’s no arrogance. He’s not a guy where it rubs you the wrong way. Every day, you like him more,” a sentiment echoed by fellow Southern Nevada players Donnie Roach, who said, “He’s a great kid and I love him to death,” and Casey Sato, who said: “The things he goes through on a day-to-day basis are completely unreal, but he responds in such a classy way. People need to get off his back and understand he’s only seventeen. It’s amazing. He’s just a good person, a good kid, and he should be completely respected for what he does for other people.” Further burnishing his reputation is his religious faith — he is a devout but not especially self-publicizing Mormon — and the kindness he repeatedly shows toward children, the elderly and those with disadvantages. Growing up in nearly lily-white Nevada, he had little exposure to African Americans as a boy, but his best friend on the Coyotes was its only black player, and he seems comfortable with black and Latino players with whom he has played and competed at various levels. He employs the vernacular of the locker room with gusto and occasional ingenuity, but he doesn’t drink or smoke and on the whole is about as squeaky-clean as they come. So the inclination here is to give him the benefit of the doubt unless and until he forces us to judge otherwise. These are words written by an ardent Nationals fan who hopes for great things for the team in the second decade of this century, but Miech comes up with a good deal of supporting evidence. He doesn’t scant Harper’s shortcomings, among which his tantrums probably enjoy pride of place, but the young man seems to have matured significantly during his year at Southern Nevada and to have continued to do so during his upward progress with the Nationals. Now, considerably sooner than had been anticipated, fans in Washington have the opportunity to watch Harper’s development, as they used to say in sports TV, up close and personal. Since his call-up last month by a Nationals team that was suddenly riddled with serious injuries to front-line players, we’ve been able to see many aspects of his game and his personality. His hustle: turning singles into doubles, making even routine infield grounders into close plays at first. His all-around ability: playing all three outfield positions with verve, although he did manage to lose a fly ball in the Cincinnati fog a week ago. His maturity: showing great patience at the bat, refusing to go after sucker pitches despite a steady diet of off-speed stuff, and hitting to all fields. And, yes, his cockiness: responding to being hit by the Phillies pitcher Cole Hamels by working his way around to third and then, in a great burst of bravado, stealing home. I leaped right off the sofa with that one. So read “The Last Natural” for the insight it provides, but caveat lector. The book is riddled with awkward, at times implausible transitions; with non-sequiturs, some of which border on the hilarious (“ ‘You lose sight of the fact that he’s seventeen,’ ” Inglehart said while wearing dark sunglasses”); and with herky-jerky prose that only rarely settles into something approximating rhythm. An editor is thanked in his acknowledgments, but there is little evidence that any editing was done. A disappointing but informative book about an interesting subject. **yardleyj@washpost.com ** ** Jonathan Yardley  **is The Washington Post’s book critic. **Bryce Harper’s Big Gamble in Sin City and the Greatest Amateur Season Ever** By Rob Miech Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s.   356 pp. $26.99

Chicago’s journey to the U.S. Little League World Series final could be good sign for baseball’s inner-city initiatives

Chicago’s journey to the Little League World Series U.S. final sounds like a screenplay, but this fairy tale is happening in real life. The inner-city squad, comprising African-American players from the Jackie Robinson West league on Chicago’s South Side, is poised to take the whole thing if it can win just two more games in Williamsport, Pa. First, they’ll have to get through the fearsome Las Vegas Mountain Ridge squad, which is coming to the U.S. final undefeated and having already scored a 13-2 mercy-rule win over Chicago on Sunday. If Chicago makes it past Saturday’s game, it will run up against a tough international team from either Japan or South Korea on Sunday. But just because the odds are not in Jackie Robinson West’s favor, doesn’t mean fans should count them out. Players such as Pierce Jones, Joshua Houston, Marquis Jackson and Darion Radcliff are up for the challenge and they’ve come prepared. Per the Chicago Tribune:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The journey for African Americans in baseball, however, hasn’t always gone so smoothly, and the number of major league players who identify as African American is shrinking. In 1980, African-American players made up 19 percent of MLB rosters; at the start of the league’s current season, that number is just 8.1 percent, according to the Associated Press.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Jackie Robinson West’s success in this year’s Little League World Series is a signal that those numbers could reverse in the near future, or at the very least the team’s rise serves as a symbol reminding us they could. No one would like to see that more than Little League and MLB officials themselves. Each league has initiated a program to help rebuild baseball in inner-city neighborhoods where the majority of residents are minorities. Jackie Robinson West is actually a product of the Little League’s Urban Initiative, which helps provide resources to ensure successful programs. The MLB has a similar initiative called Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities, or RBI. “All of us at MLB is talking about that team,” David James, senior director of MLB’s RBI program, tells the AP. “It’s really good for the game.” Urban Initiative officials are slower to take credit, however, for Jackie Robinson West’s rise success, noting that without a supportive community, the program would never work. “Everybody wants to talk about the Urban Initiative League and how we’ve helped Jackie Robinson West,” Urban Initiative director Demiko Ervin told the AP. “They’ve benefited from the program, but I’ve got to give so much credit to the folks in that league and folks in that community. … It doesn’t work if you don’t have the coaches and the volunteers that come out, support them and do the things that it takes to run a league.” Jackie Robinson West’s success has led to support from celebrities, too, and not just in words and tweets of encouragement (of which there have been many). Several MLB players, organized by Colorado Rockies pitcher LaTroy Hawkins, donated funds to pay for the Chicago team’s trip to Williamsport, the Sun Times reports.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico It would be disappointing to come all this way and not win, as it also would for the other remaining teams, so while the rest of us think about the larger implications of Jackie Robinson West’s rise, the team is thinking about its next game. “I feel a win, honestly,” Chicago Manager Darold Butler told DNAinfo Chicago on Friday morning. “Vegas hasn’t lost yet, and I feel they’re going to come in relaxed and think they have a cakewalk against us and not realize the game is over until it’s too late. They’re not going to know what hits them until it’s over.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The U.S. championship game will air Saturday on ESPN at 2:30 EDT.

In Iran, a spark of enthusiasm for America’s national pastime

TEHRAN — Down a dirt road in a back corner of a vast Tehran sports complex, several dozen young men recently took part in tryouts for Iran’s national baseball team. These ballplayers, some of them fasting for the holy month of Ramadan in the scorching July heat, are part of a small but growing number of Iranians taking up America’s pastime despite long odds. Closer to the “Bad News Bears” than the major leagues, organized baseball has been played here since 1991. Few Iranians beyond the estimated 500 players, coaches and umpires who belong to the national association, however, have even heard of the game. The lack of exposure means baseball receives almost no funding from Iran’s powerful Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, and players actually have to pay — the equivalent of about $5 per month — to be on a team. “A lot of people will laugh at me, but I know if I lived in a country where there were more baseball resources, I could have gone far,” Younes Fathizadeh, a burly 26-year-old with a frizzy black ponytail who plays first base for the team, said between innings of an exhibition game during tryouts. Like other players here, Fathizadeh has a regular job, working for an interior design business and part time as a real estate agent. With the sun setting and the day’s workouts ending, several players dashed into the woods around the capital’s lone baseball diamond to forage for balls that had been fouled off throughout the day. “This is how most of our practices end,” said Mehrdad Hajian, coach of the national team and a local pioneer of the sport. “Six years ago, I bought a thousand balls. I’ve got about 20 left.” Although Iranian baseball faces many obstacles, the national team’s global standing is much higher than might be expected. Of 124 countries currently ranked by the International Baseball Federation, Iran is tied with Chile, Nepal and the tiny Micronesian nation of Palau for 48th in the world, just behind Aruba and Peru and ahead of Guatemala and Bulgaria. To put that in perspective, Iran’s national soccer team, which receives millions of dollars in annual funding and participated in this year’s World Cup in Brazil under the guidance of one of the world’s best-known coaches, Carlos Queiroz, is 43rd in FIFA’s global rankings. “Compared to what’s available to us, we’re twice as good as we should be,” said Fathizadeh, the first baseman. In the early days of Iranian baseball, most players were introduced to it through family links with the United States or other baseball-playing nations, but that is changing. According to Hajian, Iranian baseball now attracts a variety of misfits with the common desire of being on a team. “No one in his right mind would be playing a sport that doesn’t get any coverage, doesn’t have any money,” he said. “When people hear that you play baseball, they ask, ‘Isn’t that the one where the ball looks like a melon?’ ” Hajian fell in love with baseball while growing up in Boston in the 1980s and has been involved since he returned to Iran in the early 1990s. In addition to being the coach of the national team and a local Tehran club, he has also become Iran’s de facto supplier of baseball equipment, although economic sanctions imposed on the country have made that endeavor difficult. Catcher’s mitts and gloves for left-handers are scarce. “We make our own bats, though, but they’re not very good,” Hajian said. Many of the players here follow major league teams and their stars, keeping track of scores and highlights. The biggest topic recently was the all-star selection of the only player of Iranian origin to ever make it to the major leagues, Texas Rangers pitcher Yu Darvish. Darvish was born and raised in his mother’s native Japan. His father is Iranian and was an accomplished soccer player. Officials in Iran’s baseball community say Darvish, who pitched a perfect inning in Tuesday night’s All-Star Game in Minneapolis, has never been mentioned on Iranian television. Regardless, players here follow and admire him. “The fact that Darvish is an Iranian in the major leagues is a huge source of pride for us,” said Hassan Farhadi, 34, a pitcher who does not have much of a fastball but possesses what is considered Iran’s best slider. While the major leagues remain a distant dream for Iranian baseball players, competing against amateur teams from the United States may be more realistic. Both Tehran and Washington support sports diplomacy programs as an opportunity for friendly interactions between citizens. And following successful wrestling exchanges  this year, the league is pursuing opportunities to host American delegations or send the team to the United States for exhibition games. “We’re in talks, and hopefully we’ll be able to get a positive answer from both Iran and the United States,” said Alireza Adib, president of Iran’s Baseball Association. “This kind of diplomacy can have a very positive impact on our work.”

‘Baseball is a way to escape’: At site of congressional shooting, a community finds normalcy in a game

The smaller diamond at Alexandria’s Eugene Simpson Stadium Park — Little Simpson, to locals — attracted a reported 4,000 people when it opened for the city’s Little Major Leaguers in 1953. The field’s dimensions were laid out by the head groundskeeper at Griffith Stadium, courtesy of then-Nats president Clark Griffith. The diamond had a $9,500 lighting system, attracted major leaguers like Bob Feller and Mickey Vernon, and was, according to The Washington Post, “one of the best Little League stadiums in the Nation.” That success helped spur the renovation of the adjoining larger diamond, Big Simpson. And together, those fields attracted generations of Alexandria ballplayers; “any kid who’s ever played any kind of baseball in Alexandria has played baseball on those fields, there’s no question about it,” Tom McHugh, president of the Alexandria Sportsman’s Club, said. That was also the field where a gunman targeted lawmakers practicing for the Congressional Baseball Game last week, seriously wounding House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), leaving bullet holes in dugouts, bleachers and fences and splashing images of Big Simpson on every news show in the country. The subsequent investigation turned the field into a crime scene for much of last week, until a place that has hosted youth baseball games for more than 60 years was ready to host them again. But “you can’t just go out and start playing ball again as if nothing happened,” said Gus Chiarello, the president of Alexandria Little League. Thus arrived Tuesday night’s “Take Back Simpson Park,” an event conceived to welcome back baseball to this Del Ray community but that soon grew to something grander. There were dozens of representatives from the Alexandria police, sheriff and fire departments, dozens of kids in uniform from local teams that weren’t even playing and hundreds of community members. There was a speech from the mayor, emailed thoughts from the president of the Baseball Hall of Fame, and pregame remarks from Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), the manager of the Republican baseball team, who offered a chilling narrative of last week’s violence. Not exactly typical pregame Little League stuff, and that’s without mentioning those television cameras up the third base line. “I can’t tell you how it warms my heart to drive up and see people and Little League teams and families, and not crime-scene tape and the FBI and all the law enforcement,” Barton told the crowd. That was a familiar thought, from people who regard this place as something more than dirt and grass. You can talk about transient Washington all you like, but here came one adult after another with stories of how they had spent their own childhoods on these fields, how they now send their children here three or four times a week, how this was the homey park for their homey neighborhood. “To have it happen here was devastating,” said Chris Mackay, a Little League parent and Del Ray resident who grew up playing at Simpson. “And to try to explain it to your 10-year-old and 13-year-old was very, very difficult. My youngest asked, ‘Why would someone do that?’ And you have to explain, people do crazy things.” “It’s hard to wrap your head around it,” John Kelly, another parent, said. “I hope for the kids this is just a release of emotion, to say we all know what happened here but the field is still here, it’s still the same, it’s going to serve the same purpose that it’s always served.” And those kids, needless to say, will lug memories of their ballfield into adulthood. Like Sam Navarro, who played Little League on both fields, starred at Big Simpson when he attended T.C. Williams (the high school plays its home games here) and was named one of the two best players in the complex’s first 50 years. He talked of neighborhood parents stopping by these fields even when their children weren’t playing, of teammates coming to watch early games and staying to watch late ones. It was the first place he played with a real scoreboard, the first place someone announced his name, the first place he played under lights. “It’s a big deal to kids, and that’s why everybody has such fond memories of the field,” he said. Then there was Alexandria’s elected sheriff, Dana Lawhorne, who has lived his entire life within 10 blocks of the park. In his last moment as a player at Big Simpson, he dropped a flyball that allowed the winning run to score; the sheriff can show you exactly where on his face that ball landed. And like so many people in Tuesday night’s crowd, Lawhorne still comes through the park just about daily, sitting in the bleachers to return phone calls and emails and to think about games held a half-century ago. “It’s something that seems sacred,” he said. “It just makes you cry to even think that a place you come to for reflection about better times has now been affected by a tragedy.” But if the adults were rattled, many of their children were not. The kids were not worried about lining up neatly in front of the television cameras, and about taking batting practice, and about getting back on their field. They were thinking about the games. “It was serious and it was terrifying for a lot people,” said 13-year-old Campbell Plishker, “but I’m just glad it’s reopened and we can play baseball again.” “It shouldn’t affect the way we feel here,” said 13-year-old Jack Kelly, who — like seemingly everyone else in Del Ray — is at the park three or four times a week. “I think we should all stick together and just keep having fun.” So when the politicians and television cameras cleared off the field, and the pregame prayer about lost innocence and senseless violence was over, and the special T-shirts (“Alexandria is our city; Simpson is our home”) were removed, there was baseball again, at both Little Simpson and its now-famous sibling. There were hot dogs and Blow Pops, dogs and clapping parents, pop-ups and strikeouts, singles that turned into Little League triples and kids pounding on each others’ helmets. The only warnings concerned errant foul balls, and if you ignored the flowers on both dugouts and the hand-drawn posters on the bleachers, it was just another normal night of baseball at a place that has seen thousands of them. Chiarello, the league’s president, grew up in Cooperstown; Del Ray isn’t exactly the same, but something still felt different when the field was shuttered. The game, at this place, “just kind of gives this sense of constancy to our life here,” he said. “Baseball is a way to escape, baseball or almost any sport,” added Mackay, the parent who has spent so much of his life at those fields. “There’s something about baseball that makes things seem okay somehow.”

MLB takes a swing at smokeless tobacco

THE DECADES-LONG effort to eradicate tobacco use in the United States has been among the most important public-health achievements of recent times, saving countless lives and improving countless more. But even as national attitudes about smoking have changed, tobacco use has remained deeply ingrained in significant elements of the culture. One big-league example: professional sports, particularly baseball, in which the disgusting and deadly smokeless tobacco habit continues to claim many addicts. Major League Baseball owners have tried to get players to cut out smokeless tobacco products, such as chew, dip and snuff, for years, with limited success. Last month they struck a new contract with the players union that aims to phase out smokeless tobacco use, barring new players from dipping. That is progress. If this were merely an issue of a few pro athletes deciding to expose themselves to deadly carcinogens, it would not be a public-health issue. But sports stars set an example. They are (mostly) known for being in peak physical shape; if they can dip and play pro ball, why not everyone else? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found last year that, though smoking rates are low for high school athletes, use of smokeless tobacco products is high in this group. Even with the new contract, it may take a while for the culture to change. Smokeless tobacco has been banned in the minor leagues and by the NCAA for years, yet telltale wads still show up in players’ mouths. Moreover, current MLB players will still be allowed to use, meaning it would take well over a decade for everyone in the major leagues to be covered. The contract will run for five years, so the policy cannot be strengthened for a while. Then there is the question of how well teams and league officials will enforce the ban. MLB organizations should keep the pressure on, reminding players that tobacco use of all kinds has consequences. San Diego Padres great Tony Gwynn tragically died of salivary gland cancer complications at the age of 54. Pitching legend Curt Schilling waged a fight against oral cancer not long after retiring from baseball. Cities can take an even harder approach — 12 of them have banned smokeless tobacco from professional sports stadiums within their limits. More should follow suit. The fight against tobacco cannot stop with smoking. In all its uses, this addictive weed still constitutes a public-health disaster. The sooner major league sports make smokeless tobacco a memory of an earlier, less informed era, the better. **Read more on this topic:** The Post’s View: It’s time to get chewing tobacco out of baseball Michael Gerson: Giving cancer a first-person voice The Post’s View: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce should quit lobbying for tobacco abroad Vinay Prasad: Why a cancer ‘moonshot’ is unlikely to find us a cure Michael R. Bloomberg and Margaret Chan: Why the United Nations should press for higher taxes on tobacco

Family Filmgoer reviews ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’

**Million Dollar Arm (PG).** Kids 12 and older who’ve played Little League or just love professional sports may be drawn to this reality-based story. It takes its time getting told, however, and there are a lot of grown-ups having heart-to-heart chats that kids will have to tolerate along the way. Struggling sports agent J.B. Bernstein (Jon Hamm), his business on the line, risks everything to hold a public search for pitching phenoms in India, where cricket is very popular. The first few hundred contestants barely throw 45 mph pitches, but eventually J.B. finds Rinku and Dinesh, two young men with real potential. He brings them to the United States without grasping the culture shock they’ll feel. He shows impatience when they don’t learn baseball instantly; it’s all about him and the risks he’s taking. J.B.’s tenant and love interest, Brenda, tells him he must mentor and protect these young men. **THE BOTTOM LINE:** It is implied that J.B. and Brenda spend a night together, but we see only a kiss. There is other mild verbal sexual innuendo. Characters drink. **X-Men: Days of Future Past.** A smart and visually ravishing new 3-D chapter in the X-Men films, “Days of Future Past” should knock out teens and older fans, even if they can’t totally parse the whipsawing plot. This time, in order to prevent a disastrous war between humans and mutants, Wolverine travels back to 1973 to find the young Charles Xavier. Wolverine must persuade a depressed Xavier to use his mutant ability to hear people’s thoughts so that he can get into the head of the shape-shifting Mystique and stop her from assassinating a human scientist, Bolivar Trask. Trask wants the U.S. government to buy his mutant-killing robot warriors, called Sentinels, arguing that otherwise, mutants will destroy humanity. The film is full of deft period touches, bringing in the Vietnam War, President Nixon’s secret tapes and quantum physics references. **THE BOTTOM LINE:** Scenes of the aftermath of a war between mutants and humans show piles of bodies and skulls. Fight scenes are largely effects- driven, with laserlike zapping, fire, ice, telekinesis, electromagnetism and occasional impalement, all of it bloodless, though characters feel pain. The script features occasional profanity, including one use of the F-word. **Blended.** A broad comedy that earns its PG-13 with lots of semi-crude sexual humor, “Blended” is okay for teens, but parents of younger kids may find much that’s inappropriate for little ones. Then again, it’s an Adam Sandler movie, so _duh_. Jim (Sandler), a widower, and Lauren (Drew Barrymore), who’s divorced, meet on a blind date and instantly hate each other. They run into each other again at a drugstore, where Lauren helps Jim buy tampons for his older daughter, and he helps her choose a sexy magazine for her older son, to replace the one she reflexively tore up after finding it under the boy’s bed. But they still hate each other. By coincidence, Jim and his three daughters and Lauren and her two sons wind up at the same resort in South Africa, where they’re constantly thrown together because it’s “blended family” week. Jim teaches Lauren’s boys to play sports and blow off steam. Lauren helps Jim’s daughters fix their awful barbershop haircuts and feel pretty. Naturally, the grown-ups start to like each other, too. **The bottom line:** The script is full of midrange profanity. There are jokes about teenage masturbation and adult sexual behavior. There is a quick shot of rhinos mating. **Ida.** A quiet, slow, stunning film from Poland (with English subtitles), “Ida” tells a gut-wrenching story that true cinema buffs of high-school and college age may find surprisingly hypnotic. Set in Poland in the early 1960s under communism, it’s about a young novice nun, Anna, who is about to take orders and enter the convent for life. First, she is sent to meet her only surviving family member, an aunt, who turns out to be an embittered hang-’em- high judge. Anna learns from her aunt that she, Anna, was actually named Ida, and that they are the only survivors of a Jewish family wiped out in the Holocaust. Their story emerges slowly and with nongraphic but shattering effect. **THE BOTTOM LINE:** Ida’s aunt drinks and smokes and picks up young men for overnight trysts, though these are not graphically shown. **Godzilla.** Monster movie fans 13 and older can feast their eyes on this effects-laden, narratively murky update of the 1954 Japanese classic, in which Godzilla battles two monsters that look like human-cockroach hybrids. (Teens prone to nightmares and reptile phobias should skip this one.) The movie opens with a prologue set in 1999: A mine in the Philippines collapses, revealing huge, weird fossils, then a nuclear plant in Japan collapses due to underground tremors. The plant’s American boss loses his wife in the disaster. Fifteen years later, their son is a bomb disposal expert in the Navy. He reconnects with his dad, who is certain that whatever destroyed the nuclear plant is back, though the explanation is indecipherable. They investigate and get caught in a crisis: Two monsters of indeterminate origin feed on nuclear power and have awakened Godzilla. **The bottom line:** Skyscrapers, railroad tracks and bridges are smashed, aircraft carriers upended and humans killed. It’s all pretty gore-free, computer-crafted and dimly lit. Many children are shown at risk. Characters use rare mild profanity. **** **Walking the Camino: Six Ways to Santiago (Unrated).** Teens of varying sensibilities — from those who are religiously or philosophically inclined to those who just love hiking and travel — can enjoy this documentary, which follows six people of different ages and origins as they walk the 500-mile Camino de Santiago trail across northern Spain. The trail is 1,200 years old and was originally meant for Catholic pilgrims trekking from shrine to shrine. It is now a rugged and picturesque challenge for many people, who, the film says, find spiritual rebirth in the friends they make and the very act of walking so far. **THE BOTTOM LINE:** Some of the pilgrims profiled suffer from severe tendonitis and blisters that bring them to tears. Others express emotional troubles they hope will be lessened by walking the trail. **** **Teenage (Unrated).** This eccentric, impressionistic film is part documentary and part new-made footage designed to look archival. It puts the “teenager” concept into historical context, starting with the 19th century Industrial Revolution, which led to laws banning child labor, which led to public education and extended childhoods for the non-rich. It explores the tug-of-war between childhood and adulthood that begins around age 13. Using film and diary entries of American, English and German youth, the movie touches on the destruction of a generation of young men in World War I, the abandon of the Roaring Twenties, the poverty of the Depression, the pull of the New Deal in the U.S. and of the Hitler Youth in Germany. “Teenage” shows how kids loved jazz and swing because it set them apart, even as World War II raged. It ventures only briefly into the 1950s, ’60s and beyond. **THE BOTTOM LINE:** Some of the footage depicts teens and young adults in the 1920s and later smoking pot, drinking and using cigarettes, and implying non-explicitly that they are sexually active and exploring sexual orientation. The footage of World Wars I and II is not graphic. There is mention of teen pregnancy. Horwitz is a freelance writer.

Every parent’s dream: Playing time is built into the price of this sports league

Tony Korson was an aspiring teenage baseball player at Walt Whitman High School in the late 1990s, searching for the coach who could turn him into the next Derek Jeter. He couldn’t find him. “I did not think coaching in this area was up to par,” Korson said. So the teenager hired his own coach, eventually becoming a star at Whitman and earning a scholarship to Florida Gulf Coast University, a prestigious baseball factory. Now 32, Korson has taken his baseball experience and turned it into a sprawling group of suburban sports leagues called Koa Sports, which grossed $1.5 million last year. Koa’s niche is providing organized sports for kids who often are not ready for elite leagues or high school teams. “Our number one objective is fun,” Korson, the chief executive, said. “Most parents and players are pursuing scholarships. We are pursuing camaraderie and good values.” This is civilized stuff. Everyone gets their names on the back of their uniforms. Every kid gets to play — although not always long enough to suit the helicopter moms and dads who are hovering. No screaming parents allowed. “We expelled the parents of one kid because the father had an out-of-body experience, screaming at the ref, sending e-mails to the entire team and inappropriately yelling at his own kid,” Korson said, adding, “You try to be as positive as you can.” The positive vibe doesn’t come cheap. Some Koa baseball programs run as high as $1,200 per player, which can double or triple in a year if they play from spring through fall. Girls’ field hockey ranges between $150 and $800, basketball is about the same, and a six-week baseball clinic runs a modest $150. Most of the kids live in the leafy environs of lower Montgomery County — Bethesda, Chevy Chase, Potomac. Many are the sons and daughters of well-heeled executives, lawyers, business owners, lobbyists and private-equity maestros. Some parents are journalists, Wall Street financiers or national association bigwigs. Koa’s board of directors includes prominent local names such as lawyers Nick Christakos and Mike Lefkowitz, Potomac entrepreneur Todd Levitt, former television producer Julie Andrews, Jeff Karton of Booz Allen, and job consultant Laura Labovich. Although a few kids hail from elite schools such as Sidwell Friends, Korson has built strong bridges with five Montgomery County high schools that feed him most of his customers: Bethesda-Chevy Chase, Whitman, Wootton, Churchill and Walter Johnson. The key, Korson said, is getting kids to start early — from 4 to 8 years old — and turning them into long-term customers. The jerseys go a long way toward creating happy players. “The kids like the swagger, looking good and feeling good.” Nobody is getting rich here. Korson owns a townhouse in Cabin John, Md., and expects to earn about $92,000 this year. The rest of his full-timers earn between $40,000 and $60,000 and are eligible for health care. Part-time coaches earn $15 to $20 an hour. The company since 2013 has leased 3,300 square feet for $5,000 a month in Kensington, where it has offices, a batting cage, a throwing lane and a video-analysis lounge to see whether the young athletes are on track to be the next Mickey Mantle — or not. Baseball is the big driver of revenue, with a share of 35 percent. Next is field hockey at 22 percent, flag football at 15 percent, multi-sport camp at 15 percent and basketball rounding out the revenue at 13 percent. Korson has devoted most of his life to baseball since high school. In college, where he led the country in ERA and games won for a brief spurt, he studied business finance. After he graduated in 2005, he reentered Whitman’s circle of baseball junkies, made up of parents, alumni and hangers-on who love the game. He started doing some one-on-one coaching at the request of a parent. Then another parent asked. And another. He remembered the professional coach he had when he was 13, recalling how much more fun baseball became when he knew how to play the game better. “This guy made the game more fun,” Korson said. “Sometimes, parents forget that sports are supposed to be fun.” Korson had a day job selling mortgages, but he went out and bought a bucket of baseballs for $60, made some business cards on Vistaprint.com for $10 and drove his Jeep Cherokee to every baseball event he could find, pitching his new, for-profit coaching business with the boring name Next Level Baseball. A lawyer friend helped him fill out the paperwork. He found 10 kids by the first winter, in 2005-2006, charging $30 for group training and $75 an hour for private, one-on-one lessons with anyone who would have him. He worked seven days a week, staying with his parents and living on less than $1,000 a week. “I was a one-man band running a bootstrapped business,” Korson said. “I had no idea what I was doing.” He would drive to any playground or county field that was unlocked, and he and his players would shag groundballs, practice batting and play catch. Many of his clients were castoffs, not good enough to make the local organized club teams. By the summer of 2006, Korson had cobbled together 16 clients to form a team, calling them Next Level Legends. Parents paid him $800 each, which covered uniforms, coaching, equipment and the fees to play in tournaments within an hour or so of Washington. As Next Level’s number of participants grew, Korson started camps to train novices. As the number of teams grew, he booked games with any team he could find. He discovered efficiencies such as putting coaches on an hourly payroll and concentrating his teams in one place to play against one another, rather than having 10 teams travel to 10 locations, with players all over the place. Korson rebranded Next Level with the more distinctive name of Koa in 2010 and diversified from baseball into other sports, which gave him a year-round revenue stream from many of the same players. Not everything went according to plan. He lost thousands of dollars in 2011 and 2012 on a girls’ softball league that fizzled when he overestimated the demand. “I learned you can’t create demand in the sport when the kids don’t want it,” he said. In 2013, he grouped his four baseball teams into a league, which he called the Bethesda Area Baseball League. The idea was to create a competitively balanced league that gives everyone a chance on the field in a community atmosphere. Last year, more than 200 fans, mostly parents, turned out for the league’s 12-and-under all-star game at Cabin John Regional Park, featuring a popular spoof YouTube star throwing out the first pitch. “It was the kind of experience under the lights that you can only dream of as a 12-year-old,” Korson said. Or as a parent.

The cost of attending a baseball game is too damn high

Thanks to Bill Fogarty, writer of the Dec. 19 letter “Coffee snobs unite,” for pointing out the inequality in our national pastime, baseball. In the early 1900s, baseball stoked the patriotism of my working-class grandfather, who went to games with his older brother. In 1947, baseball provided a key step to breaking the color barrier — in sports and in this country — when the Dodgers started Jackie Robinson at first base. In the 1950s, going to baseball games together provided an often lacking bond between my husband and his father. But today, one prime ticket to a baseball game can cost $200. Yes, there are good seats at $40, but try taking a family of four to a game. Add $5.25 hot dogs, $36 pizzas and $4.50 sodas or water. Maybe you can take the family once a year. It is time to play fair, starting with our national pastime. ****Dale Kaufman** , Washington**

Family Filmgoer reviews ‘42,’ ‘Trance’ and ‘The Company You Keep’

**From Up on Poppy Hill (PG).** Kids who love animation and who are open to non-Hollywood films will be charmed by the hand-drawn look, exotic locale and poignant teen love story of this film from Japan’s fabled Studio Ghibli. It is 1963, and a girl named Umi lives with her grandmother, sister and several boarders. She meets a boy named Shun and helps him and his friends clean a clubhouse where the boys follow many intellectual pursuits. But the grown-ups want to tear it down. In the middle of all this, Umi and Shun, who are chastely falling in love, learn of something that could keep them apart. **THE BOTTOM LINE:** Both Umi and Shun have experienced loss, and both have grown up around adults with sad memories. SPOILER ALERT: There is a delicately treated mystery, which implies that Umi and Shun might be brother and sister. This would kill their romance, but the mystery ends happily. **42.** This Jackie Robinson film is presented in a completely engaging way that will draw teens, and even some kids younger than 12, under its spell. For those younger viewers, the film’s depiction of what life was like for African Americans in the segregated South and often the North will be eye-opening. In 1945, Brooklyn Dodgers General Manager Branch Rickey hires Negro League star Jackie Robinson for a spot as the first African American to play major league baseball. With wife Rachel offering silent support from the stands, Robinson faces vicious racist taunts from fans and from other players. The film also re-creates the famous moment on the field when Pee Wee Reese walked up to Robinson and put his arm around him. **THE BOTTOM LINE:** The racial slurs and other insults hurled at Jackie Robinson are awful. The script also includes some mild profanity and a homophobic attempt at locker-room humor, as well as mild, marital sexual innuendo. **Jurassic Park 3D.** Unless they’re very hearty souls, kids younger than 13 may want to skip this 3-D version of “Jurassic Park.” Even 20 years after its debut, Steven Spielberg’s movie remains a thrill. Dinosaur fossil expert Dr. Alan Grant and his girlfriend, Dr. Ellie Sattler, are recruited by millionaire John Hammond to give their seal of approval to his private island preserve, Jurassic Park. To their shock, they learn that Hammond’s scientists have recovered dinosaur DNA and used it to clone the beasts. An employee steals DNA samples and tries to sneak off the island. Humans quickly become prey. **The bottom line:** Even if kids 12 and younger already have watched the film on video, this 3-D version could prove too much for them. We see several victims grabbed by dinosaurs, but we don’t really see them killed or eaten. It’s all strongly implied, however, and one bloodied animal part does land on a car roof. Characters use occasional barnyard epithets. **Trance.** This thriller is too sexually explicit and violent for anyone younger than 17. Simon works at an auction house in London. When a Goya painting is stolen by criminals, we see Simon as a victim. It quickly develops that he’s in league with the robbers, led by Franck, but a bump on the head during the heist has given Simon partial amnesia and he can’t remember where he hid the stolen art. Franck and his crew try torture, but that fails. So they take Simon to a hypnotherapist, Elizabeth, in hopes that his memory can be unlocked. She privately tells Simon she can help him get out of trouble, but then seems to place herself into the criminals’ confidence. **THE BOTTOM LINE:** “Trance” includes graphically violent scenes involving gunplay, people getting run over and fistfights. It also contains a couple of visual moments that depict victims of violence with stomach-churning gore. The film features a semi-explicit sexual situation and instances of total nudity. Abuse and revenge themes figure into the finale, and there is occasional strong profanity. **The Company You Keep.** Only those few high-schoolers fascinated by the anti-Vietnam War movement of the 1960s and ’70s will be drawn to this mildly R-rated dramatic thriller about former radicals. Apart from Shia LaBeouf and supporting players Anna Kendrick and Brit Marling, the film’s stars made their names decades ago. That noted, “The Company You Keep” (based on a novel by Neil Gordon) spins a good yarn, with complex moral questions and compelling characters. LaBeouf plays Ben, a hungry young newspaper reporter with shaky ethics in Upstate New York. His ears perk up when he learns that a local public interest lawyer, Jim Grant (Robert Redford, who also directed), might have a connection to a one-time ’70s radical named Sharon Solarz (Susan Sarandon). She has just given herself up to the FBI after 30 years living underground. She and other members of the violent Weather Underground had robbed a bank and killed a guard. Ben learns that Grant is living a lie, too, and starts following him, as does the FBI. A widower raising a young daughter (Jackie Evancho), Grant puts her in his brother’s (Chris Cooper) care and goes on the run. On his journey, he connects with former compadres played by the likes of Julie Christie, Nick Nolte, Richard Jenkins and more — an amazing cast in a film that isn’t much of a thriller, but holds lots of water dramatically. **The bottom line:** The R rating reflects some strong language and references to growing and selling marijuana. It’s implied that Redford and Christie spend the night together. Horwitz is a freelance writer. Read her previous reviews at On Parenting.

D.C. students inspired by baseball legend Jackie Robinson

For a group of D.C. high school students, baseball player Jackie Robinson had been a distant historical figure they knew little about. But as they left a screening Friday of “42,” the new film about Robinson and his sometimes painful path to integrating baseball, they were inspired by lessons that apply to their lives today. “People can say a lot of hateful things,” said Reneshia Gaskins, 17, an Anacostia High School junior. “But watching him and knowing what he went through was way worse than anything I’ve ever been through, so I know I can succeed, too.” About 400 teenagers from 14 D.C. schools watched the film starring Howard University graduate Chadwick Boseman as the Dodgers second base player who broke the color barrier in the major leagues. After the screening, the students took part in a panel discussion with Nationals center fielder Denard Span, first base coach Tony Tarasco and general manager Mike Rizzo. Span, 29, credited Robinson for “opening up so many doors” for black athletes and said the film honestly portrays the racism of the era. “Being a black baseball player, it showed me what Jackie Robinson had to go through so that I could be here today talking to you,” Span said. “It hits home to your soul and signifies how much this game and the world has changed since then.” Braswell Chappelle, 16, a 10th-grader at Anacostia and a basketball player, said Robinson displayed admirable self-control when he was taunted with epithets. “He didn’t let them get into his head,” Chappelle said. “He did what he had to do and played baseball.” The film depicts Robinson’s efforts in the face of withering bigotry to win over his teammates while helping the ball club to win games. Along the way, he became one of the first prominent figures in the nascent civil rights movement. He first took the field as a major league player on April 15, 1947, years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Ala., and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the Lincoln Memorial steps and said, “I have a dream.” “We owe a debt of gratitude to Jackie Robinson,” said Kendra Gaither of the Jackie Robinson Foundation, started in 1973 by his widow, Rachel Robinson. “Gratefully, we no longer have to experience” what Jackie Robinson did. After Robinson joined the Dodgers, other black players soon followed in the major leagues. But in Washington, it officially took until September 1954, when Senators owner Clark Griffith signed Carlos Paula, a Cuban-born outfielder. Paula hit a single and a double in his debut to help Washington beat Philadelphia 8-1. The Boston Red Sox were the last team to integrate in 1959. The screenings of “42” are part of an effort by Major League Baseball to promote the game and its history, particularly with young black athletes. In his talk to the students, Rizzo said the number of black players in the league has dwindled in past decade. He estimated that about 9 percent of all professional players are black. Span recalled that growing up, he was usually the only black player on his youth baseball teams . “I’ve played in a lot of hostile environments,” Span said. “Still to this day there are ignorant people in the world. I ignore the haters and just have fun.”

For MLB, Billy Bean delivers a message only he can

Billy Bean spent the past week performing tasks once woven into his fabric, tasks that for two decades seemed downright foreign, things he would never do again. He leaned on batting cages. He pulled on a major league uniform. He played catch, shagged flies, threw batting practice. Tuesday, he worked out with the Philadelphia Phillies. Wednesday, he headed south down the Gulf Coast to see the Boston Red Sox. And in these major league clubhouses, places where he once didn’t feel comfortable with himself, he stood before a group of major league players – veterans and prospects, from cities and small towns, from the U.S. and Latin America and beyond — and tried to fill them with, well, hope. “It’s a responsibility,” Bean said, “that I could not pass up.” Bean is lots of things: son, brother, outfielder, optimist, .226 career hitter and the only living openly gay former major leaguer. He is now, too, branded as Major League Baseball’s first “Ambassador for Inclusion.” “Nobody knows what it is,” Bean said. “It’s changing every single day.” What it is appears to be the most progressive position in professional sports. It started as a conversation last summer with MLB officials in their Park Avenue offices, a conversation from which Bean walked away thinking, “That was nice.” He expected nothing more. It is now a full-time job. So Billy Bean, who once lived what he called a “double life” as a major leaguer and a closeted gay man, is now standing in front of the generation that followed him, asking those players to be open to others so that maybe the next Billy Bean doesn’t sit in the corner, hiding himself from his teammates, as Bean once did. This is, though, delicate work. “It’s so easy for everyone to assume that all of our players are completely versed in every way socially,” Bean said in a lengthy phone interview Wednesday. “These are young men who have dedicated 99 percent of their attention to developing their craft. The players are going to be who they are. It’s the way it is. They’re going to be resistant to reach out while I’m there.” Which, Bean believes, is fine. The fact that the conversation is even happening, that he’s even in this position, is most important. A year ago, as NFL prospect Michael Sam prepared to come out and NBA veteran Jason Collins became the first openly gay man in his league, baseball grappled with its history of understanding as it relates to sexual orientation. Bean — who played parts of six seasons with the Tigers, Dodgers and Padres – and the late Glenn Burke, an outfielder with the Dodgers and Athletics in the 1970s, were the only players to ever come out. When officials looked into the gay community’s feelings about MLB – which had endured the rhetoric spewed by former Braves reliever John Rocker, for instance — they found something they hadn’t suspected: Some people believed baseball was embarrassed it even had a pair of gay players in its past. As officials discussed it more, Paul Mifsud, one of MLB’s labor lawyers, decided he would simply call Bean and invite him in for a meeting. An hour with Mifsud; Dan Halem, the executive vice president of labor relations; Peter Woodfork, the league’s senior vice president of baseball operations; and Pat Courtney, the senior vice president of public relations, turned into a full day. “It was pretty clear, as I spent the whole day with Billy, that he would really like to be involved with this at a significant level,” Mifsud said. “But he said he didn’t want to be a pet. He didn’t want to be just trotted out, just like we checked a box and put him on a pedestal and said, ‘There’s Billy. See? We did something.’ ” So they started slowly with an announcement of his new position, nebulous as it was, at the All-Star Game in Minneapolis. Over the winter, Bean spoke at MLB’s rookie development program, a gathering of top prospects for a four-day seminar on what life in the majors will be like. He showed a video of an interview he gave with Diane Sawyer in 1999, when he first came out. And he revealed, to a silent room at a conference center in Leesburg, his personal story, which is at the core of his message. The oldest of five boys raised by a father who was an ex-Marine, Bean believes his upbringing created an “inner homophobia” that was commonplace for kids of his generation. He played ball, went to college, got married – the expected path. He made the majors and got four hits in his debut. Dream stuff. And yet he was struggling. “It just took me so long to accept myself,” he said. But in 1992, he met a man who would become his partner. He got divorced. He began living what he called a double life. No one – not his teammates, not his family – knew he was gay. So this is the story Bean tells at each of the dozen camps to which he has been invited, from the Yankees to the Tigers to the Phillies and on and on. But from the moment he met with MLB officials last spring, it was clear that he would not force his message, his lifestyle, on anyone. There was, in fact, one person on earth who could credibly hold Bean’s position – an ex-ballplayer who knew clubhouses, not to mention someone who spent his life in those clubhouses living a lie. Unknowingly, MLB had the perfect ambassador, because Bean knew he would meet resistance. He knew force feeding wouldn’t work. “He doesn’t push views on people,” said Halem, one of the MLB officials in the initial meeting. “He doesn’t lecture people. He’s told his story to different audiences, people with different views on the subject, and he’s always spoken in a way you can kind of relate to him. Whatever your sexual orientation, he says that everybody in life has kind of felt left out, felt alone, felt like they have a secret and that you don’t belong.” That attitude has allowed Bean to, already, navigate potholes deftly. At the rookie program, players were allowed to submit questions anonymously through iPads at each of their stations. One asked simply, “Do you love God?” Bean paused, exhaled, and admitted religion was something with which he had struggled. Last week, after a visit to Mets camp, New York infielder Daniel Murphy told NJ.com, “I do disagree with the fact that Billy is a homosexual.” Here was a test case. What would Bean do? “We’re going to have those moments when we stop in our tracks,” Bean said by phone. “But people need to expand on those moments. I don’t want any player to feel they can’t voice their opinion.” He could have said, “I can’t believe people still have these views.” He could have said, “This proves we have such a long way to go.” He could have asked, “Why are people in baseball, the sport I love, still so close-minded?” Instead, he wrote a thoughtful response, posted on mlb.com, that didn’t have to be shaped by any of baseball’s message-shapers. “Expecting everyone to be supportive right away is simply not realistic,” Bean wrote. “… I appreciate that Daniel spoke his truth. I really do.” “He took a situation that could have been extremely negative and frankly turned it into a positive,” Halem said. “His message of tolerance, of trying to understand people, became a prominent storyline out of that basically because of the way he handled it.” Where this goes from here, no one’s sure. Baseball, this season, will feature an openly gay umpire in Dale Scott. It won’t, for the moment, feature an active, openly gay player. For Bean, that’s just fine. “I refuse to look at our success and failure by how many players are out on the big league field,” Bean said. “That’s not our priority. I don’t want to put the whole message on the shoulders of one player. That’s not fair while they’re trying to play. I’m willing to be the guy with the target on his back for a while.” The target is on the move, from spring training camps in Florida across the country to the Cactus League, to Arizona. There, he’ll again pull on a glove and have a catch, back on the field, back in the game, back where he never expected he’d be again — delivering a message only he could deliver.

Not a gimmick: Tim Tebow is headed to Arizona Fall League to play against baseball’s top prospects

Tim Tebow the baseball player is no gimmick. The 29-year-old former NFL quarterback’s aspirations to become a major league player are legitimate, and on Monday, they received a boost. The New York Mets announced they are sending No. 15 to play against some of the best prospects in baseball in the Arizona Fall League. Each major league team sends six prospects to play fall ball, and 18o players are divided among six teams. Tebow will play for the Scottsdale Scorpions.  The dry climate in the desert helps baseballs carry, so the AFL is considered a hitter-friendly league. That should be good news for Tebow.  The Scorpions are also an affiliate club for the Angels, Giants, Phillies and Yankees. The team’s alumni include Bryce Harper, Mike Trout and basketball Hall of Famer Michael Jordan. No matter his production on the diamond, Jordan had basketball to fall back on. Tebow has no such luxury, and his performance in Scottsdale will go a long way in determining where in the minor league pecking order the Mets use him next spring.

A D.C. police officer steps up to the plate for children

IT HAS become depressingly commonplace in the District to hear stories of people enriching themselves at the expense of children they claim to be serving. The council member who bought a luxury car with money intended for disadvantaged youth comes to mind. So does the boxing coach who squandered charitable funds on gambling vacations. So it was pure delight to learn of efforts by one good citizen of the District to bring baseball — and a new way of life — to children in Southeast Washington. Jason Medina, a 30-year-old officer with the Metropolitan Police Department who conceived and helped build the successful “Ward 7 Baseball” program, was recently featured by NBC News and in a richly told story by The Post’s Dave Sheinin. Mr. Medina grew up in the projects of Harlem and credited Harlem RBI (Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities) with giving him the life lessons and opportunities to succeed. All too aware of the problems that confront inner- city youth — he sees them on his daily police patrol — he wanted to give back. Thus was born a program that uses the joy and discipline of baseball to teach the value of teamwork and the importance of working hard. Three years ago, in his spare time and on his own dime, Mr. Medina, helped by former Harlem baseball teammate Jose Agosto, went to work reclaiming an old ball field from neglect and detritus, enlisting coaches and reaching out to kids who at first didn’t quite know what to think of this cop who wanted them to learn how to play ball. The program caught on — 72 youth, ages 7 to 16, are served each year — and the effects rippled through the community. People lined up along the fences to watch the Saturday games. They brought barbecue grills and coolers of Gatorade to feed the players. They wanted to know what they could do to help the program, Mr. Sheinin reported. “We’ve had people just pull up on the roadside: ‘Hey!’ And they’ll just toss over a bag full of gloves. Or, ‘I got some pants here! I got some old cleats!’,” said one Ward 7 Baseball coach. Mr. Medina hopes to extend the program, and the public offers of help that have followed publicity about his good works should spur that effort. But the beauty of what Mr. Medina has accomplished — the lesson to be learned from his example — lies in his promise that “even if 10 years from now we’re still on a nothing budget, we’ll still be here, as long as we can keep paying it forward.” **Read more from PostOpinions:** The Post’s View: A promise of change Dana Milbank: Welcome to Camp Competitive Danica Stanciu: Easing the summer camp crunch

After outcry over minor league baseball bill, congresswoman can’t disown it fast enough

Last Friday, the bipartisan team of Reps. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.) and Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) introduced a bill dubbed the "Save America's Pastime Act." Apparently, those who love America's pastime thought it would do nothing of the sort.  The sporting press wasn't nearly so neutral in how it wrote about this piece of legislation. A sampling:  The consensus was simple: The bill would effectively take more money out of the pockets of underpaid minor-leaguers, who don't make nearly the fortunes of those who make it to the Big Show and who often can't survive on playing baseball alone. Bustos has now dropped the bill like a hot potato, tweeting Thursday that she's withdrawing her support for it -- which, again, she introduced with Guthrie less than a week ago.

After ‘Moneyball,’ Tabitha Soren kept shooting. The results are stunning.

Back before a president could phone-drop on Kimmel or tweet his way directly into the headlines, there was really only one person who could help you reach the youthful masses. Her name was Tabitha Soren and she worked for MTV News. And during the 1990s, Soren’s gets included both Clintons, Yasser Arafat and Anita Hill. Then something strange happened. Soren decided she didn’t want to be on TV anymore. She wanted to take pictures. In a way, it made perfect sense. Soren grew up a military kid, relying on her 35-millimeter camera to remember the people and places that made up a childhood. And Soren graduated from New York University with a degree in journalism and politics, not necessarily a prerequisite for an internship on “Headbangers Ball.” Her professional photography career started when she would accompany her husband, Michael Lewis, on assignments and shoot pictures for his stories. In 2003, that meant photographing the members of the Oakland Athletics draft class featured in his book “Moneyball.” Then she kept shooting. “I just thought, here are these people starting something,” she says now. “Wouldn’t it be nice to see what it’s like at the end?” Some made it, including future stars Nick Swisher and Mark Teahen. But most never got close. “Fantasy Life: Baseball and the American Dream,” her first book, arrives in time for Opening Day and documents many of those players. This sampling of Soren’s photos also includes two A’s draftees who aren’t in the book — Steve Stanley and Lloyd Turner. Each ballplayer supplied Soren with an essay, excerpted here. **Mark Teahen** **Major leagues: 9 seasons. Highest annual salary: $4.75 million** Professional baseball is a constant adjustment: to the weather conditions, the opposing pitcher or to your living situation. Jumping from minor league baseball in small towns on a tiny salary to playing on a national stage for big bucks was a shock to my system. Competing against the best players in the world was a large enough difference, but the instant notoriety and public spotlight was a huge change from the minor leagues. Every great play is on ESPN, but it’s also impossible to hide when you are struggling or make an error that costs the team. After being drafted, I completely reworked my college swing to be able to hit higher-caliber pitchers. Less than a year later, I was traded to the Kansas City Royals — which was the first of nine times I would be traded. I was on the Diamondbacks for two months, the Reds for one day and the Rangers for 10 days! I quickly realized tomorrow wasn’t guaranteed, so I battled and tried to get comfortable quickly so that I could perform on the field. The game was the same — but I had new teammates, new personalities and a new organization to impress. The effort to find my niche became as challenging as being a productive player. **Steve Stanley** **Minor league average: .292 in 432 games** I came from a place of deep trust for all people. I never looked at relationships cautiously. That changed when I turned pro. Most of the players that I saw have great success were the ones that understood that they needed to protect themselves. Nick Swisher was a good example. I watched him in the cage in Sacramento, where a coach was giving him feedback. He was taking it in stride. He would try it for the session, and then when it was over he would go right back to doing things his way. He was brilliant at the politics of the game. Mark McLemore came down to Sacramento on a AAA rehab stint and summed it up beautifully. My coaches in AAA truly believed that I needed to pull the ball more and stop trying to go to the opposite field so much. I was in the cage hitting and a coach said, “Those cheap hits to left field won’t work in the show.” I stepped out of the cage and McLemore looked at me and said: “Don’t listen to a word they are saying. That place where you are hitting the ball has $20 million in it.” He was referring to his career earnings for being a opposite-field hitter. ** Lloyd Turner   ** **533 minor league games;   622 in independent league** As a player, I did experience a piece of the American Dream. I also suffered through the reality. Part of the grind wore on me mentally. I truly believed in my ability, and yet, there was another part of the game that was filled with fear of not making it. The Mental Game of baseball is hard, especially in your young 20s. I allowed so many things that I couldn’t control affect me in a negative way. I started searching for who I was as a player. If I wasn’t in the lineup, I became very angry. If I played and didn’t get more than one hit, I worried that I may not play the next day. But you can’t control the lineup, someone else’s promotion, or how a coach views you. These worries kept me from sleeping at night. And that’s a surefire way not to play your best the next game. I should have just stayed ready for the next opportunity and kept doing my normal routine. There was nothing to search for and a lot to endure. Enduring something means you continue to believe in yourself and do what it is that you do best and not CHANGE! **Drew Dickinson** **Total earned over 5½ minor league seasons: $40,000** Since I was 7 years old, all I wanted to be was a professional baseball player. Even as I got older in school and the question of “What do you want to be when you grow up?” was asked, I always replied immediately that I wanted to be a professional baseball player, not caring that people thought I was crazy. Baseball was my life, passion and dream. I had a great high school career, which I turned into a great college career at the University of Illinois, where I was a two-time all-American. In 2002, my dream came true when I was drafted by the A’s in the 28th round. I wasn’t the hardest-throwing pitcher out there, but I could locate and change speeds better than most. When I was released by Oakland in 2006 I of course was devastated, but I had no regrets. Oakland gave me every opportunity to make it to the big leagues. But unfortunately it didn’t happen. I rose quickly through the system to Double-A but seemingly hit the proverbial wall. I quite honestly just didn’t throw hard enough to generate the success I needed to keep moving — and once that happens you usually end up getting released, and that’s what happened to me. I went as far as my abilities would allow, and some would argue further than anyone else would have gone with those same abilities. **Jeremy Brown** **Major league games: 5** Walking away from baseball was one of the toughest decisions that I have ever had to make. I had come to a point where my personal life was more important than continuing baseball. I was going through a divorce and my kids lived in Florida. I wanted to be closer to them and not traveling all the time while they were so young. I love the game and had the time of my life when I was playing. If circumstances had been different, someone would have had to rip the jersey off of my back to stop me from playing. I enjoyed the minor league lifestyle. I enjoyed what we were getting paid to do — even if it was a bit like “Groundhog Day.” You play. You come home. You work out and then play again. I moved back near my home town of Hueytown, Ala., and worked as a coal miner with my dad on the night shift. But now I’ve completed my college degree and I’m about to get my teacher’s certificate. I’m a regular guy from Alabama now, but I was a regular guy from Alabama when I was playing, too. I continue to work with lots of aspiring baseball players through our Dixie Youth program. One day soon, I hope to open an indoor baseball facility for the kids and coach full time. I have a knack for it. **Ben Fritz** **Minor league pitching record:** **   34-41** Even before I was drafted in the first round by the A’s, there were many opportunities to play the “what if” game. It all started in college. I played hurt, by choice, on several occasions. What if I hadn’t done that? My sophomore year I would catch eight innings and pitch the ninth on a few occasions. My junior year I would pitch Friday, play first Saturday, catch Sunday and the midweek game. What if I hadn’t done that? Many of my outings I threw 120-plus pitches. Looking back it sounds crazy, but maybe that’s because that’s what everyone tells me. Professionally there are many “what ifs” as well. I made several mechanical tweaks throughout my career, the bulk of them after my elbow blew out. I lost roughly 4 mph. Was it because of the surgery/rehab or the mechanical changes? I pitched through some arm issues that I didn’t want to say anything about. I personally think everything happens for a reason and try not to play the “what if” game. I wouldn’t change a thing I did. I loved every minute of it. I absolutely wish I got the opportunity to pitch in the big leagues, but “what if” this was supposed to be my path?

Poverty really is the result of a state of mind — among rich people

But Carson’s error runs deeper. Implicit in his understanding of poverty — which many share — is that people are poor because they aren’t working and they made bad choices and decisions that landed them in poverty and keep them there. It might surprise Carson to learn that many poor people agree with him. Helen, a white woman in her 40s, is an example. When I interviewed her, she lived in a dilapidated house in Philadelphia, with no running water. She did maintenance work sporadically at one of the city’s stadiums; her husband’s work in construction was also inconsistent and low-paying. She was looking for a better job and wishing for longer hours and higher pay, but she nonetheless told me that poor people are lazy and don’t want to work.     Poverty is not a state of mind; it’s an economic reality. Helen had been trying to get out of poverty for years, but her faith in her own efforts had not made that possible. She had the mind-set the HUD secretary thinks she should, and she believed that it would get her out of poverty. But poor people cannot escape poverty by simply having the right attitude, even though many of them think they can — an attitude that does more to encourage them to blame themselves when things go wrong than it does to help them rise out of poverty.  It’s time we realize that people aren’t poor because they don’t work. Too many people work awfully hard to still live in poverty. Carson should be looking out for people like Helen, not stigmatizing them.

Tim Tebow the baseball player is no gimmick. The 29-year-old former NFL quarterback’s aspirations to become a major league player are legitimate, and on Monday, they received a boost. The New York Mets announced that it is sending No. 15 to play against some of the best prospects in baseball in the Arizona Fall League. Each major league team sends six prospects to play fall ball and 18o players are divided among six teams. Tebow will play for the Scottsdale Scorpions.  The dry climate in the desert helps baseballs carry, so the AFL is considered a hitter-friendly league. That should be good news for Tebow.  The Scorpions are also an affiliate club for the Angels, Giants, Phillies and Yankees. The team’s alumni include Bryce Harper, Mike Trout and basketball Hall of Famer Michael Jordan. No matter his production on the diamond, Jordan had basketball to fall back on. Tebow has no such luxury, and his performance in Scottsdale will go a long way in determining where on the minor league pecking order the Mets send him next spring.

D.C.’s boys of summer

Regarding Mamie “Peanut” Johnson’s efforts to interest African American youths in baseball [“ ‘Peanut’ pitches again,” Metro, April 30]: Unfortunately the barriers are stiff, indeed. Last summer when I was practicing with a D.C. government softball team at a Shaw neighborhood playground, I witnessed the unrequited hunger of two boys who wandered over from the adjacent, crowded basketball court. They begged our coach to let them play but were rebuffed, and two possible future stars were left with no option other than to further hone their basketball skills. Peanut, Washington Nationals, these boys exist. Go get them! ****John M. Howard** , Washington**

Nationals to renew agreement with Class AAA affiliate Syracuse

The Nationals have used three different Class AAA affiliates in their brief history, but in Syracuse they have found a more permanent home for the top rung of their minor league system. The Nationals and Chiefs will announce a renewal of their partnership with a four-year agreement, according to multiple people familiar with the situation. The Chiefs have called a press conference for Wednesday, which General Manager Mike Rizzo will attend with other members of the Nationals’ front office. The Nationals spent their first two seasons in Washington using New Orleans as the home for their Class AAA affiliate. They moved to Columbus for another two years, then switched to Syracuse five years ago. The chilly weather presents issues, particularly for pitchers’ arms, and there are closer locations. But in Syracuse the Nationals have found an affiliate they want to grow with. Syracuse is just a six-hour drive from Washington, and the ~~Eastern~~ International League cities are close enough that players can join the Nationals’ in Washington on short notice. If the Nationals tried to find a new affiliate, they could be stuck with an undesirable, far-flung city. Teams and Class AAA affiliates match up in the fashion of musical chairs, and some organizations are left with choices they loathe – the Mets, for example, use Las Vegas against their wishes.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The Nationals’ rookie ball affiliate, Auburn, is right down the road from Syracuse, which adds convenience for team officials and scouts who want to see both teams.

A tale of two ball clubs

_Steven V. Roberts teaches journalism and politics at George Washington University._ By David E. Hubler and Joshua H. Drazen Rowman & Littlefield.   299 pp. $65 An Episcopal priest once told me this story. Since the National Cathedral sits on the highest point in Washington, it got the best radio reception. On summer nights, baseball fans would park in the church’s lot and follow the broadcasts of their hometown teams, the Cubs and the Cards, the Tigers and the Reds. Not the Senators. There are lots of baseball fans in this city, but many of us who grew up elsewhere retain our childhood loyalties. The Nats are breeding a new generation of homegrown supporters, but they still face a problem. A few years ago the local team promoted a “take back the park” campaign to prevent the Phillies faithful from overrunning its stadium. In their new book, David E. Hubler and Joshua H. Drazen chronicle the history of baseball in the capital during World War II and follow two teams: the Senators of the American League and the Homestead Grays of the Negro League, which shared old Griffith Stadium on Georgia Avenue. The Grays were the superior squad, winning a string of championships, while the Senators generally languished in the second division. But Clark Griffith, the Senators’ owner, was a stalwart opponent of integrating baseball who signed a one-legged pitcher, a New York garbage man and a raft of Cuban imports before the team employed its first African American — in 1957, 10 years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers. I did learn a few things from this book. Franklin Roosevelt, for example, was a great baseball fan who managed the team at Groton School and helped raise the American flag at Griffith Stadium on opening day in 1917. But those small nuggets don’t make up for some large flaws. There’s no real theme here. The subtitle says the wartime years in Washington “changed the game forever,” but that’s clearly not true, since the most important change, integration, came in spite of the Senators, not because of them. Yes, the war encouraged night baseball, so that defense workers who were occupied all day could attend games. But who were those workers? What role did baseball fill in their lives? No answers here. Connecting baseball to the war often leads to jarring juxtapositions. The Senators lost five straight games in July 1943, the authors write, “a fall from grace that coincided with another and far more noteworthy tumble — Benito Mussolini’s fall from power in Rome and subsequent arrest.” Yeah, that Benito, he could never hit a curveball. If you’re interested in baseball and race, pick up Neil Lanctot’s excellent biography of Roy Campanella, the third African American to join the Dodgers; or Paul Dickson’s insightful study of Bill Veeck, a pioneering club owner who signed Larry Doby, the first black player in the American League. Those are pennant-winning books. This one, like the Senators, is a cellar-dweller.

How are baseball players — especially Hispanics — taking Trump’s election?

The Nov. 11 Sports article “NBA, NFL struggling on Trump” was spot on, except that there was a glaring omission: Major League Baseball. Although MLB does not have a high percentage of African American players, it has a very significant percentage of Hispanic players, and we all are aware of how President-elect Donald Trump has disparaged Hispanics (especially Mexicans) and his intention to deport many millions of them. MLB and Hispanics really should have been bigger parts of this article. ****Val Kehl** , Manassas**

Microcredit doesn’t end poverty, despite all the hype

The idea has a wonderfully simple and powerful appeal: Give a tiny loan to a poor person in a poor nation. Watch her start a small business — whether hawking tomatoes or fattening goats — that puts her and her family on the first rung of a ladder that will elevate them out of poverty and into the middle class. Repeat across the planet. Few proposals for economic development have been so durable and so celebrated as microcredit — the provision of business loans as small as $100 to the poor. Its appeal has spanned the political spectrum, drawing in the left with its subversive promise to empower women in sexist societies and enticing the right with its emphasis on entrepreneurship and individual responsibility. The World Bank and other lending agencies have bought into it, as have foundations and countless individual donors. In 2006, microcredit became the only economic development idea to win a Nobel Peace Prize, when the laurel went to Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank, the financial institution for the poor that he founded in Bangladesh. There has been enough time and evidence now to explore the full impact of microcredit in depth, and, set against its vaunted reputation, my verdict is dour: Microcredit rarely transforms lives. Some people do better after getting a small business loan, while some do worse — but very few climb into the middle class. It’s a constructive endeavor, but it has been vastly overhyped. And the hype has undermined the good that the movement can achieve. One reason microcredit has soared so high in public esteem is the power of the stories its promoters tell. In his memoir, Yunus tells of Murshida, a Bangladeshi woman whose husband regularly beat her. One day after he sold the roof of their hut to pay gambling debts, a storm soaked Murshida and her three children. When her husband came home, Murshida confronted him. He divorced her on the spot and threw her and the children out of the house. Murshida moved in with her brother and in time took her first microloan — $30 to buy a goat and sell the milk. With larger credits, she started a business sewing and selling scarves. Eventually she employed 25 women. Such anecdotes are powerful. But that does not make them representative. Poor people who take loans use them in different ways and with different outcomes. By luck or by pluck, some do well, and it is their stories, of course, that microcredit promoters have most often recounted. To be fair, microcredit has had more than selective storytelling on its side. Dozens of academic studies in the 1980s and 1990s seemed to validate the anecdotal evidence. Researchers typically surveyed hundreds of families and looked for patterns in the data. Perhaps families that had used microcredit also reported higher earnings, for example. The premier analysis was funded by the World Bank and appeared in the prestigious Journal of Political Economy in 1998; through complex statistical methods, it found that microcredit cut poverty in Bangladesh, especially when women received the loans. One of the researchers later estimated that 5 percent of Grameen Bank borrowers climbed out of poverty each year. But most such studies had a significant problem: If some households with higher borrowing also display higher earnings, can we really know which is causing which? Does credit make households less poor, or does being less poor make them more apt to borrow money in the first place? In recent years, a new generation of development economists has addressed this problem by experimenting with microcredit programs, randomly offering loans to some people and not others. Just as in the best drug trials, this has allowed researchers to measure cause and effect more precisely. If, one year later, those who received loans earned more or enrolled more of their girls in school, what factor other than the loans could explain those happy outcomes? The first randomized studies of microcredit appeared in 2009. MIT economists found that in the slums of the megalopolis of Hyderabad, India, small loans caused more families to start micro-   businesses such as sewing saris. Existing businesses saw higher profits. But over the 12 to 18 months the researchers tracked, the data revealed no change in bottom-line indicators of poverty, such as household spending and whether children were attending school. Perhaps those who made more from their own businesses earned less in wages outside the home. A study in Manila by American economists Dean Karlan and Jonathan Zinman also found no effect on poverty for families one to two years after they received a loan. On the heels of such studies came more bad news. Microcredit bubbles began to reveal themselves as financial bubbles do — by popping, in places such as Nicaragua, Bosnia, Morocco and Pakistan. In Bosnia, for instance, the microloans outstanding shot from $275 million in 2005 to $1 billion in 2008, before slumping to $830 million in 2009 on defaults and write-offs. In 2010, amid reports of suicide among overindebted borrowers, the government of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh ambushed the microcredit industry there with a harsh law that all but shut it down. Microlenders must now register with the governments of the districts in which they operate and must seek approval for each loan. This puts much power in the hands of local officials, who in some cases are known for their aptitude in converting such leverage into delays and graft. I believe that Andhra Pradesh overreacted in quashing rather than reforming the industry. But in talking to borrowers there in late 2010, it became clear to me that, even if the state was overreacting, it was doing so in response to a real problem. The proliferation of fast-   growing microlenders had made it easy for poor men and women to get in over their heads in hundreds of dollars of debt. Not all were wise enough to avoid the trap. These bubbles may be the first in history fed more by charity than by greed. Almost all the large-scale financing for microcredit has come from private donors, socially minded investors, public aid agencies and, in India, private banks complying with legal quotas for lending to the poor and minorities. Ironically, almost all were motivated by the idea that microcredit was a sure-fire aid to the poor. The zeal for microcredit may have undermined the power of the larger microfinance movement, which involves the creation of financial services, beyond just loans, that are available to the poor. Financial services are like clean water and electricity — they are essential to leading a better life. Imagine if you didn’t have access to bank accounts, insurance or mortgages. Poor people need such services more than anyone, because in developing countries, poverty does not just mean low income, it means volatile income. The poor need to set aside money in times of plenty and draw it out in lean times. Financial services allow you to save for wedding expenses, borrow for funeral costs or insure for health care. The industry should move away from its long-standing focus on credit, and experience shows that it can. Mature microfinance institutions in Indonesia, Bangladesh and Bolivia are doing at least as much deposit-taking as loan-making — good news for the poor, since it is much harder to get in trouble by saving too much than by borrowing too much. In Mexico, Compartamos Banco offers life insurance along with its loans and ranks among the country’s largest life insurers. And in Kenya, the mobile-phone-based money-transfer system M-Pesa now does more transactions then Western Union. But the funding flows into microfinance are, if anything, impeding such initiatives by heavily favoring credit. According to the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, public and private investors — including social investors seeking to do good while doing well — committed a record $3.6 billion to the microfinance industry in 2010, with 86 percentdevoted to financing microloans. One wonders when the next bubble will pop. The best approach is not to pour more money into microlending. It is to put less in — and target it for start-up investments and training that can build durable financial institutions that deliver a variety of services to the poor. This approach would cut the costs of microfinance for donors while increasing the benefits. It might not transform the lives of the poor, but it would improve them. **droodman@cgdev.org ** **David Roodman** is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and the author of “Due Diligence: An Impertinent Inquiry into Microfinance.” Follow him on Twitter: @davidroodman.

Brian Jeroloman, 31 and at Class AA Harrisburg, won’t quit chasing the dream

Brian Jeroloman doesn’t want any pity, but it’s hard not to feel some when he tells his story. Imagine being on a star-studded collegiate Team USA roster in 2005 with players who have become major league mainstays — Max Scherzer, David Price, Matt Wieters, Mark Melancon, Ian Kennedy, Sean Doolittle, Jon Jay and others — and you’re 31 and at Class AA Harrisburg. Imagine being one of the Blue Jays’ top catching prospects, getting the call of a lifetime on Aug. 23, 2011, and never appearing in a major league game over the next five weeks because of a broken hand. Imagine suffering five substantial injuries and still hoping the majors aren’t a fleeting dream while on a six-hour bus ride in the minors. “I won’t put a timetable on it,” Jeroloman said earlier this season, sitting in the dugout. “When I feel like I’m not helping a team, then I’ll take a good hard look at it. That’s the tough part, to be realistic and truthful with yourself to say I’m done. But I think I’m nowhere near done. I still feel like I’ve got a lot of stuff to get better at and smarter at.” Jeroloman believes in perseverance and doesn’t want to be known for his injuries or age, but they are part of his identity now. He is six and a half years older than the average player in the Eastern League. He is in his 11th minor league season, and 2016 is his eight time in the Eastern League. “If there’s an Eastern League Hall of Fame, I’d probably be a first-ballot hall of famer,” he said. When Jeroloman was drafted in the sixth round by the Blue Jays in 2006 as a standout University of Florida catcher, he didn’t envision this. Known more for his strong defense than bat, he was on the fast track to the majors. By his second full minor league season in 2008, he was in Class AAA Syracuse, then a Blue Jays affiliate. He called his girlfriend and future wife, Savannah, and told her he couldn’t wait to see where his life would be in six years.  “I want to see what I can do now,” he said. “I’m not giving up on the major leagues. At all. But I know that if I’d stayed healthy, life would probably be a little different right now.” In late August 2011, the Blue Jays needed a backup catcher. But nine hours before Jeroloman was told of his call-up, he hurt his hand sliding into third base in the seventh inning. He finished the game even though he knew the injury was serious.  Jeroloman said his hand was too swollen to reveal the fracture on the first x-ray. With the Blue Jays, the pain in Jeroloman’s hand got worse during batting practice two days later. Because of the swelling, only an extra large batting glove fit on his right hand. Jeroloman said a trainer noticed his shaking hand and another exam showed the break. With September roster expansion nearing, he was not placed on the disabled list. He wasn’t allowed to talk to reporters about his injury, nor did they know of the situation. He stayed with the big league team until the end of the season and never appeared in a game. “Just bad luck for both of us,” Jeroloman said. “The Blue Jays had high expectations. I had high expectations. I just kept getting injured.” Jeroloman later signed with the Indians as a minor league free agent in 2013, only to be shipped to Pirates and then the Nationals in minor league trades. He has re-signed minor league deals with the Nationals each offseason since. “The reason I love the Nationals and I keep coming back – because there are other opportunities out there – is the people that are in place here treat me like a big-leaguer,” said Jeroloman, who credited Nationals assistant general manager Doug Harris, director of player development Mark Scialabba, minor league catching coordinator Michael Barrett and Harrisburg Manager Matt LeCroy for treating him professionally. Nationals officials and players speak highly of Jeroloman’s attitude. Catching prospect Spencer Kieboom, who has suffered injuries himself, sees Jeroloman as a mentor. Jeroloman knows the bulk of the playing time needs to go to Kieboom, and he is proud to help the young catcher. “I remember that when I was a starter, that you’d feel like the backup was rooting against you sometimes,” Jeroloman said. “I’ve never rooted against guys.” “He’s a guy I really enjoy being around,” Kieboom said. “He’s fun to have on the team. He’s not a goofball but you can sit there and talk to him about his experiences and how to handle things.” LeCroy, a former big league catcher, said he sees coaching potential in Jeroloman but just not yet. Although Jeroloman has played in just 19 games, is hitting .204 and has a career .232 average, he isn’t done. “Sometimes you do whatever you can to keep that uniform on,” LeCroy said. “And him coming here and knowing he’s not going to play as much, he gives us everything he’s got. He’s awesome. That’s why he’s here. We’ve got a young pitching staff here. He’s got a chance to make an impression on them and help them, and a young catcher, too. I always tell him, ‘Don’t think you gotta be a coach but use your experience to help them. But still, you’re playing. You’ve still got a shot to play in the big leagues.’ I’d do whatever I could to get one more at-bat or catch one more inning.”  “The thing fans probably don’t understand is how much of a pain the minor leagues is,” Scherzer said. “How far the travel is, how painstaking the travel is on your body. For somebody at 31 years old and still doing that, I can’t tell you how much respect I have for him that he does love the game. Hopefully somehow some way he does get a shot at the big leagues because when you hear a story like that, a guy who has ridden it out that long, deserves a shot.” Jeroloman remembers when he was 18 and attended a pre-draft workout. A Cardinals scout, who had a player quit two years after he was drafted, asked Jeroloman: “How do I know you’re not going to quit?” Jeroloman’s answer then — he said he wasn’t going to quit until baseball quit on him — rings true today.

Dreams of sports stardom lead disadvantaged students astray

Byron Leftwich left H.D. Woodson High School in 1997, but people there still talk about his nine seasons as a quarterback in the National Football League and the riches and fame that came with them. Like many other U.S. high schools, Woodson’s best athletes still dream of where their talents could take them. They have little chance of becoming a pro if they don’t go to college, so their grades and test scores must reach a certain level. Schools try to give them extra academic help, such as Woodson having math teacher Caleb Stewart Rossiter tutor top athletes in the fall of 2012 for the SAT. On the surface, it seemed like a sensible effort to give disadvantaged students who might win athletic scholarships the kind of test-prep they couldn’t afford. But in Rossiter’s new book about the mistreatment of our most-disruptive and least-productive students, “Ain’t Nobody Be Learnin’ Nothin’: The Fraud and the Fix for High-Poverty Schools,” he portrays after- school tutoring sessions as a well-intended gesture to help kids that instead leads them astray. Rossiter describes a session with a former college hurdler whom he invited to explain how the athletes could improve their odds for an athletic scholarship. “All the 40 students in the room and the 40 more who had skipped the session had devoted untold hours to their sport with the vague sense” — fueled by the legend of Byron Leftwich — “of using it to build their adult lives,” Rossiter writes. “Only about 10 of these 80 would be offered an initial full ride to college. “The irony is that many of these lottery winners would have had a great chance of a full scholarship, and a four-year one at that, if they had gone the purely academic route and taken one of the scholarships that have proliferated for the young, black, and not even gifted but at least perseverant. Many of the lottery losers would have been academic winners as well, if they had put their untold hours into that arena instead of sports.” Rossiter taught at Woodson from 2010 to 2012. He says he tried his best with the athletes but that most of them did not take his tutoring anymore seriously than they did his math classes. Some coaches enabled the worst teenage habits of sloth and procrastination by trying to wheedle last-minute reprieves from teachers when terrible grades threatened students’ sports eligibility. “As every grading period winds down, the coaches appear at the classroom doors, with their players in tow, and ask teachers to ‘work with’ the students and accept ‘extra credit’ work to boost their grades,” Rossiter writes. “If teachers don’t cooperate, some coaches encourage guardians to explore special education designation.” D.C. Public Schools officials did not respond to requests for comment on Rossiter’s observations. It was interesting to me, and one of the rare bright spots in Rossiter’s book, that coach Henry Anglin made sure his champion girls’ basketball team members came to every one of the SAT tutoring sessions that fall. He apparently figured his teams would play better and be more likely to remain eligible for sports if they applied basketball-court discipline to their studies. Even the athletes who received college scholarships often lost them, Rossiter reports, as they discovered that they still had to meet academic standards in college that were beyond their level. There are arguments in Rossiter’s book that I don’t accept, but many of his observations from inside D.C. schools are painfully vivid and match what I already know. Despite the efforts of energetic teachers and administrators, standards in urban districts, such as in Washington, remain low. Many students have little incentive to work hard because it is still relatively easy to slide through. My column last week on what Rossiter found about grade inflation inspired a flood of comments and e-mails saying such malpractice was happening nearly everywhere in the country. But what do we do about it? Next week, I will discuss Rossiter’s solution. It doesn’t seem practical to me, but it represents the toughness I sense many Americans think is overdue.

Young, black and ridiculously good: Hunter Greene may be just what MLB needs

He has yet to sign a contract, yet to take his first steps as a professional and yet to experience the toll of the unique brand of intense fan and media scrutiny that is likely to meet his first extended slump, but already this much is clear about Hunter Greene: He may be the most intriguing, most important baseball prospect to arrive in years, if not ever. Greene, the 17-year-old Los Angeles prep superstar taken by the Cincinnati Reds with the second overall pick of this week’s amateur draft, possesses the sort of electrifying ability one might expect of someone so young taken so high in the draft.  Like Harper, Greene has the requisite combination of generational talent, preternatural charisma and indefinable star power to become an iconic player of his era. Both have compelling family backstories: Harper’s father, Ron, was a Las Vegas steelworker who helped build some of the city’s iconic casinos; Greene’s father, Russell, is a renowned private investigator whose clients include Justin Bieber, Kanye West and the Kardashians. But there are elements of Greene’s overall package that even Harper can’t match. Most significantly, Greene is African American, and comes along at a time when the sport’s effort to retain a foothold in the black community has reached a crossroads: Despite a massive expenditure in money and manpower on the part of Major League Baseball, fewer than eight percent of big leaguers are African American, down from a peak of around 20 percent in the 1980s. (Royce Lewis, the Orange County prep shortstop taken with the first overall pick by the Minnesota Twins, also has an African American father.) As a Little Leaguer, Greene attended MLB’s Urban Youth Academy in Compton, Calif. — one of the initiatives the sport has introduced in recent years in an attempt to grow the game in African American communities. When he was 13, he won an essay-writing contest, the prize for which was an audience with Jackie Robinson’s daughter, Sharon. He clearly understands and embraces the responsibility that comes with having his stature and platform. “This is huge for our game,” Commissioner Rob Manfred, who announced each pick from the MLB Network studios in Secaucus, N.J., told reporters. “We hope these programs will continue to produce players like Hunter.” But Greene has a chance to be a baseball trailblazer in another way that has nothing to do with race. As a legitimate two-way prospect — a right-handed pitcher whose fastball has been clocked at 102 mph and a slugging shortstop with elite power — he is in position, under the right development plan, to blow away the baseball norms that hold that top prospects and impact big-leaguers are either pitchers or hitters, but never (or at least not since the days of Babe Ruth) both. (In this endeavor, he could be beaten to the history books. Louisville left-hander/first baseman Brendan McKay, another two-way star, is closer to being big-league-ready; he was taken fourth overall by Tampa Bay. Or perhaps by Shohei Otani, a legitimate two-way superstar known as “the Babe Ruth of Japan,” who is considering playing in America in the next two years.) When he was asked by reporters Monday night, following his selection by the Reds, whether he considers himself first and foremost a pitcher or a shortstop, Greene replied, “All of the above.” “On the mound, I consider myself a monster,” Greene told reporters, describing his different approaches to pitching and hitting. “I pound the zone. I get ahead. I stare guys in the eyes. I just like the whole competitive edge. At shortstop, showing my range and having smooth hands and footwork and firing across the diamond. Then hitting, just having good pitch selection and crushing balls, that’s me. … “I still love doing both, and I think the ballclub is excited for getting two players for one. So I think they’re pretty pumped for that.” That may not be exactly true. While the Reds have said they will have an open mind to allowing Greene to continue pursuing his hitting career, they made it clear they drafted him as a pitcher. “Playing at the highest level is very difficult,” Reds General Manager Dick Williams told reporters following the selection of Greene, “and I wouldn’t want someone to focus on both to the detriment of one. We think Hunter’s got a great chance to be a major leaguer as a pitcher. We think the potential is there as a position player. I think at first we will focus on pitching, [but also] allow him to take at-bats. We’ll keep the door open to playing in the field. This is a very unique situation, something we’ve never been confronted with before.” Greene hasn’t pitched since April, so assuming he signs quickly — with a bonus expected to be in the high seven figures — and is able to begin his professional career in a developmental league this summer, he will be brought along slowly. And even if his development as a pitcher goes perfectly, it is likely to be years before we see Greene in the major leagues. Only five pitchers this century, most recently the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Jose Urias last season, have appeared in a big league game as a teenager. But if and when he arrives, on a pitcher’s mound or in a batter’s box — or perhaps in both — Greene is likely to have an immediate impact on the sport, one that will rise in direct proportion to how well he performs on the field. Already, before his pro career has even begun, it is safe to say baseball has never seen a prospect like him.

ESPN’s tweet about rundown neighborhood outside Cuba’s stadium backfires

The Cuban national baseball team and the Tampa Bay Rays played a historic game Tuesday in Havana, with President Obama and his family looking on, along with the widow of Jackie Robinson. It was a great scene for Cuban-American relations and showcased the role that sports can play in mending old diplomatic rifts. But early Tuesday afternoon, ESPN’s “SportsCenter” Twitter account drew fire for sharing a photo of the downtrodden area outside Estadio Latinoamericano. It isn’t clear exactly what ESPN was thinking. Perhaps the idea was nothing more than an attempt to illustrate that Cuba has not yet progressed economically. Whatever the purpose, Twitter users took issue with the message and quickly shared images of what they said were economically depressed areas just outside a few stadiums in the United States. H/T Gizmodo    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

The Nationals leave politics aside despite their proximity to power

The Washington Nationals spent the last six weeks a few miles from Mar-a-Lago, where they were temporary neighbors of President Trump when he visited his Palm Beach golf resort. They will spend the next six months playing games a few miles from the White House, a long flyball or two from the Capitol, representing the city often engulfed in political fervor, consumed by it now. Politics have not come up much in the players’ public dealings this spring. None of the Nationals brought them up. Frankly, no one really asked. Non-baseball things like movies and music and television come up in interviews and clubhouse banter all the time. Non-baseball things like politics, race and religion do not. These Nationals will spend their summer at the crossroads of controversy, in a sport where reticence is the unspoken rule. Nationals General Manager Mike Rizzo said he issued no new directives after the 2016 election than he has in the past. He said Nationals players went through the same media training sessions as they always have, heard about the same pitfalls they always do, and got the same advice about handling social media — namely, to proceed with caution. That, Rizzo said, does not mean he thinks his players should stay silent. “I’m all about players speaking out when they feel like speaking out. They’re grown men,” Rizzo said. “You’ve seen it when people on our roster have said negative things toward me and my decisions. I salute their right to express their opinion.” But cultural diversity is as much a part of the United States as the right to free speech, and diversity hangs a tightrope across Major League Baseball clubhouses. Spanish-speaking players raised in Latin America share vast swaths of time and small amounts of space with born-and-bred Americans. Players with less than a high school education share space with college graduates. Baptists, Catholics, and everything in between share intense and emotional experiences. The more diverse an audience, the greater the risk someone will take offense. “I think you have guys in baseball that talk about, but it’s definitely more NFL and NBA that seem more talkative,” Ryan Zimmerman said. “It’s a different demographic.” The NFL and NBA have age and education requirements for their players, and foreign-born players are less prevalent than they are in baseball, making them (by and large) less culturally and linguistically diverse than MLB. Though NFL and NBA rosters are far from homogenous, and exceptions certainly exist, the social differences in those locker rooms are far less gaping. But most Nationals did not cite concern for teammates as the main deterrent to making political or social beliefs public. External pressure, it seems, inspires most to stay muzzled. “Those are very sensitive areas, but somebody has to speak out about them, and athletes do have a tremendous impact. I don’t put a muzzle on these guys,” Nationals Manager Dusty Baker said. “You say what you want to say. The only thing is, if you say what you want to say, then you gotta deal with the repercussions that could affect you for a long time.” For example: In 2015, then-Met Daniel Murphy was asked how he would react to having a gay teammate. Murphy said he would accept that teammate, but that he “disagrees with the lifestyle.” New York and national media pummeled Murphy, who was asked about those comments when he arrived in D.C. Asked recently not about those comments but about speaking out in general, Murphy replied that he was excited for the season to get started, and politely ended the interview. Murphy still brings up his faith occasionally, as many of his teammates do, but is far more outspoken about pitch selection these days. Adam Eaton said he stays away from Twitter because he has “gotten crushed” for sharing his opinions before. “For me, it’s not worth it to speak your mind as an athlete because you do get burned,” Eaton said. “Even if 95 percent of the country agrees with you, there’s that five percent that doesn’t. And if a media personality picks it up and disagrees with you, you’re in trouble.” Even though he feels informed enough on many issues to speak out, Max Scherzer worries the current environment is not a good one in which to share his thoughts. “Everything’s just so charged. Everybody, on either side, is pulling their hair out,” Scherzer said. “If players and athletes want to speak out, that’s great. If guys don’t, that’s understandable. You don’t want to trip over your lip and say something. Things can get taken out of context real quick right now.” Bryce Harper’s grandmother once told him “nobody should know who you vote for and how much you make.” Harper has little control over the latter these days, but took the former to heart. “Those outside issues, I don’t bring them to the clubhouse,” Harper said. “Of course as a family and stuff we talk about it, but as an organization and as a whole, we don’t bring it in.” Ryan Zimmerman, more than a decade into his D.C. tenure, said he prefers not to share his political beliefs because he got his platform through baseball, not politics. “Both ways, people are very quick to judge. Whether it’s Trump or Obama, it’s a pretty volatile climate we’re in,” Zimmerman said. “I think we all have our beliefs. It just feels like a lose, lose.” Earlier this week, President Trump declined the Nationals’ invitation to throw out the first pitch on Opening Day. On Twitter, Facebook and similar media, a multifaceted uproar ensued. Thursday, a few days after the hoopla subsided, Trea Turner tweeted at the president, wondering what his windup might look like, with the hashtag “MaybeNextYear.” President Trump did not respond, though plenty of others did, and the response made Turner smile. “For me, I think people take life too seriously in general,” Turner said. “It doesn’t matter what your beliefs are, it just matters how you treat others, how you treat teammates, how you treat family. That’s all that matters to me.”

Bud Selig’s winning legacy

The business of baseball and the nation’s business used to be conducted in Washington with similar skill. The Washington Senators were run by Clark Griffith, who said: “Fans like home runs, and we have assembled a pitching staff to please our fans.” Today, however, Washington’s team is a model of best practices. The government? Less so. The nation had what historians have called a “critical period,” and so has the national pastime. The nation’s was in the 1780s, after the Revolution but before the Constitutional Convention, when the 13 states were linked, barely, by the Articles of Confederation, which George Washington called “a rope of sand.” The federal government was too weak to collect adequate revenue or to assure the free flow of interstate commerce, and disparities between bigger states — Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York — and the rest produced a weak sense of common national endeavor. The solution was James Madison, not the flashiest of the Founders but the one who, at this moment, mattered most. By subtle increments that were cumulatively momentous, he guided the Constitutional Convention in putting America on a path from “the United States _are_ ” to “the United States _is_ .” Now, as baseball’s Madison, Commissioner Bud Selig, retires, consider how he steered baseball through its worst crisis. Twenty years ago, baseball was in a trough more dangerous than the one into which it tumbled during the Black Sox scandal, when some White Sox players colluded with gamblers to lose the 1919 World Series. Baseball’s solution was a prodigy who had come to baseball from a Baltimore orphanage — George Herman Ruth. In January 1995, baseball was prostrate. What began Aug. 12, 1994, lasted until April 2, 1995. The 232-day strike and lockout — the eighth work stoppage in Major League Baseball history and the third in-season stoppage in 22 years — canceled the remainder of the 1994 season and the World Series. When Selig became acting commissioner in 1992, baseball still had an economic model that antedated television, radio, flight and the internal combustion engine. Most revenue was generated locally, and little was shared. As local broadcast revenue grew, so did revenue disparities and competitive imbalances between the large- and small-market teams. Selig engineered a new equipoise that would encourage the teams’ competitive strivings while enhancing the essence of a sports league — competitive balance, wherein every well-run team has a regularly recurring, reasonable hope of playing in October. Since 1992, baseball has created four new teams, opened 21 new ballparks, adopted interleague play, instant replay and drug testing, expanded the postseason with two wild cards in each league, gone 20 years without labor troubles interrupting play and has vastly expanded revenue-sharing and has implemented a “competitive balance tax” on team payrolls above a certain threshold. And on Sept. 1, 2014, in the last season of the Selig era, 17 of the 30 teams were within 5½ games of a playoff spot. The average attendance at MLB games last year was 30,437, compared with 13,466 in 1955, in baseball’s supposed golden age. Last year’s worst per-game attendance (the Tampa Bay Rays’ 17,857) was better than that of the 1955 World Series-winning Dodgers (13,423). Selig’s leadership has resembled Dwight Eisenhower’s. He conducted what one scholar called a “hidden-hand presidency.” Eisenhower got his way most of the time, but it was unclear how. After years of danger — the Depression, World War II, the Cold War with a hot episode in Korea — Eisenhower administered eight years of peace and prosperity. Voters gave him vast affection; the intelligentsia, which usually is the last to understand things, gave him condescension. Although Eisenhower often was syntactically challenged, sometimes his grammatical fender-benders were guileful. When a worried aide anticipated possible news conference questions about a delicate problem, Eisenhower placidly promised, “I’ll confuse them.” Selig has sometimes resembled Alan Greenspan, who supposedly once said, “If I’ve made myself too clear, you must have misunderstood me.” It is easier to make an unassisted triple play than to diagram some Selig sentences, but opacity has had its uses when managing the clashing egos and interests of the hyper-competitive people of the 30 teams’ ownership groups. Baseball has a spring in its step as spring approaches, thanks to one of the four most important people in baseball’s history: Alexander Joy Cartwright (the genius who in the 1840s placed the bases 90 feet apart), Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson and a fan from Milwaukee. Which is what Selig has been, first and always. * * * **NOTE:** In the late 1990s, George F. Will was one of four members of the Commissioner’s Blue Ribbon Panel on Baseball Economics. _Read more fromGeorge F. Will’s archive or follow him on Facebook._ **Read more about this topic:** Dave Sheinin: Bud Selig leaves a complex legacy

Baseball officials to lobby Congress to help MLB avoid paying minor league players minimum wage

Minor league baseball players get paid peanuts — well, most of the time. Save for a freak major league player coming down with a pre-existing contract (ahem, Dan Uggla), those who start in the minor leagues and remain there make less than minimum wage.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico This is the driving factor behind a class-action lawsuit filed in July by minor league players against Major League Baseball, which operates the minor leagues, in U.S. District Court.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico It looks like MLB isn’t going to concede easily, especially when it has the help of Stan Brand, vice president of Minor League Baseball. At a the winter meetings last week Brand said MiLB had plans to lobby Congress with the aim of getting an exemption to the Fair Labor Standards Act, arguing that minor leaguers are seasonal employees and thus not eligible for federal wage protection. “In the coming year, we will be seeking legislation to clarify that professional baseball players are not covered by these federal wage and hour laws,” Brand said (via Baseball America). “Just as we did in the 1990s to save the antitrust exemption, we will need your help to explain to our legislators the importance of this issue to the future of minor league baseball and their communities’ investments in stadia and infrastructure. I do not want to overstate the threat this suit presents, but I think my honest assessment is that it is equally perilous for our future as the antitrust repeal was in the 1990s.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico NBC Sports reporter Craig Calcaterra was quick to poke a hole in Brand’s argument, however. He writes that the suit would likely not affect the bottom lines of minor league owners who operate stadiums because MLB pays the minor league players. Calcaterra continues:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Minor league players make base salaries of $5,500 per year. This amount covers only the months of the season and not any training — including mandatory spring training — that players generally do to keep fit. They do this, though, because of the dream. If players make it to the majors, they get a 90-fold salary increase. The minimum wage in MLB is $500,000 per year.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico This kind of discrepancy between minor league and big league pay is not uncommon, but it is more extreme than even the D-League and the NBA. The lowest paid D-League player makes $13,000, while the minimum salary in the NBA is $507,336.

W.P. Kinsella, the Canadian author whose book inspired ‘Field of Dreams,’ has died

Canadian author W.P. Kinsella, whose novel “Shoeless Joe” inspired the hit film “Field of Dreams,” has died, according to his agent. He was 81 years old.  He is best known, however, for his novel that inspired the American film “Field of Dreams.” Kinsella began writing “Shoeless Joe” as a student at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in Iowa City near where the story was set. The story, which was published in 1982, follows a farmer who is coaxed in a dream to build a ballpark in a corn field and is visited by the ghost of “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, the White Sox star who was banned from baseball over the 1919 World Series betting scandal. The 1989 film version, starring Kevin Costner and James Earl Jones, made the phrase, “If you build it, he will come,” one of the most famous movie lines ever. The film, by the way, actually did build a ballpark in the tiny town of Dyersville, Ia., which still exists today, a concept that delighted Kinsella.   Kinsella’s biographer, Willie Steele, hinted that the decision to die on his own terms had been in the works for at least the past few weeks. “He essentially told me a couple of weeks ago, ‘You know, I’m not going to be here much longer, so whatever questions you’ve got, let’s get them done,'” Steele said in an interview with CBC Radio One’s On the Coast (via CBC.com). Steele later revealed one of the last correspondences he had with Kinsella, in which he was sent an email. “I’m a storyteller, in that my greatest satisfaction comes from making people laugh and also leaving them with a tear in the corner of their eye,” Kinsella wrote, according to Steele. “I think he’s done that for a lot of people,” Steele added. Kinsella has one last book, “Russian Dolls,” that will be published posthumously, according to his agent.

Unrealistic expectations regarding prospects may be diminishing

Baseball may look back on 2014 as the year the prospect bubble expanded to its bursting point. It took years to reach this point. Teams commodified the future, selling promise when they couldn’t sell success. Fans, many of them driven by fantasy leagues, delved deeper into farm systems, digging for information and future stars. Annual prospect rankings exploded in number, grew in popularity and sprouted midseason and post-draft updates. The Next Big Thing became the only thing. To a point, the cycle happened for good reason. Baseball’s salary structure makes young talent the cheapest and easiest to control. Prospects add excitement to a tradition-steeped sport with a marathon season. They’re evolving lottery tickets. Teams once swapped high-ceiling minor leaguers for established veterans with disregard. As recently as 2008, the Orioles rebuilt themselves with one trade, sending Erik Bedard to Seattle for Adam Jones, Chris Tillman and other pieces. What’s happened in the years since, though, is an over-correction and the formation of unrealistic expectations. In June, Sports Illustrated used its cover to label the Houston Astros, who have gone 216-398 since the start of 2011, as “Your 2017 World Series Champs.” Prospect rankings had become a way not just to gauge progress, but to define success. Teams have started swinging the pendulum back closer to reality. In the offseason before the 2013 season, the Royals were savaged for trading prospects Wil Myers and Jake Odorizzi to the Rays for James Shields and Wade Davis, a right-hander who swung between the Rays’ rotation and bullpen. It was framed as a smart organization robbing an old-fashioned one: Six years of future star Myers, plus the upside of Odorizzi, for two seasons of Shields and a spare part. Look now. The Royals flirted with the playoffs last year, and this season they lead the American League Central. Shields is their leader. Davis might be the best reliever in the American League. The Rays went to the playoffs last season as Myers won rookie of the year. Myers has struggled through growing pains and injury this season, and the Rays are in fourth and currently out of the race, even as Odorizzi establishes himself as a solid starter. Below the Rays in the AL East lies another cautionary tale for placing too much faith in prospects. After winning the World Series in 2013, the Red Sox plugged rookies Xander Bogaerts and Jackie Bradley into their starting lineup. Bogaerts is hitting .224 with a .627 OPS. When the Red Sox demoted Bradley recently, he was slugging — slugging — .290. At the trade deadline this season, A’s General Manager Billy Beane traded his best prospect, shortstop Addison Russell, to land pitchers Jeff Samardzija and Jason Hammel. At the time, he called the present an undervalued asset. Teams in his estimation had started hoarding prospects too much. Of course, many high-rated prospects work out just as teams hope and analysts predict. Yasiel Puig rescued the Dodgers last season. Where would the Nationals be without Anthony Rendon? But that’s part of the point. No matter where they show up on a prospect list, young players succeed and fail for myriad reasons. Veterans at least provide a track record to help predict their future success. Prospects can be scouted and tracked, but at the end of the day, they offer little more than hope. That hope remains an extremely valuable commodity, as it should. But after this season, the hype and expectation attached to prospects may dial back a bit.

Will a Nats playoff run get black kids excited about baseball? Old-timers hope so.

In late September, the ball settled into Denard Span’s glove for one of the last outs of the Washington Nationals’ triumphant regular season, and Rafael Scott — one of the few African American fans in Section 311 — looked down at his young seatmate. Quiz time: What just happened? “He’s out, Grandpa,” declared D’Angelo Scott, 9. “The center fielder caught the ball.” “You’re learning, D, you’re learning,” said Scott, 64, satisfied that he was an inning closer to fulfilling an increasingly tough generational duty: passing on the love of baseball he’d learned from his own father and grandfather. That wasn’t so hard in the days when African American communities buzzed with the box scores of the Washington Senators and the Homestead Grays, back when kids in dusty lots mimicked the basket catches of Willie Mays and the base-running banditry of Jackie Robinson. Back before baseball all but vanished from the playgrounds, televisions and back-fence chatter of black neighborhoods. Now, old-timers such as Scott hope a dose of pennant fever will give them another crowbar to loosen the iron grip of the NFL and the NBA on young attention spans. Surely, with Span, one of the few African Americans on the Nats’ roster, having a breakout year and the team a favorite to reach the World Series, some little heads will be turned. And yet, lean over and ask a city kid like D’Angelo — even as he basks in the green infield glow — what his favorite sport is, and he’ll answer instantly: “Football!” “It’s a tough sell, for sure,” said Antonio Scott, D’Angelo’s uncle and the general manager of the D.C. Grays, a summer collegiate league team. “They think it’s boring to watch on TV; they don’t see too many players that look like them. Having a winning team helps, but it’s not enough.” Baseball’s decline among African American youth is a long-standing concern of the sport, from top to bottom. And it’s lost favor among adults, too. In a 2011 Post poll of Washington area residents, just 3 percent of African Americans cited baseball as the sport they follow the most, while 74 percent favored football and 13 percent basketball. In the decades since Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color line in 1947, the share of African American major league players has also plunged, from a high of 18.7 percent in 1981 to 8.3 percent in 2014, according to Major League Baseball and the Society for American Baseball Research. In response, the league has issued reports and launched task forces. In March, the Nationals opened a $17.7 million Youth Baseball Academy in Southeast Washington’s Fort Dupont Park with the goal, according to its director, of “creating a culture of baseball east of the Anacostia River.” Span, a 30-year-old center fielder, views inspiring young African Americans as a sacred duty. “I feel like God put me on this platform for a reason, and one reason is to be a role model for black kids,” Span said. Several times a season, Span invites groups of youngsters who are growing up with a single parent, as he did, to come see him take batting practice and stay for a game. Before a recent outing, about a dozen boys and girls from area Little League teams — most of them African American — joined Span in a meeting room outside the clubhouse. These kids were already fans. (“Can I have your hat, Denard?” one young outfielder asked Span, who laughed, signed his brim and handed it over.) But he knows that when he appears in front of most young African Americans, he’s just another grown-up. “A guy coming off the bench in the NBA,” he said, “they’ll probably recognize him over an everyday baseball player like me.” Washington’s fan-in-chief remembers when it wasn’t so. Mayor Vincent C. Gray, 71, started playing ball at age 8 in a D.C. where every recreation center had a team and pro players came to give clinics for kids who were hardball-crazy. Gray wore the number 8 from second grade through college in honor of Senators first baseman Mickey Vernon. “Baseball was huge,” said Gray, who still plays softball weekly. He supported the return of major-league baseball to the city and the publicly funded $690 million Nationals Park, in part because it would serve to reintroduce the sport to communities that once embraced it. “We lost touch with our adult role models,” said Gray. He’s ordered the city’s Wilson Building bathed in red light to mark the playoff series and thinks the deeper the Nats go, the more young African Americans will follow. Even those who bleed Redskins burgundy. “Winning matters, and right now the winning team is the Nationals,” Gray said. “Our football team obviously has a ways to go.” Robert Powell, who owns a janitorial supply company in Southeast, agrees. An avid Senators fan growing up, he began taking his grandson, Colby, to Nats games six years ago. Game by game, he teased out the subtleties for him, when to bunt, where to throw with runners on first and third and one out. Colby, now 12, is smitten. He’s on a Capitol Hill youth team and was riveted not only by the Nats’ march to the postseason, but also by the performance of Jackie Robinson West, an all-black Chicago team, during the Little League World Series in August. “Baseball has become a fixture with this kid,” said Powell, who has e-mailed the mayor’s office in hopes of bagging tickets to a playoff game for Colby and his teammates. “They will come, they will come. Because black folks love winners.” The most visible sign of baseball’s effort to win over local kids is the gleaming modernist building surrounded by state-of-the-art ball fields just off Minnesota Avenue in Southeast. The Nationals Youth Baseball Academy was part of the city’s original deal to lure the former Montreal Expos to town, and critics complained when it took nine years to open with funding from the city and the team’s charitable foundation. Now, in the program’s first year, 108 third-, fourth- and fifth-graders arrive by bus each day after school. (The academy plans to add a grade each of the next three years.) At no cost to their families, the kids pick up a snack in a demonstration kitchen where they also get nutrition lessons, do homework in supervised classrooms and then hit the fields for at least an hour a day. It’s obvious that most of the students have had little previous experience with baseball. One boy said he would like to watch the Nats on TV but doesn’t have cable service at home. Another can name Span, Ian Desmond and Michael Taylor as his favorite players, but he knows of only one bat and one ball among the friends on his block. “Nobody is into baseball where I live,” said Dwayne Dargin, 9, a fourth-grader at Beers Elementary. Tal Alter, the former Haverford College shortstop who runs the academy, said he sees very little ballplaying in the surrounding parts of the city. Kids don’t have the gear, there’s not much green space, and parents don’t want their children out unsupervised. “The truth is there is not a lot going on,” said Alter, 38. “The days of playing stickball in the street are gone.” He hopes to fill the void with a safe place to play, good coaching and a supply of real ball for them to watch. Several high schools play at the facility, along with the Howard University women’s softball team and the D.C. Grays in the summer. Nationals players, including Span and Desmond, are frequent visitors. There are signs that the presence of a winning professional team is starting to penetrate the consciousness of brains already crammed with images of RGIII and LeBron. The District’s recreation department reported a jump in participation for T-ball, machine-pitch baseball and softball this summer. The number of Little League teams in black neighborhoods is up. Akili Cooper is a medical supply salesman who is trying to instill a love of baseball in his 7-year-old son. He thinks baseball is safer, in spite of being a serious football guy; he played for both Louisiana State and Howard universities, and his first cousin is Redskins wide receiver DeSean Jackson. The Nats are helping the cause, he said. “The other day he made a good catch [for his Little League team] and someone called him Denard Span,” Cooper said. “He really liked that. Their success is definitely having an impact.”

In the 2020 college football season, will your favorite team still exist?

_Donald H. Yee is a lawyer and partner with Yee & Dubin Sports, a Los Angeles sports-management firm that represents professional athletes and coaches, including New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton._ You’re a coveted football star in the 2020 high school graduating class. Here are your options: Join a team in a major college football conference, where starting quarterbacks earn up to $100,000 per year. Sign up for the TFL (Tech Football League), where you might play in a rivalry game between the Ellison Oracles and the Cuban Cubans. Play in the NFL-D (National Football League-Development), where you could sign with the minor league Cowboys and suit up in Jerry Jones’s AT&T Stadium. All of these scenarios are imaginable with the recent National Labor Relations Board decision granting Northwestern University football players the right to unionize. Pending the school’s appeal, the NLRB now considers scholarship football players to be employees of their institutions, not student-athletes. The ruling by NLRB regional director Peter Sung Ohr could make him one of the most influential figures in football history. Not only could his decision prompt reforms within the NCAA and spur new football business initiatives from wealthy entrepreneurs, but most important, it could give college-age players more choices as they begin their careers in football. I’ve represented professional football players and coaches for more than 25 years, so I’ve had an up-close view of the college football moneymaking machine, and I’ve heard many sad stories of athletes being betrayed by coaches and universities in the NCAA system. The NLRB decision was inevitable and foreseeable. In 2010, I proposed in these pages that the NCAA’s sham amateur football system should end; it is already professionalized, except that the players don’t share in the profits derived from their labor. The NLRB has taken a step toward affording college football players full participation in the capitalist system, with all its risks and rewards. So what does the 2020 college-age football world look like for that highly decorated high school senior? Well, he won’t be able to go directly from high school to the NFL, even if he’s good enough. The NFL Players Association and the league have agreed, through collective bargaining, that players cannot enter the NFL until they are at least three years removed from their high school graduation date. This arrangement appeases those who are concerned about safety risks for physically immature teens playing with physically mature men, and it ensures good relations between the NFL and the NCAA, its de facto minor league. Neither of these reasons is valid — for example, if a player is physically unprepared for the NFL, personnel evaluators won’t offer him a job — but since the NFL has collectively bargained for this prohibition, the system is immune to antitrust challenges. So the next option for our high school star will be to play major college ball. Currently, there are 120 universities playing NCAA Division I football. If the Northwestern decision is upheld, many schools will drop the sport because they won’t be able to afford it, meaning that fewer jobs will be available at major universities for our young star. Indeed, by 2020, it is possible that only 50 to 60 schools will participate in a system in which they must negotiate working conditions with a union representing football players. (While the current NLRB decision applies only to private universities, it’s an easy legal bridge to cross for union organizers seeking to extend the impact to public schools as well.) The union players will have a collective-bargaining agreement establishing standards for salaries, medical care and insurance coverage. They may benefit from academic reforms, such as the ability to pursue any major, as opposed to being funneled to courses designed to keep them eligible. The union players also may bargain for greater freedom to transfer from school to school. And the playing schedule also may be shorter — say, only 10 regular-season games instead of 11 or 12 — but each game will be a high-quality matchup; no more Ohio State 76, Florida A&M; 0 . Major university coaches may balk at some of these changes, but such reforms will relieve them of a burden they’ve been carrying for far too long — the burden of hypocrisy. They know that their players work hard at jobs that generate tremendous revenue. Once players are paid a value, negotiated at arm’s length, coaches making millions will have some relief for their consciences. Of course, our high school star may have other options beyond university settings. For example, deep-pocketed tech entrepreneurs could disrupt the football business, as they’ve already changed communication and entertainment. Larry Ellison of Oracle — who happens to have enough money to buy the entire NFL — is rumored to be interested in the football business. And Mark Cuban, owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks and a vocal critic of the NCAA and its past lack of a Division I football playoff system, even formed a company to promote playoff games between the best teams. A group of rich and ambitious innovators such as Ellison and Cuban has the ability to create a new league, stocked with talent between the ages of 18 and 20. It can give these players free-market salaries and even offer them educations through partnerships with colleges or vocational schools. A Tech Football League could be televised on any number of cable channels hungry for fresh content (perhaps on Cuban’s own AXS TV) or streamed online. And if the TFL can sign enough high school stars, fans will follow, because fans want to see the best performers. Of course, this may or may not affect fan interest in major college football. Some fans may stop watching Alabama and Texas if they know that the talent is inferior, while others may feel loyal to college traditions. The free market will determine winners and losers, and those college-age players in 2020 will have to learn how to weigh such market risks. If a Tech Football League sounds preposterous, remember that recently deceased Buffalo Bills owner Ralph Wilson once joined with seven other millionaires in 1959 to form what they called the “Foolish Club” — eight men foolish enough to take on the NFL by forming the AFL, the American Football League. Thanks to Wilson and his friends, NFL fans now have the Bills, Titans, Jets, Broncos, Chargers, Raiders, Chiefs and Patriots to cheer (or despise). One final option for our 2020 high school star is playing for pay in a new NFL developmental league. The NFL has tried this before with NFL Europe and the World League of American Football. Those leagues, however, relied on players recently out of college who weren’t talented enough to play in the NFL right away. Fans didn’t support the leagues because they knew that the best talent was in the NFL and because those leagues played in the spring — a non-traditional football season. NFL-D would draw upon the best emerging talent in those first three years out of high school. Imagine if Johnny Manziel had played at age 19 for an NFL-D team instead of Texas A&M.; With the NFL’s marketing muscle and players such as Manziel, fans could be attracted to the new college-age league. NFL-D could also be televised by the NFL Network, already in more than 60 percent of all TV homes in the country. Ohr’s decision in the Northwestern University case could change the lives of the next generation of football stars. Until now, there has essentially been but one path to a professional football career: Work for three years for no pay and no say in the NCAA. Watch coaches, administrators, networks and sponsors make millions while you’re prevented from making anything. Suffer limited transfer abilities, live under the thumb of coaches and administrators who can eliminate your scholarship at will. Have no influence over the medical care you receive. And suffer a final indignity when your labor subsidizes scholarships for athletes in sports generating no revenue. Every previous sports business similar to the NCAA model has died. Major League Baseball players once had no free agency; their contracts could be renewed year after year after year, without negotiation. NBA players once had to wait four years after high school to enter the league, even though their skills demanded otherwise. Oppression can only last so long. The NCAA is about to find this out.

Baseball offers enrichment in Ward 7 and beyond

Dave Sheinin’s interesting article about baseball in Ward 7 is encouraging [“A rebirth in Ward 7,” Sports, June 30]. Baseball can go a long way toward producing kids with wholesome values as well as enriching their lives. Having played for Police Boys’ Club No. 10 70 years ago, I well remember how important the sport can be in the life of a teenager. The Post printed the box scores of our games, and we even played an All-Star game at Griffith Stadium. Those memories are important. I hope that through such baseball programs, many youngsters will get to have similar ones. ****Bob Hudson** , Silver Spring**

Tracy McGrady tries baseball, with help from Roger Clemens

Tracy McGrady is serious about this baseball thing — so serious about pitching that he’s enlisted assistance from Roger Clemens. McGrady, a seven-time NBA all-star who played mostly for the Houston Rockets, is working out with the Sugar Land Skeeters, the team with which Clemens made his brief comeback in the summer of 2012. Like Michael Jordan when he took a hiatus from the Chicago Bulls to try his hand at baseball, McGrady spoke in terms of a “dream.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University “Just having a tryout for a minor league team is more fulfilling than anything I can imagine as far as baseball,” McGrady told ESPN.com Tuesday. “I’m just going to train as hard as I can and pursue my dream. Where this takes me, I don’t know. I’m doing this for the love of the game. I’ve made money. The Atlantic League doesn’t have salaries like the major leagues. So this is a kid who’s trying to fulfill his dream. This isn’t a gimmick. I’ve played baseball. I know the game of baseball. And I’m going after what I’ve always wanted to do.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University McGrady, 34, last played in the NBA in the 2012-13 season. He was the Toronto Raptors’ ninth overall pick out of high school in 1997. He spent three seasons with the Raptors, then four with the Orlando Magic, leading the league in scoring twice. He then spent six years in Houston. A 6-foot-8 righthander, McGrady isn’t going to be an overnight success, although Clemens said he was hitting 90 mph on a radar gun for the Skeeters, have no major league affiliation. “He’s not there yet,” Clemens told the Houston Chronicle. “[He] needs more time and needs to react to live hitters and balls coming back [toward] him.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University But if it’s love … “This is a story of someone who is truly, genuinely playing for the love of the game. I made a lot of money during my NBA career,” McGrady told ESPN. “This is for the sheer love of playing baseball.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

D.C. baseball fans weren’t born yesterday

The major league shenanigans that relocated two profitable (and moderately successful) clubs reflect poorly on Major League Baseball, not the cadre of baseball-mad “cave-dwellers” (as we Washingtonians are affectionately known) . I was born on Capitol Hill during the second Roosevelt administration (FDR, mind you, not Teddy), and I began attending games with my grandfather during the war (that would be World War II). While there were, as yet, no black players, Clark Griffith did let us black folks attend the games of both professional teams that played at his stadium. (It was Washington Redskins owner George Preston Marshall who was the racist, not Mr. Griffith.) Our town is chock-full of the native-born, black and white. A huge number of us have been baseball fans all along. We are not “on the verge” of anything, except perhaps another pennant.

Colbert King: A ‘big-league city’ led by bush-leaguers

Mayor Vincent Gray’s upbeat State of the District address Tuesday night hailed many things: growth in businesses and higher-income residents, fewer homicides, 55 construction cranes dotting the D.C. skyline. Left unmentioned were the poor condition of many D.C. youth and the woeful ethical climate blanketing the District. Instead, Gray trumpeted that we are a “big-league city.” A big-league city even as many of our youth function at a minor-league level? Even as residents endure some politicians whose moral principles are less than second-rate? How can the mayor toss around such a term when only four in 10 D.C. third-graders can read proficiently? That is just one of several depressing statistics in a report released this week by Raise DC, a coalition of civic, philanthropic and community groups Gray created to evaluate city programs. A “big-league city” when only six in 10 students graduate from high school in four years? When approximately 19 percent of District adults lack basic literacy skills? We are a “big-league city” when 10,000 low-income 16- to 24-year-olds are out of work and out of school? What’s going to happen to those third-graders who aren’t passing reading tests? Will they miraculously reach proficiency by 10th grade? Or are they more likely, without a tremendous amount of remedial help, to drop out of school? What, pray tell, are those 10,000 adolescents in our “big-league city” doing when they are not in school or on a job? Here are some of Raise DC’s findings: ●About 11 percent of births in the District are to mothers under the age of 20; ●More than 600 16- to 21-year-olds spent their adolescence in foster care; ●Each year, more than 1,000 youth are committed to the supervision of the juvenile justice system. ●Nearly 30 percent of D.C. children live in poverty, and 1,800 are homeless. Sounds like a “big-league city,” doesn’t it? When the report was released Monday, Gray suggested that the answer is better collaboration among programs that target social ills. Raise DC put it this way: “shape a civic infrastructure that moves away from the District’s habit of isolated efforts toward a smarter and more integrated way of organizing existing funds, initiatives, and resources for children and youth.” Oh, please. What about a “civic infrastructure” focused on building stronger families: fathers living at home and married to mothers of their children; parents who see that their kids get to school on time, ready to learn, and who raise their children to respect others and themselves? Ah, many will say, that’s so antiquated. What’s needed could be gleaned from the mission of Raise DC: “Together, raise DC by connecting resources to provide every young person the opportunity for success from cradle to career.” Resources = public dollars = bureaucracy = paperwork = reports on the shelf = more kids who can’t read, babies having babies and young men off to jail. Which leads us back to what Gray didn’t say in his State of the District speech. An ingredient is missing from efforts to tackle our social ills, and it’s not money. It is moral authority. What is the normative behavior of our city’s leaders? What do they consider wrong or inappropriate? Let’s roll the tape. A minor mayoral candidate in 2010, Sulaimon Brown, charged that he was paid by Gray’s campaign to stay in the race to harass the incumbent, Adrian Fenty. First there were heated denials from Gray’s campaign, then Gray himself. Turns out, however, that it’s true. Two Gray campaign aides, Howard Brooks and Thomas Gore, were convicted of felonies. Then came disclosures of a shadow campaign believed by some to have been financed by businessman Jeffrey Thompson, who made much of his fortune from D.C. government contracts. A Thompson associate in the alleged scheme, Jeanne Clarke Harris, a close friend of Gray’s, has pleaded guilty to felony campaign finance violations. Thompson has not been charged, but his home and businesses have been raided. Next we learned from The Post’s Nikita Stewart of another scheme to unlawfully funnel campaign contributions to the Gray election effort. And there’s more to come in the wide-ranging federal investigation. If reports from sources tracking the investigation are true, the flow of unreported cash to some D.C. politicians and the source of that tainted money are likely to blow our minds. And what better evidence of our leaders’ unethical behavior than this week’s finding by the D.C. Board of Ethics and Government Accountability that D.C. Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) violated three provisions of the employee code of conduct? The true state of the District? A city without moral restraints from doing wrong. Gray didn’t mention that, either. _Read more fromColbert King’s archive._ **More on this debate:** The Post’s View: Jim Graham should go Colbert I. King: Wake up, D.C. Council!

Show baseball games early enough for kids to watch

I remember World Series games differently than Philip C. Brown [“The best time for a baseball game,” letters, Nov. 4]. Growing up in New Jersey, where I attended a small parochial school, daytime Series games were quite the thing. The nuns would arrange for someone to bring small (though it seemed huge then) black-and-white televisions into the classrooms, and everyone sat riveted watching the games. Still vivid in my mind is the seventh game of the 1960 World Series. There, in unsurpassed drama, we watched the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the New York Yankees with a home run in the bottom of the ninth inning. There, on the TV screen for all to see, was Yogi Berra leaving the field with his head down while Bill Mazeroski rounded the bases in glee. It is no wonder — as baseball commentators and sociologists alike lament — that Major League Baseball has lost generations of kids through its late-night telecasts of the World Series. ****Ken Kryvoruka** , Falls Church**

With five sons of major leaguers, Nationals take a dip into the gene pool

The comparisons are inevitable, and they start at a young age. Imagine a Little League game, only one kid is two or three years younger. His skill set has him playing with the older kids, and the name on the back of his uniform doesn’t hurt. Strikeout, groundout, pop fly — the outcome of the at-bat almost doesn’t matter. The game made his father famous, so the son faces outsized expectations. “You should be hitting like your dad,” they’d say to a young Tony Gwynn Jr., the only son of the late Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn. “Everyone expects you to be your dad. I mean, exactly like him,” said Gwynn, a 32-year-old minor league outfielder for the Syracuse Chiefs, the Nationals’ Class AAA affiliate. Washington now has five sons of major league players in its system: Gwynn, Cutter Dykstra, Cody Dent, Ryan Ripken and Mariano Rivera III. Six if you count Nationals outfielder Jayson Werth, the stepson of Dennis Werth, who played first base for parts of four seasons with the New York Yankees and Kansas City Royals. “I don’t think it’s anything coincidental. We like to scout the sons of ex-big leaguers, and that’s for obvious reasons I would think,” said Kris Kline, Washington’s vice president of scouting operations. “They’ve been around the game their whole lives, and the track record of those guys playing in the big leagues is pretty good.” Not every son pans out, which Kline, a longtime scout, certainly knows. “I would hope that they just go out and try to be their own person,” he said. “Be who they are, stay within themselves and kind of try to create their own identity.” But the paternal comparisons are inevitable. “You just deal with it,” Gwynn said. Their fathers played a combined 9,226 games over 84 MLB seasons, spreading out 53 all-star appearances and nine World Series titles. Of the five sons in Washington’s minor league system, Gwynn is the only player to have reached the big leagues, playing a total of 685 games over eight seasons with a .238 career batting average. On June 19, 2006, as a member of the Milwaukee Brewers, Gwynn notched his first career hit, 24 years to the day after the first hit of his father’s 20-year career. Even sweeter, both were doubles. It’s a memory Gwynn cherishes. Tony Gwynn Sr., recognized as one of the best hitters of all-time, died last year at 54 from cancer . “Hitting is what separated my dad from the norm,” Gwynn said. His father holds a .338 career average with 3,141 hits. “So I would say that is what separates him and me.” Sometimes comparisons come naturally, like the one-in-a-million chance a father and son would achieve a career milestone on the same day, or against the same organization. Former New York Yankees shortstop Bucky Dent is most famously known for his three-run homer at Fenway Park in the 1978 one-game playoff between AL East rivals Boston and New York. The blow sunk the Red Sox and earned Dent infamy in New England, where he is widely referred to as Bucky “Bleeping” Dent. In 2013, Cody Dent, then playing for the Class A Auburn Doubledays, broke up a perfect game bid with a bloop single in the ninth inning against the Lowell Spinners, an affiliate of the Red Sox, and the game was on the road in Massachusetts. “I got on first base and I remember this guy was in the right field stands. He yelled out, ‘You Dents ruin everything,’ ” recalled Cody, now a utility infielder for the Class A Potomac Nationals. Dykstra’s starkest similarity to his father is what became one of former New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies center fielder Lenny Dykstra’s trademarks in 12 seasons on the field. “Chewing tobacco. That’s about it,” Dykstra recently said with a smile before a game with the Class AA Harrisburg Senators. Sometimes, the ties between father and son are forced. In his professional debut with the Doubledays in June, Rivera III emerged from the bullpen in the seventh inning of an away game against the State College Spikes to the tune of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” — the same entry music that would blare through Yankee Stadium before his dad, Mariano Rivera, MLB’s all-time leader in saves, would take the mound. “It’s not my song, it’s my father’s song,” Rivera told reporters that night. Some thought Rivera III might be a Yankee one day after New York took him in the 29th round of the 2014 draft. But with his sights on a higher selection, he returned to college for one more season before Washington took him in the fourth round last month. Disappointed not to be a Yankee? Not really. A relief? Maybe a little. “The comparisons? It is frustrating,” he said. “But I got a good idea of how to take it, step away from it and become my own person outside of baseball and inside of baseball. I have a good hold on it now, but it took time.” Through high school, college for some and now the trials of the minors, the secret to coping with the pressure can be found in advice they’ve received from their fathers. “Hey, you gotta be yourself,” Bucky Dent said he often tells Cody. The two talk nearly every day, especially after games. For the Dykstras, the dynamic is different in some ways. For the past few years, Cutter, 26 and in his eighth year in the minors, has shied away from talking publicly about his dad, who spent 6  1/ 2  months in federal prison for bankruptcy fraud before being released in 2013. Bringing up Lenny’s post-baseball history ends conversations. Mentioning his dad’s playing days starts them. “I want to play the game like my dad did because he played the right way,” Dykstra said. The sons got early lessons in the difference between perception and reality. They know they might not reach the same heights as their fathers, but they can strive for the same dream. “I know I don’t have to be him,” Rivera III said. “At the same time, I want to be good.” Nine days after the first Father’s Day since the passing of Gwynn’s dad, his wife, Alyse, gave birth to their fourth child and first son, Anthony Keith Gwynn III, or “Trey” as they call him. “He will play sports, I know that,” Gwynn joked. “I would love for him to play baseball, but ultimately that decision will be left up to him.” Dykstra has a 2-year-old son named Beau. “Right now, he’s obsessed with baseball. Like literally, that’s all he wants to do — hit off the tee and throw,” Dykstra said. “I didn’t push him to it but of course, of all sports, he just wants to keep playing baseball.” Dent, 23, plans to stick with baseball for as long as he can. “They’re going to tell you when you’re not good enough,” his dad often advises him. He recently married his high school sweetheart, but the prospect of having kids seems a bit far off. But Dent admits he’s thought about it. “I would love to have a son one day,” he said. “That’d be awesome if he played baseball, but if he decided to play something else, it’d be up to him. Just like my dad let it be up to me.”

Fixing inequality, starting with the youngest

Michael Gerson’s March 17 op-ed column, “Poverty and ‘Our Kids,’ ” dealing with Robert D. Putnam’s book “Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis,” hit the nail on the head. The protests over race in Ferguson, Mo., have their origin in the inequality of children. I agree that this is largely due to the collapse of the blue-collar economy. We must find the means to train our youth via financial support at all educational levels. At the same time, opportunities are required for their elders to work on much-needed infrastructure where advanced knowledge is not required. Remember the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Depression? ****David Atlas** , Silver Spring**

Tim Tebow wants to play baseball. This won’t end well.

Tim Tebow, the former NFL quarterback who won the Heisman Trophy at Florida, is looking to try his hand at baseball. He will hold a workout for MLB teams on Tuesday, according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter.    If we look at all players who debuted at the age of 29 or older over the past 10 full seasons, the odds are still stacked against Tebow’s chances of becoming a productive major leaguer. The average hitter in this group of 40 players bats .240 with one home run in 43 plate appearances, with half falling to surpass a .154 average. Twenty one of these rookies never produced a single hit in their first season. Even if we give Tebow the benefit of the doubt and say he gets through his rookie year, it would be historic if he qualified for the batting title in his second season, which requires 3.1 plate appearances per team game played. Since 2006, no American-born player in his 30s has managed to do that. In fact, you have to go back to Charles again, this time in 1963, to find the most recent. NBA superstar Michael Jordan famously pursued a baseball career after retiring from basketball at the age of 31. He batted .202 with three home runs for the Chicago White Sox Class-AA affiliate, the Birmingham Barons, in 1994, his only season with the club. He returned to the NBA in March of the 1994-95 season.  “Hope he can hit a curveball,” Wilson told MMQB’s Peter King when asked if he had any advice for Tebow. “Baseball’s pretty hard.”

Poor kids can’t afford $300 baseball bats. This incredible warehouse solves that.

Kelvin Giles and his wife, Tondrea, wanted to start a baseball program for at-risk children in Richmond, but the kids didn’t have gloves, bats or even baseballs. With no money for a trip to Dick’s Sporting Goods, they drove a rented van 2 1/2 hours to a Silver Spring, Md., warehouse that they’d heard could help their kids play ball. The warehouse is home to Leveling the Playing Field, a nonprofit organization that collects used equipment from the affluent and passes it on to those in need. When the couple walked into the 4,000-square-foot space earlier this month, it was nearly a religious experience. In giant boxes and on tall shelves were thousands of baseball bats, soccer balls, hockey skates, cleats, lacrosse sticks, tennis rackets and more. All for free. “In my mind I’m saying, ‘God, you are faithful,’ ” said Kelvin Giles, who with his wife runs the nonprofit Dynamic Works Program Support. “This is almost unbelievable. You cannot overstate how much this is needed.” The lack of funding for youth sports has challenged parents, coaches and league officials around the country, especially those in cities and rural areas. Youth sports advocates say budget struggles, pricey equipment and the high cost of elite travel teams are leaving behind children with ability but not cash. Participation rates in baseball, hockey, lacrosse and soccer rose at least 4 percent last year for all Americans, according to the Sports and Fitness Industry Association. With kids dominating those games, youth sports experts saw that as a positive sign after years of decline. But there is concern that the uptick appears limited to children in higher-income families, according to Tom Farrey, a sportswriter who runs the Aspen Institute’s initiative on youth sports. A 2014 study by the University of Florida showed sports participation rates for children among families earning more than $100,000 per year is 33 percent. For those below $25,000, it’s 15 percent. In many suburban areas, there has been a shift from recreational leagues to travel teams, with fees topping $2,000 per year. Families who can’t afford that put their children in the cheaper rec leagues, where the level of play has declined because travel teams drain participants and coaches. Frustrated kids get bored and quit. **** “A child’s access to sports shouldn’t depend on where the child lives or where the parents work,” said Mark Hyman, a professor of sports management at George Washington University and the author of several books on youth sports. “But too often it does in this era of elite travel teams, private coaching and $300 Little League baseball bats.” Leveling the Playing Field has donated $1.4 million worth of sports equipment to 250 programs in the region, preventing many from folding because of equipment shortages. It is one of several efforts around the country using the surplus of the haves to help the have-nots. All Kids Should Play collects used equipment in Baltimore. Teenagers in Westchester, N.Y., started Let’s Play it Forward. Dick’s is also helping through its foundation and Sports Matters effort, providing funds for more than 1,500 teams nationwide. Leveling the Playing Field was launched in 2013 by Max Levitt, a Bethesda, Md., native who, like most of his peers, had the newest and most expensive gear growing up. In college, at Syracuse University, he worked as an equipment manager for the football team. Before every season, the managers were told to get rid of “old” equipment — some of it lightly used, some of it new but not the latest model. “We threw it all in the dumpster,” Levitt said. “It was crazy.” Levitt, now 27, said he saw similar surpluses later while working for the Montgomery County recreation department. And he suspected — correctly, it turns out — that people’s garages had piles of unused equipment, either because kids had outgrown it or because newer models promising even higher performance had hit the market. Levitt worked in sales for Living Social after graduating, but he kept thinking about all that wasted equipment. “Most things in my life have been given to me,” said Levitt, who attended private schools. “I had all this opportunity just dropped at my feet. I was lucky. A lot of people aren’t. I wanted to start something on my own, to hopefully change a systemic problem.” At first, Levitt collected equipment at his parents’ house. Word spread. People would drop off items on the driveway. Under Armour learned of his efforts and came by with an enormous truck hauling seven pallets of equipment, dumbfounding Levitt’s mom. Levitt moved the operation to the Silver Spring warehouse a year and a half ago, and it’s already near capacity. He has corporate donors and relationships with Under Armour, Morgan Stanley and Whole Foods, as well as professional team partnerships for used equipment and donation drives with the Nationals, Capitals and DC United. To get his inventory, Levitt sets up donation bins at youth athletic complexes and schools in affluent areas. He also encourages synagogues and community groups to have students organize their own equipment drives and help sort gear at the warehouse. Bethesda residents Melissa Reitkopp and her 12-year-old son Shane have been collecting equipment for three years. “Right here in D.C., just 10 minutes away from us, there’s a kid who can’t afford a league or doesn’t have the right shoes or a lacrosse stick,” Reitkopp said. “I think that affluent kids need to understand this. And they need to understand that they can make a difference, and everyone will benefit.” Those in need can swing by the warehouse and pick up what whatever they want. Levitt and his other employee — the staff of two will soon grow to three — will also arrange delivery. The Satchel Paige Little League in the District has been relying on Leveling the Playing Field’s equipment for four years. Nearly 200 children and their families come to opening day every season and pick out gear. “Ninety percent of these kids would not be able to play if we didn’t have this equipment,” said Andre Lee, a District public works employee who runs the program. “We wouldn’t have a league.” Lee says the league is about life skills as much as it is about baseball, a message Levitt constantly hears from other youth sports officials working in impoverished areas. And it’s not just about the kids. Sports is also a way to get parents interacting with school officials and other community leaders. Do the kids care that the equipment is used? “It’s new to them,” Lee said. “They love it. Something is better than them trying to catch a ball with their bare hands.” And the gloves are already broken in. Levitt showed the Richmond couple and their kids around the warehouse. “Here’s gloves by size,” Levitt said. “Here’s catcher’s gear. Take as many sets as you want.” “Here’s baseball pants.” “We’ve got jerseys over here. You’ve got youth small, medium and larges.” Kelvin got bats. His wife helped pick out uniforms. Their son went through boxes of baseball gloves. He even found a brand new one, tag and all. Kelvin spotted some jump ropes. “Might take some of those,” he said. “They’re good for coordination.” Levitt stood by, watching. He thought back to winning the championship at basketball camp when he was younger. He still talks about it with his buddies — the celebration, the thrill of victory. “I want kids to have that same opportunity,” he said. **Read more:** This student put 50 million stolen research articles online. And they’re free. A WWII vet’s body lay unclaimed at the morgue. Then neighbors did something beautiful. A Marine fights to prove he’s innocent of sexual misconduct. Then a lost cell phone is found. A retired cop’s nightmare: His son is accused of killing a police officer and his own wife.

W.P. Kinsella, ‘Shoeless Joe’ novelist who inspired ‘Field of Dreams,’ dies at 81

W.P. Kinsella, a Canadian writer who published more than 25 books but who is best remembered in the United States for just one, “Shoeless Joe,” a magical exploration of baseball and fantasy in an Iowa cornfield that inspired the 1989 film “Field of Dreams,” died Sept. 16 in Hope, B.C. He was 81. His literary agent, Carolyn Swayze, said in a statement that Mr. Kinsella’s death was doctor-assisted, a legal procedure in Canada since June. Other details were not disclosed, but he was known to have had serious complications from diabetes. Before he turned to writing in the 1970s, Mr. Kinsella had a varied career, including working as a taxi driver, government clerk, insurance salesman and restaurant owner. He was 46 when his first novel, “Shoeless Joe,” in 1982. The book may have been hard to classify — a magical realist fantasy touching on farming, a reclusive author, fathers and sons, dogged faith and, most of all, baseball — and it was not universally well received. Yet “Shoeless Joe” became a literary phenomenon that would sell more than 1 million copies. In a review in the New York Times, writer Daniel Okrent described it as a “lyrical, seductive and altogether winning concoction.” The tale follows the whimsical dreams of an Iowa farmer, Ray Kinsella, who looks out at his cornfield and, on the novel’s opening page, hears a voice say, “If you build it, he will come.” Surprising his relatives and even himself, Kinsella plows up part of his corn crop to construct a baseball diamond, complete with lights, backstop and grandstand. He carefully tends the grass in left field, and after three years, a mystical apparition appears in an antiquated baseball uniform. He has come. The player is “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, one of the greatest players of his time and whose .356 career batting average that is still the third-highest in history. After emerging from the cornstalks and onto the Iowa field of dreams, Jackson invites teammates from the 1919 Chicago White Sox — infamously known as the “Black Sox” after the betting scandal that got them banished from baseball — to join him in a glorious romp of innocence. But the players are not visible to everyone: Only those who trust in the magical powers of baseball and its ability to forge bonds across time have the ability to see Shoeless Joe. For those who believe, baseball becomes a faith as strong as any religion. “A ballpark at night,” Mr. Kinsella writes, “is more like a church than a church.” The story continues as another fateful voice intones, “Ease his pain.” Kinsella, the central character, interprets the cryptic command as a personal mission to find and kidnap the reclusive author J.D. Salinger, who accompanies him on a baseball road trip into the past. (After the actual Salinger threatened legal action, the character’s name was changed in the film adaptation to Terence Mann and was played by James Earl Jones.) The novel includes a touching evocation of the two-inning career of a ballplayer named Moonlight Graham, who in real life became a small-town doctor. “Field of Dreams,” which starred Kevin Costner as Ray Kinsella and included Ray Liotta as Shoeless Joe and Burt Lancaster as Moonlight Graham, became a cultural phenomenon in its own right. It was filmed on a farm in Dyersville, Iowa, and the baseball diamond created in the cornfield became a destination for fans from around the world. “I know there are many who are troubled, anxious, worried, insecure,” Mr. Kinsella wrote. “What is the cure? . . . The answer is in the word, and baseball is the word,” William Patrick Kinsella was born May 25, 1935, in Edmonton. His parents were Americans who ended up in Canada during the Depression and stayed there. His father was a semiprofessional baseball player. Mr. Kinsella grew up on a farm in Alberta without electricity or motorized vehicles. He didn’t attend school until he was 11, when his family settled in Edmonton. He held a variety of jobs in Edmonton and Victoria, including owning a pizzeria, before studying at the University of Victoria, from which he graduated in 1974. He received a master’s degree from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1978. He taught at the University of Calgary from 1978 to 1983 and grew to detest academic life. In 1977, Mr. Kinsella published a collection of humorous stories, “Dance Me Outside,” set on a Canadian Indian reservation, which became the basis of a 1994 film of the same title. His stories about Indian life were perhaps better known in Canada than his writings on baseball, but he was sometimes criticized for appropriating tribal folkways for humorous purposes. Mr. Kinsella had a prickly personality — “more angry and cynical than I would ever make my characters” — and said his chief aim as a writer was to make money. “I’m a manufacturer,” he said in 1993. “I’m in business to make my living as a writer.” His marriages to Myrna Salls, Mildred Clay and Ann Knight ended in divorce. His fourth wife, Barbara Turner, died in 2012. Survivors include two daughters from his first marriage. In the mid-1990s, Mr. Kinsella had a relationship with Canadian writer Evelyn Lau, who later wrote disparagingly about him. He sued for defamation before the case was settled out of court. In addition to “Shoeless Joe,” Mr. Kinsella published several other books about baseball and small-town life, including “The Iowa Baseball Confederacy,” “Box Socials” and “The Dixon Cornbelt League.” In 1997, he sustained serious injuries after being struck by a car while walking and was unable to write for several years. In 2011, he published his final novel, “Butterfly Winter,” about twin baseball-playing brothers in Central America. He recognized that his signature achievement would always be “Shoeless Joe,” with its lyrical look at baseball, family bonds and America. “I swear the stars have moved in close enough to eavesdrop as I sit in this single rickety bleacher that I built with my unskilled hands, looking down at Shoeless Joe Jackson,” Mr. Kinsella wrote. “ ‘God what an outfield,’ he says. ‘What a left field.’ He looks up at me and I look down at him. ‘This must be heaven,’ he says. “ ‘No. It’s Iowa.’ ” Read more **Washington Post obituaries ** Edward Albee, Pulitzer-winning playwright of modern masterpieces, dies at 88 John Saunders, longtime ESPN sports announcer, dies at 61 Morley Safer, longest-serving correspondent for CBS’s ‘60 Minutes,’ dies at 84

Chase Lambin, a minor league baseball player at 34, holds on to MLB dream

Chase Lambin turned 34 years old a week ago Sunday, and to celebrate, he sat on the bench during a minor league game in Round Rock, Tex. ¶ Lambin plays third base for the Omaha Storm Chasers, the Class AAA affiliate of the Kansas City Royals, and he’s the oldest active minor leaguer never to reach the major leagues. Eleven years as a professional, and the view hasn’t changed much. ¶ This night was different, though, and a sort of birthday treat was that Manny Ramirez, the 41-year-old former big league star, was resuming his career with the Round Rock Express, the Texas Rangers’ Class AAA affiliate. Lambin spoke to Ramirez before taking batting practice, and he watched later as Ramirez looped a single into right field. Ramirez is pursuing one last taste of the big leagues. Lambin is waiting for his first. Neither is ready to step away just yet. “This game,” Lambin would say by telephone two days later, “it gets in your blood.” Lambin, who spent the 2010 season in the Washington Nationals organization, was drafted in the 34th round by the New York Mets in 2002, and add up all the hope and dreams and more than 1,200 games, and, anyway, he’s still here. “I’d love to be 28,” he said with a chuckle. More than a decade ago, he figured his baseball career was finished. He had played four seasons at Louisiana-Lafayette, watching the pro draft each time he was eligible, waiting for a call that never came. Baseball is cruel to most players, dangling opportunities and memories that can never be redone. But even on his most frustrating days, Lambin’s father, Bruce, a baseball coach, told him to respect the game — and someday it’ll respect you back. But on the draft’s second day in 2002, the selections and rounds flying by, Lambin’s patience was gone. His respect was spent. Why hadn’t baseball returned the love? To clear his mind, he ran errands, putting the draft and baseball past him. Then his phone rang, and when he answered he heard his father’s voice. “What’s up, Met?” Lambin recalled his dad saying. The New York Mets had selected him with the 1,017th overall pick. Then the days started passing, the weeks turning to months and then seasons. Lambin was 24 before knew it, reaching Class AA, surprising even himself with his rapid climb. Each night was an adventure, game or not. One night in 2004, the Class AA Binghamton (N.Y.) Mets were rained out, and group of players went to dinner. The feisty waitress’s name was Sara, and not only did she refuse to put the Mets game on television, saying this was New York Yankees country, she wouldn’t give Lambin her phone number. He found it anyway, calling and talking her into dating a baseball player, even if he was a Met. Five years they dated, living the ups and downs of minor league baseball. In 2005, Lambin batted .309 with 24 home runs at two levels, including at Class AAA, the fringe of the majors. At the time he thought the call would come any day, but all he kept hearing was how his friends and teammates were getting a chance, and . . . Lambin remembered being told by Willie Randolph, the Mets’ manager at the time, “Go do your thing at Norfolk, and we’ll see you soon.” That was spring training 2006, and sometimes all you need is an injury or a hot streak or to just stay out of your own way. Lambin had his chance, life on the fringe, but all he did was hit .222, get demoted back to Binghamton and, after spring training the next year, released. “The more I pressed and the more I tried, the worse I played,” he said. “. . . I was in a good position, and I just — I don’t know. I stumbled. Maybe it happened for a reason.” He signed with the Marlins in 2007. Two years later, with no teams calling, his only option was playing in Japan. “We just go where the game takes us,” Lambin said. So he and Sara packed, Lambin believing this could be his last chance and Sara saying she was “retired” from selling jewelry. Two days before their plane left, they were married. They made a life in Japan, and a year later, the Nationals called with a minor league contract. Around then, Lambin said, reality began to sink in. He wasn’t the up-and-comer he once was; in every clubhouse he entered, he was among the oldest players. Friends from back home in Houston were salesmen or successful in some other field that earned them a nice car or a big house. Lambin kept signing contracts for between $40,000 and $60,000, he said, enough to live on but barely enough to do much else. “We do our best with what we make,” he said. Those same friends with the big salaries told Lambin they envied him; his office was a stadium, and his boss wore a ballcap and jersey. Teammates respected Lambin because of his longevity, and now he was showing youngsters how to swing and deal with the daily grind. They would get promoted sometimes, and while Lambin used to watch the highlights and wonder why it wasn’t him, now he was happy that maybe he’d had a hand in someone else’s success. “These young guys need to be motivated and helped,” he said, “and I really enjoy that side.” Nearly three years ago, Sara told Lambin she was pregnant. A son was on the way, but they kept moving together anyway. From Syracuse to Rochester to New Orleans. “I wouldn’t say she loves it,” Lambin said of his wife’s thoughts on moving so often. “But she doesn’t complain about it.” Their son was born 21 months ago. They named him Chase, like his dad, but they call him Champ. The couple bought a house in Houston last year, trying to settle down as best they could. But after the independent league team offered no more than $3,000 per month, bringing Lambin to think more about transitioning to coaching, there was another call from an affiliated team — and another contract. The Royals were interested, and so it was time to move again. The house in Houston now sits vacant. Lambin has played in 20 games this season, batting .265, but no matter how well he plays, he admitted he doesn’t expect a call from the big leagues. The minors are where it started more than a decade ago, and this is probably where it’ll end. Not that his mind doesn’t wander. “I feel like telling them sometimes: ‘Just give me 20 at-bats, and if I don’t do well, send me down and you’ll never see me again,’ ” he said. “I just want to know how I would do up there. I kind of just want to know that for myself.” He said he’ll keep playing until there are no more contracts, whether it’s in the United States or overseas. Baseball has given him a career, a family and more than a decade of experiences. He might not reach the majors, but in unexpected ways, the game had returned the love. “I might as well enjoy it and play it as well as I can,” he said. So on Sunday evening, another birthday having come and gone, he sat and watched Ramirez, understanding why he’s still here. Ramirez compiled statistics worthy of the Hall of Fame and made millions, and even he can’t give up the game. Lambin said he goes to the stadium each day, wherever it is, and plays the best he can, still trying to respect the game after all these years. Maybe it has one more surprise left for him. “I’m realistic. I know the chances are pretty slim,” he said of reaching the majors. “But I know there is a chance.” **Morebaseball  coverage: ** Nationals take small step before all-star break Box score: Nationals 5, Marlins 2 Boswell: Unstable, but still in contention Davis hits 37th homer as Orioles win All-star replacements are in place

Oakland A’s find success with former Nationals prospects

The Oakland Athletics have many reasons not to be where they are. They have the second-lowest payroll in baseball at $55.4 million, missing the last-place distinction by $130,000. They have the second-youngest roster in the American League. They have one of the lowest-scoring offenses in the league, with their best hitter being a rookie from Cuba. Before this season, they traded away their past three all-stars for other teams’ prospects, including a trade that brought Gio Gonzalez to Washington this past winter. Yet, the Oakland Athletics sit eight games above .500 as the season approaches the two-thirds mark in one of the highest-spending divisions in baseball, the AL West. They posted the best July in baseball, an impressive 19-5 record. They have the best pitching staff in the American League. They have 12 walk-off wins, the most in the majors. And, if you dare to dream: If the playoffs began now, this low-cost organization, whose innovative philosophy was depicted in the book and movie “Moneyball,” and its potpourri of players would make the playoffs as a wild card. “We’re winning games the way we were losing games,” said Oakland outfielder- designated hitter Jonny Gomes, who played for the Nationals last season. “We’d make an error, throw the ball to the wrong base or something, and the other team would just totally capitalize on it. Now that’s what we’re doing.” At the heart of the success of one of baseball’s most frugal teams is that trade that sent Gonzalez and a minor league pitcher to Washington for four of their best prospects — all drafted and developed by the Nationals. Washington felt it was a front-line starter away from contending, and Oakland could unload salary and bolster its farm system with young arms. Two of those players have been in the majors this season, and none has contributed more to Oakland’s surge more than starter Tommy Milone, who made his major league debut last season with Washington. Gonzalez has been stellar for the Nationals, earning his second all-star selection and helping propel Washington into first place. It’s a trade that, for the moment, appears to have benefited both teams. “At the time, it’s difficult to let guys like that go,” Oakland Manager Bob Melvin said. “And then you come to spring training and see what we got, and you’re pretty happy about that trade. I think both sides are very happy about that trade. That’s a little unusual, especially for the younger guys that we got. It usually takes a little more time. But we’re getting production out of some guys right now." Oakland has risen to contention in the AL West against the Los Angeles Angels ($154 million payroll) and two-time defending AL champion Texas Rangers ($120 million) because of the strength of its pitching. Its meager offense, limited by its cavernous home stadium, has been boosted by Cuban defector Yoenis Cespedes, a power-hitting 26-year-old who signed with the team for $36 million over four years and has been one of baseball’s most pleasant surprises. Milone, a 25-year-old left-hander, wasn’t as highly regarded as the other prospects in the deal. Baseball America’s ratings tagged right-handed starter Brad Peacock as the best of the bunch, and the Nationals’ third-ranked prospect, followed by right-handed starter A.J. Cole and catcher Derek Norris. But with injuries to three of Oakland’s starters, Milone earned a spot in the starting rotation to start the season. And since, Milone has posted numbers somewhat comparable to Gonzalez. Milone’s ERA (3.68) is slightly higher than that of Gonzalez (3.27) and has struck out 40 fewer batters, but Milone has walked 25 fewer batters and has thrown 101 / 3 more innings. In 11 of his 21 starts, he has pitched at least seven innings. Milone has thrived at home at the Coliseum, so much so that he has a 5-2 record and 1.51 ERA at home, but 5.77 ERA and 4-6 record on the road. He doesn’t have as electrifying stuff as Gonzalez, but he has a dangerous change-up and has already shown pinpoint command beyond his years. Gomes told Melvin during spring training: “This guy almost throws too many strikes.” At first, Milone said it was tough to stomach the trade from the only organization he has known and spent four years in its minor league system. But he wasn’t sure if he would ever earn a spot in the Nationals’ crowded starting rotation. “It’s hard to leave a place that treated me so well and the support they gave me,” said Milone, who still often checks Nationals results on his phone and iPad because he developed with players such as Steve Lombardozzi and Danny Espinosa in the minors. “But I couldn’t be happier with the opportunity I’ve gotten here.” Norris, 23, made his major league debut on June 21 — sooner than even he expected — and hit a walk-off three-run home run in his third game. He contributed, mainly behind the plate as a backup catcher starting 20 games, before he was optioned to Class AAA Sacramento this week. Peacock, 24, who represented the Nationals in the same 2011 All-Star Futures Game as Bryce Harper, has struggled at Sacramento, where he is 8-7 with a 6.17 ERA. Cole, 2o, a hard-throwing starter, has adjusted better at low-Class A Burlington after a hiccup at high-Class A Stockton. But they’re young, and the Athletics have high hopes for both. Gomes, who played 43 games for the Nationals last season, said once he spent spring training with his new teammates he began seeing similarities with one of his former teams, the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays, who had the second-lowest payroll during that fairy-tale season. “Excuse my ‘Bull Durham’ quotes and positive attitude, but I’ve been to the World Series with the lowest payroll,” Gomes said. “I’m living proof that it can happen.” More on Major League Baseball: Nationals Journal: Latest updates MLB standings MLB wild-card standings Oakland A’s team page

MLB’s deal with DraftKings should signal baseball’s changing stance on gambling

Last week, Major League Baseball announced an extension and enhancement of its previously under-the-radar partnership with DraftKings, a leading daily fantasy sports Web site. The deal gave baseball a small ownership stake in the company, with which baseball had been in business since MLB’s Advanced Media struck a deal in 2013. Baseball is smart to leap into the daily fantasy sports business, a booming industry that will provide the league new revenue and, more importantly, boost engagement with fans, particularly those in the coveted 18-to-35 male demographic. But the league must also confront and reconcile the ethical ramifications of doing so, something it has not shown it is willing to do.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Daily fantasy sports companies make a profit – a very large profit – by taking a cut of prize pools created by users who enter contests for cash. They choose a lineup of players while remaining under a salary cap and earn points based on the statistics their players compile. The contests last a single day, and winners receive prizes immediately.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Major League Baseball is now in that business. The league supports and profits from the public risking money on the performance of its players. What ethical difference, then, does Commissioner Rob Manfred see between daily fantasy and regular sports betting? “The difference is one’s legal and one is not,” Manfred said Monday while in Washington for the Opening Day game between the Nationals and New York Mets. “It’s a pretty definitive line. We see DraftKings as a form of fantasy baseball akin to the traditional fantasy that has been a part of our game for years and years. We’re comfortable that the games on DraftKings are on the right side of the legality line. We see it as a continued growth of the fantasy activity.” For-cash fantasy is protected by a carve out in the 2006 federal law that prohibited online poker and sports betting. Daily fantasy is a form of the game that lawmakers did not foresee, but the companies have designed their contests to fit under the law. So Manfred is right that the game is legal. But he chose not to grapple with the broader ethical dilemma. “We see the issue as the difference between fantasy, which is legal, and sports betting, which is not,” Manfred said. Manfred has declined to take the public stance of NBA counterpart Adam Silver, who argued for the federal legalization of sports betting in a New York Times op-ed last November. But Manfred hasn’t taken a stand against Silver’s position, either. And in February he said he was “getting ready to have a dialogue with the owners” about where baseball stands on legalized sports betting.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico With their stake in daily fantasy, baseball has entered a space that recalls the old line: “We’ve established what you are, madam.” If baseball is comfortable with one form of fans risking money on the performance of its players, why not another? Baseball’s history with sports betting – the sport’s original sin that stretches from the 1919 Black Sox to Pete Rose to even Jarred Cosart, the Miami Marlins pitcher fined Friday for placing illegal wagers – makes Manfred’s public stance more fraught than Silver’s. But the winds are shifting. Even if he will not acknowledge it yet, baseball’s deal with DraftKings brought Manfred a step closer to aligning with Silver.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Yogi Berra’s Medal of Freedom quest heads to White House

An online petition urging President Obama to give New York Yankees legend Yogi Berra the Presidential Medal of Freedom cleared a hurdle Monday night, beating the deadline by which it needed to amass 100,000 signatures. Now, the decision rests with the White House and there’s plenty of evidence that supports giving Berra the award. One of the greatest catchers of all time and a Hall of Famer, Berra’s off-the-field achievements offer more than substantial support. In addition to his humanitarian efforts, Berra was a hero of World War II, fighting on D-Day as a young Navy sailor. D-Day wasn’t the first time Berra came up against moments of historical significance. “…[H]e befriended the first black and Latino baseball players in Major League Baseball,” as the petition points out. It’s easy to recall Berra’s famous malapropisms (like “it ain’t over til it’s over), but that does him a disservice. As a 19-year-old kid, he was a Navy gunner on an LCSS (landing craft support, small) boat tasked with protecting Allied troops by firing at Germans during the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. “You saw a lot of horrors,” Berra, who is 90, told The Associated Press last year on the 70th anniversary of D-Day. “I was fortunate. It was amazing going in, all the guys over there.” As for his accomplishments on a baseball diamond, Berra was a three-time AL MVP during his 19-year playing career, spending all but one season with the Yankees. A member of the Major League Baseball All-Century Team, Berra’s teams won the World Series 10 times. “Everybody knows what my Grandpa did on the baseball field and some even know about his time on the battlefield,” Berra’s granddaughter Lindsay told Fox News. “I don’t think they know a ton about all the humanitarian work he has done. He’s been an advocate for education,” Berra added. “He was one of the first players to embrace players across racial lines. He’s really used his fame to embrace people. He helped to push the civil rights movement into the forefront.” The Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the U.S., was established in 1960. Two former ballplayers, Stan Musial in 2011 and Ernie Banks two years later, have received the honor.

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A minor meltdown: Why NASL’s collapse matters to North American soccer fans

Major League Soccer is preparing for its 21st championship match, with host Toronto FC and the Seattle Sounders taking part Saturday in what could be one of the biggest finals in the league’s history. But for many fans of clubs outside the top tier, this has been a week of confusion and worry. The second-division North American Soccer League is in crisis, with its flagship club, the New York Cosmos, on the brink of closing operations. One club is moving up to MLS, two others have quit the league to join its rival, the officially third-division United Soccer League, and others are reported to be in serious financial difficulty. The NASL was set up just seven years ago, initially out of a group of breakaway USL clubs. It chose its name to hark back to the 1970s league that enjoyed a short spell of great promise and prominence before collapsing in a pile of debt. Perhaps the choice of name was tempting fate: History appears to be repeating itself.  Why should any of this matter to soccer fans? MLS is, after all, proof that a more prudent, cautious and well-planned approach can produce a stable and sustainable professional soccer league in North America. But it matters because the United States and Canada are two large countries, and MLS can never provide a club for every major population center. Lower-division (or minor league, if you prefer) soccer can provide fans in those other markets with the experience of supporting a local club and attending live games rather than just consuming the sport via television. They help grow the game and popularize the sport in communities that will never have an MLS team. In football and basketball, college programs bring thrills to communities that never get the chance to experience the NFL or NBA up close. NCAA soccer is never going to enjoy that kind of prominence; it is up to the professional game to fill the gap. Lower-division soccer matters from a player-development point of view, too. Throughout the history of professional soccer, there have been countless players who reached greatness after being missed or rejected by scouts at a young age and who thereafter worked their way up from lower-league clubs. One of England’s finest, Kevin Keegan, began his career at lower-league Scunthorpe United and ended up a two-time Ballon d’Or winner. Closer to home, former U.S. national team defender Jay DeMerit was not drafted by MLS, moved to England and worked his way up from the seventh tier to the Premier League, earning a place in Bob Bradley’s 2010 World Cup squad as a result. The North American soccer system is different. The absence of promotion and relegation, while understandable given the nature of investments made in MLS, undoubtedly makes it harder for lower-league clubs to grow. Being a minor league side in good-size markets such as Tampa or Indianapolis is a tough sell — in New York, it’s almost impossible. While much remains to be resolved, the indications are that the USL will soak up the remaining clubs, should the NASL be unable to continue. But the USL has also seen plenty of short-lived clubs, brief expansion experiments and financial worries. The history of soccer in this country, before MLS and outside of MLS, has been one of instability and insecurity. That shows no sign of changing. One of the truly unfathomable aspects of this mess is the insistence both NASL and USL have in trying to cover all of North America. When crowds tend to be below 5,000 in many cases, how much sense is there in having clubs fly coast-to-coast for games? With no major television deal and limited revenue, why have the expense of, for example, flying a club from Florida to Edmonton? A regional structure surely makes more sense. Regional divisions would not only reduce costs dramatically but could replicate the kind of intraconference rivalries seen in college sports. It is hard not to think that such a structure would also appeal to the many regional sports television channels and get lower-division soccer exposure outside of the limited realm of Internet streaming. It is also a system that is used in soccer in many European countries. Germany and France, for example, have regionalized soccer for their fourth tiers, while Russia regionalizes from the third tier down. In the North American context, regional championships could lead into a full national playoff competition. Ally that with a better-organized, better-marketed U.S. Open Cup competition, which annually pits teams from all levels of U.S. soccer, and the game beyond MLS would surely be more attractive to fans, the media and sponsors. It might also allow clubs to gradually grow, investing more in facilities and player development than in flights and hotels — and ultimately to enjoy the kind of stability that the game in the United States and Canada so badly needs.

Dodgers and Padres could reportedly play regular-season series in Mexico next year

The games in Mexico City “are anticipated being played but have not been formalized,” Clark said ahead of the All-Star Futures Game at Marlins Park.  Major League Baseball has played regular-season games outside of the United States and Canada several times before. Most recently, the Dodgers and Diamondbacks opened the 2014 season in Sydney. Two  years before that, the Mariners and A’s opened the season in Tokyo.

Bullpen catcher Sam Palace finally gets his major league opportunity with the Nats

*[WSU]: Wayne State University For the past few seasons, he was one of the Nationals’ minor league bullpen catchers who managed to fulfill his dream by playing in a handful of games. But now, Palace, 27, stood on a major league field, as part of a major league team, for the first time in his life, promoted to serve as one of the Nationals’ bullpen catchers a week ago, and he was proud.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University “To me, it feels kinda like I made it in my own way,” he said. The Michigan native is one of the many behind-the-scenes employees who work in the Nationals’ organization. He played baseball in college, but was never drafted, and later played in independent leagues before landing with the Nationals. In 2012, after a rash of injuries to catchers in the Nationals system, Palace appeared in 11 games between Class A Hagerstown and Potomac. He was a bullpen catcher with a minor league contract, intended to appear in games only in an emergency. Instead of playing, he caught minor league pitchers’ bullpen sessions and played catch with them, and did other odd jobs when needed. Playing in the minor leagues and making the long bus rides is tiring and thankless, but so is working for a minor league team. He taught baseball lessons in the offseason to teenagers to help pay the bills. Palace was again a minor league bullpen catcher in 2013. He spent most of the season again on the disabled list with phantom injuries, activated on the rare occasion he was needed, bouncing between Hagerstown and Class AAA Syracuse. He appeared in three games for Hagerstown, went 4 for 13 and hit a home run, and played in one game with Syracuse. He did it all with a smile, and those around him appreciated that. This spring, Palace was brought back again as a bullpen catcher. But instead of shuttling back and forth between the minor and major league camps in Viera, he stayed on the major league side. He worked hard and kept his head down. At the end of camp, he thought he would be sent again to another minor league team to land on the disabled list and catch bullpens. But in the final week of camp, he was called into the coaches’ office. All of the coaches were there, along with General Manager Mike Rizzo. Pitching coach Steve McCatty, whose son was a former college teammate of Palace’s and gave him his first opportunity as a bullpen catcher, told Palace how much the coaching staff liked working with him. But, because there wasn’t any room on the minor league side for more bullpen catchers, the Nationals were going to release him. Quickly, the gag ended. McCatty told Palace that he would instead be offered a chance to be a bullpen catcher with the major league team and would travel with them during the season. Palace went from being worried he would have to find another job to being told he had reached the majors leagues. “It was funny,” he said. Palace instantly accepted. And on Monday, he was on the field before the game started, playing catch with Taylor Jordan and Jose Lobaton, and any player or pitcher who needed someone to throw with. Like the other support staff, his name was announced before the game. “It’s an honor to be up here and to be around these great guys and staff,” he said. “They’ve been unbelievable. Rizzo has been great. I couldn’t be more thankful. I just feel humbled by the chance to be up here after coming through independent ball and the minor leagues and being able to like me and appreciate me has been a blessing.” Players told of their promotion to the majors often call their families immediately to share to news. Palace did the same.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University “‘I’ve been waiting 10 years to tell you this but not in the way that we had dreamed about as a kid but I’m getting a chance to go to the big leagues,'” he said he told his parents. “For them, it was just like the players who get called up. It was like my call-up. They were crying. It was a cool moment.” **FROM THE POST**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Matt Williams handles a lot in his managerial debut, a wild 9-7 win over the Mets, writes Adam Kilgore.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The Nationals played an opener with everything, writes Thomas Boswell.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Wilson Ramos’s hopes for an injury-free 2014 take a hit.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **FROM YESTERDAY’S JOURNAL**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Anthony Rendon breaks out opening day    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Matt Williams loses first replay challenge    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Aaron Barrett earns win with dominant ninth in big league debut    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Bryce Harper passed concussions test after taking a shin to the head    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Wilson Ramos left season opener with injured hand [UPDATED]    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Bryce Harper hit in the head sliding into second base, stays in the game    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Bryce Harper bats fifth, Wilson Ramos hits cleanup and Matt Williams explains    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Rain and snow dampen Nats-Mets opening day    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Nationals’ opening day lineup    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Nationals 2014: The best case and the worst case    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

Katrina vanden Heuvel: During the holidays, remember America’s ‘least’

As we celebrate the holiday season, we are instructed by virtually all faiths to turn our thoughts to the “least of these.” January will mark the 50th anniversary of the War on Poverty, but most notable today is how impoverished our discussion of poverty is. Political leaders in both parties pledge to save the “middle class,” because polls show that most Americans consider themselves part of the broad middle. Democrats tout their “middle out” economics against Republican “trickle-down” economics. Republicans claim to be fighting to save small businesses and middle-class homeowners from the rapacious demands of government. Very little attention is given to the poorest among us. Perhaps that is because poverty scars this rich nation. A recent report by the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) reveals that among 35 developed nations the United States ranks 34th in childhood poverty, above only Romania, a country several times less wealthy. Worse, we are also next to last in the depth of childhood poverty — the gap between average income of child’s family and that of poverty standard. There is no argument about the facts. The poor were much more deprived when Lyndon Johnson declared his “war on poverty,” of course, but the percentage in poverty hasn’t changed much . Childhood poverty translates into poor health, poor education, and poor prospects. It isn’t an accident that the country frequently is at the top of the international education rankings – Finland — also has the lowest levels of childhood poverty in that U.N. study. So you’d think Washington would be focused on what to do to reduce the number of children in poverty, to address mass unemployment, declining wages, family distress. Instead, Washington has decided to administer a little “tough love.” Last month, Congress cut food stamps by an average of 7 percent for 48 million Americans . And this week 1.3 million jobless Americans will lose unemployment benefits , with as many as 5 million left in the cold over the course of the coming year . In his recent “exhortation,” Pope Francis wrote starkly about the moral challenge of poverty: “We can only praise the steps being taken to improve people’s welfare in areas such as health care, education and communications. At the same time, we have to remember that the majority of our contemporaries are barely living from day to day, with dire consequences. A number of diseases are spreading. _The hearts of many people are gripped by fear and desperation, even in the so- called rich countries._ . . .[Emphasis added.] “Just as the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say ‘thou shalt not’ to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure but it is news when the stock market loses two points?” Here, the pope was standing firmly in the long tradition of the church’s concern for the poor, but among American conservatives, the response was hysteria. Rush Limbaugh accused him of peddling “pure Marxism.” Louis Woodhill in Forbes scorned him for “Papal Bull” that seemed “copied and pasted out of The Nation or Mother Jones.” (I take that as a compliment.) Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), a pious Catholic, was notably silent. In a recent speech on inequality, President Obama insisted, “We are a better country than this,” and he made the case for government action. But his agenda was far less impressive than his rhetoric — including lower corporate tax rates, more trade accords, “streamlined” regulations, a “responsible budget” (meaning continued austerity). The president touted his “race to the top” education program, when, in fact, schools in low-income districts have been forced to fire teachers, leaving classrooms far more crowded. He bragged on his college loan efforts even as reports showed students are graduating even deeper in debt. He did repeat his call for universal preschool and raising the minimum wage, but neither of these has been able even to receive a vote in the Republican-led House. The reality is that government programs to lift the poor work. Johnson’s War on Poverty brought poverty down dramatically, but that war was lost to the war in Vietnam. Today, the United States does a much better job lifting poor children out of poverty than it did before Johnson pushed through Medicare and Medicaid expansions, child nutrition programs, subsidized school lunches and more. Even so, the United States still does far less than other developed countries. In 2010, for example, Dutch government programs reduced its poverty rate from 25 percent to 7.5 percent , while the United States only reduced its rate from 28 percent to 17 percent . Two fundamental issues should be at the center of our debate. The first, posed by Pope Francis and Barack Obama, is what must be done to make the economy work for working people? The second is that posed by the president: Are we a better country than this? Do we want to be? We know what works. We can afford it, even more than other industrial countries. But are we prepared to do what needs to be done? _Read more fromKatrina vanden Heuvel’s archive or follow her on Twitter._ **Read more:** George Zornick: GOP faces backlash over unemployment benefits expiration Robert Rubin, Roger Altman and Melissa Kearney: Food stamp cuts make U.S. poorer Fareed Zakaria: The ‘defining challenge of helping the poor’ Katrina vanden Heuvel: The GOP’s awful poverty agenda

Meet new Syracuse Chiefs Manager Billy Gardner Jr.

Billy Gardner Jr. has spent more than two decades coaching and managing in the minor leagues and has loved it all. Next season, he was expecting to return to Montgomery, Ala. for his eighth season as the manager of the Biscuits, Tampa Bay’s Class AA affiliate. He enjoyed working for the Rays and the Biscuits. “I was very happy there,” he said. “I coulda ran for mayor in Montgomery.” But earlier this winter, he received a call from Doug Harris, the Nationals assistant general manager and vice president of player development and former farm director. “It really came out of left field,” Gardner said. After former Class AAA Syracuse Manager Manager Tony Beasley agreed to shift to a minor league field coordinator, some within the Nationals organization had suggested Gardner as a possible replacement. Harris and Gardner talked, and then Harris offered the position. Excited, Gardner accepted the first AAA job of his career.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University “It’s close to home, about five [hours] and change from there, so it gives me an opportunity to go home a little bit,” said Gardner, a New London, Connecticut native. “It’s a great organization and I’ve heard nothing but good things and I’m really grateful to be with it.” Gardner, 47, grew up in a baseball-rich family. His father, Billy Gardner, was an infielder for the Baltimore Orioles, New York Giants, Washington Senators and Minnesota Twins, among others, and later managed in the major leagues. Gardner was on two World Series-winning teams: the Giants in 1954 and New York Yankees in 1961. He later managed the Twins for five years from 1981 to 1985 and then the Kansas City Royals in 1987. Gardner Jr., a first and third baseman, was drafted by the Royals in the 50th round of the 1987 draft out of Mitchell College in New London, Conn. and played two seasons in the minor leagues. Two years later, he was a coach in the New York Mets system. His first managing job was with the rookie ball Butte Copper Kings in Montana in 1995. Bob Schaefer, now a special assistant to Nationals General Manager Mike Rizzo, brought Gardner with him to the Boston Red Sox as a minor league manager a year later. Gardner spent seven seasons in the Red Sox minors leagues, then three years in the Royals minor leagues and a year in the Cincinnati Reds minor leagues — all as a manager. In 2007, the Rays hired him to manage the Biscuits. In seven seasons there, he compiled a 497-475 record, a .511 winning percentage. He managed top players, such as Evan Longoria, David Price, Alex Cobb and Chris Archer, in the well-regarded Rays minor league system. He led the Biscuits to a Southern League title in 2007, was named the league’s best manager prospect in 2010 by Baseball America and was honored as the Southern League Manager of the Year in 2012 after a 74-63 season. Overall, Gardner has a 1,262-1,249 record in 19 years as a minor league manager. Through 24 years in the minors, Gardner has built a connection with many across the sport, even in the Nationals organization. Close friend Schaefer is in Washington. Gardner has gotten to know director of pro scouting Bill Singer during his scouting trips to Montgomery over the years. He also got to know Jay Robertson, another special assistant to Rizzo, when he was scouting the Arizona Fall League and Gardner was a manager there. And, of course, there is Paul Menhart, the Class AA Harrisburg pitching coach who was promoted to Syracuse this offseason. Menhart and Gardner were American Legion teammates in Connecticut “back in the stone ages,” Gardner said. “It’s going to be a great opportunity to work with him,” he added. “And the transition into the organization will be seamless working with people like Paul, who I know.” Joe Dillon, a former major leaguer with the Marlins, Brewers and Rays who is making his professional coaching debut, will round out the coaching staff as the Syracuse hitting coach. Gardner prides himself in being not only an instructor for players but also a confidante. He understand that at this level of professional baseball he isn’t normally tasked with overhauling players’ mechanics or swings, but providing the final tweaks and push to the majors. “As a manager you wear a lot of different hats and psychologist is one,” he said. “Friend is another. I think you have to be able to connect with the player in order to teach them. I think communication is the No. 1 priority. I think the strategy, the X’s and O’s, there’s a lot of good baseball people who know a lot about the game. But being able to connect with people, develop the relationships and people skills part of the job is really important today. I’m hands-on and I have expectations that, if you lay out, people will meet.” In a month or so, Gardner will pull on a Nationals uniform in Viera for spring training and begin his 25th season as a minor league coach or manager. A new challenge awaits with a new organization and level of the minors, but he relishes the work of developing players. “I love every day that I’m teaching in the minor leagues,” he said. “I never look too far ahead or too far back. I really just enjoy helping kids and players get better and eventually make the major leagues.”

Value Added: This businessman keeps swinging for the fences

Many young baseball players aspire to play in Major League Baseball’s Big Show, under the lights, hitting home runs for the television cameras, signing autographs. Making zillions. Steve Sclafani had the same dream, but he settled for being a baseball scout. Now he owns his own business, which appears to be pretty successful. He is the chief executive and founder of the Baseball Factory, an $11 million Columbia-based company whose main mission — and core business — is helping kids to develop their talent and make it to the college level. The guy loves baseball and has been at it for 33 of his 42 years. “I was the baseball rat who hung around the field, taking ground balls,” the Bethesda resident said. The Baseball Factory has about 60 full-time employees and approximately 1,000 contract workers across the country. Its online evaluation system allows college coaches to search player criteria, from SAT scores to arm strength, when looking for prospects. Sclafani and Baseball Factory President Rob Naddelman, both former infielders for the University of Pennsylvania, are equal partners. They have an additional 30 investors in the business, many of whom are the parents of players they have schooled. Sclafani’s success is based on pluck and persistence. From the sound of it, he is a slightly above-average, 5-foot-8-inch athlete who — through sheer tenacity — willed himself onto a college baseball team and leveraged that into a career. “Persistence is in my blood,” he said. He didn’t simply play the game. He has been a longtime student of it, studying scouting, devouring baseball bibles like “Dollar Sign on the Muscle: The World of Baseball Scouting” and talking, sleeping, eating and playing the game. “One of the reasons I learned scouting is I really wanted to be drafted,” he said in a phone call last week. “The more I can learn about scouting, the more I can learn what the teams are looking for, like arm strength, foot speed. I was always on the lookout to learn about what they were looking for.” He talked his way onto the Villanova University baseball team, and now he wants to teach others how to do it, too. He smothered Villanova’s baseball coach with letters asking for attention while he starred at Atholton High School in Howard County. (Another alum, Steve Lombardozzi Jr., plays for the Nationals.) A pro scout Sclafani met sent reference letters on his behalf, which Sclafani realized was a key catalyst for getting a college coach’s attention. He got a neighbor to help him make highlight tapes, which he also mailed to Villanova. “I had to beg the coach to come out and see me play,” Sclafani said. Sclafani was recruited as a walk-on second baseman for Villanova, which means he played but received no financial aid for his efforts. He stayed one year before transferring to Penn, where he attended the Annenberg School for Communication and started as the team’s second baseman. The payoff, according to Sclafani, is that he knows how to play the game — that is, the game of grabbing college coaches’ attention. And he has parlayed that into a baseball business for him and Naddelman. ****“The fact that it was so hard for me to get recruited was the impetus for the business,” Sclafani said. After graduating in 1993 from Penn, where he was strong on defense but an average hitter, he sold advertising for a publishing company and spent his personal time giving coaching lessons and scouting players for Mike Toomey, who was then with the Texas Rangers. Sclafani was living in an apartment in Elkridge, not making much money but doing something he loved. “I was 23, and I was broke. You keep your head down and love what you’re doing. You got to love the grind and the grit.“ Then a light bulb turned on. “I was at high school and college baseball games talking to parents and coaches,” he said. “I realized there is a real need for a business that could write unbiased evaluations on high school players for college coaches.” ****He ran into Naddelman, and they kicked around the idea of starting a baseball business built on giving young athletes an honest assessment of their talents — and then helping them improve. They went to a local library and researched how to form a company. They founded theirs and named it Baseball Factory Inc. They wrote a business plan. They borrowed $130,000 — in two successive loans — from the entrepreneurial fund sponsored by the Rouse Co., where Sclafani’s mother worked. They set up shop in a 9-by-10-foot office with two tiny desks in a Columbia office park. They struggled to pay the $300-a-month rent. Sclafani and Naddelman used their contacts in Maryland and New Jersey, visiting various coaches and baseball programs to find players to mentor. The Ivy Leaguers pored over business books, educating themselves on finances. They put together brochures containing success stories. They struck gold in 1997 with two home runs. First, they persuaded American Legion Baseball, a national youth baseball league with thousands of participants, to recommend the Baseball Factory to its players. The second home run was renting out high-profile major league ballparks in San Diego, Minneapolis and Miami, hosting tryouts for hundreds of aspiring Bryce Harpers. They took out expensive full-page ads in baseball publications to grab attention. Their business exploded. The number of clients grew more than tenfold, from 100 to 1,100. Revenue popped to $375,000. “We were scrambling to figure out how to service everybody, doing videotaping, evaluation, talking to colleges,” Sclafani said. It isn’t cheap. The company charges $99 for an initial five-hour assessment at a field the Baseball Factory rents. For $499, employees will shoot a video to post on a Web page with an evaluation so college coaches can check you out and, hopefully, recruit you. Many players in college baseball today have benefited from the service. One of the big draws is the player-development camps, in which a Baseball Factory client goes to Arizona, Omaha, Cape Cod or the Pittsburgh Pirates’ facility in Florida, known as Pirate City, for a week of instruction. Prices range from $1,500 to $3,000; meals, lodging and instruction are included. The best players are selected to play on the Baseball Factory’s Under Armour national teams, on which they are observed by scouts from Major League Baseball and dozens of colleges. **** ****Revenue has doubled since 2007, and the Baseball Factory has morphed into Factory Athletics, which consists of the Baseball Factory, the Softball Factory and the Football Factory, holding more than 600 events in more than 150 cities and 47 states. Sclafani hasn’t hit a financial home run yet, but he certainly is making contact with the fastball.

Marvin Miller, union chief who revolutionized baseball off the field, dies at 95

Marvin Miller, the founding executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association who led a revolution in sports by expanding the concept of free agency, which made many star athletes multimillionaires, died Nov. 27 at his home in Manhattan. He was 95. His daughter, Susan Miller, confirmed the death to news outlets. He was diagnosed with liver cancer in August. When Mr. Miller was approached to lead the players union in 1965, the players’ primary goal was to increase their pension fund. He had been the top labor negotiator for United Steelworkers and had served on presidentially appointed labor-management panels. Quiet and urbane, with a matinee-idol mustache, Mr. Miller did not conform to the stereotypical image of a hard-knuckled union organizer. “I loved baseball, and I loved a good fight, and, in my mind, ballplayers were among the most exploited workers in America” he wrote in his 1991 memoir, “A Whole Different Ball Game.” Leading the players union seemed initially like a thankless task at best. The union had only $5,400 in its coffers and no staff. Two other candidates had turned down the job before Mr. Miller accepted in 1966. During his 17 seasons at the helm of the New York-based players association, Mr. Miller forged one of the unlikeliest and strongest unions in the country, battling an entrenched group of wealthy team owners. He helped establish several landmark advances, most notably free agency and salary arbitration, which gave players a greater voice in determining their salaries and guiding baseball’s future. He also organized four labor stoppages, including a mid-season strike in 1981 that halted the game for two months and alienated many fans previously sympathetic to the players’ cause. “I think he’s the most important baseball figure of the last 50 years,” former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent told the Associated Press. “He changed not just the sport but the business of the sport permanently, and he truly emancipated the baseball player — and in the process all professional athletes.” When Mr. Miller took over the players union, the minimum salary was $7,000. Today, it is $480,000. Major league players now earn on average more than $3 million a year. His other triumphs included the right to collective bargaining, the right to use agents to negotiate contracts, arbitration in labor disputes and the contractual ability of players to block trades to other teams. The model Mr. Miller created for baseball players was later copied by unions in other sports, including the National Football League, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League. In spite of his undeniable achievements in improving conditions for players, Mr. Miller was repeatedly denied a place in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. On five occasions, he failed to gain the required 75 percent of votes of the hall’s veterans committee, which was once dominated by old-school players and executives with a lingering resentment of Mr. Miller’s role in changing the game. “He is one of the 10 most important figures in baseball history,” sports broadcaster Bob Costas said Tuesday in an interview. “It is regrettable that he’s not in the Hall of Fame. It’s an embarrassment. It’s an absurd omission.” In his early days as union leader, Mr. Miller would meet with players during spring training, traveling from one baseball camp to another in Arizona and Florida. Owners sought to brand Mr. Miller as a communist, a menace who would destroy the game, and clubs went to interesting lengths to disrupt his meetings. In one instance, a coach hit baseballs into the outfield near where Mr. Miller was talking to players. Calling the standard player’s contract “one of the worst labor documents” he had ever seen, Mr. Miller negotiated an increase in the minimum salary to $10,000 in 1968. In that first labor agreement, he also secured the right to independent arbitration, which would be hugely important after free agency took effect. The owners’ control of the financial underpinnings of baseball resided in what was known as the “reserve clause” of a player’s contract. Under this provision, a contract could be automatically renewed year after year. A player was bound to a team forever unless the team decided to trade or release him. Mr. Miller maintained that the reserve clause was in effect for only a period of one year. If a player refused to sign a new contract and the team automatically renewed the previous year’s agreement, he argued, the player would be bound to the team for only the next baseball season— not in perpetuity. After fulfilling his contractual obligations for one year, a player could offer his services to other teams. He would become, in effect, a free agent. One of the few players to challenge the reserve clause was outfielder Curt Flood, who had refused a trade to the Philadelphia Phillies in 1969 after 14 years with the St. Louis Cardinals. In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Flood, largely on grounds that baseball had been declared exempt from antitrust rules in a 1922 high-court decision. Mr. Miller then devised a strategy to take the teeth out of the reserve clause by recommending that players not sign new contracts. After one year at the previous season’s salary, the clock would start ticking down to free agency. In 1975, two pitchers — the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Andy Messersmith and the Montreal Expos’ Dave McNally — refused to sign contracts offered by their teams. Mr. Miller urged them to file grievances, which were heard by an independent arbitrator, Peter Seitz. He ruled that the two players had fulfilled the obligations of their contracts and were, in fact, free agents who could seek employment elsewhere. The baseball establishment challenged the ruling in court but to no avail. The reserve clause was broken, and free agency became part of a new collective bargaining agreement negotiated by Mr. Miller. Currently, a player with six or more years of major league service who has not signed a contract is eligible for free agency. Contrary to the fears of baseball owners, the game enjoyed a huge boost in attendance, fan interest and skyrocketing television income after free agency began in the 1970s. “All players — past, present and future — owe a debt of gratitude to Marvin, and his influence transcends baseball,” current players association chief Michael Weiner said in a statement. “Marvin, without question, is largely responsible for ushering in the modern era of sports, which has resulted in tremendous benefits to players, owners and fans of all sports.” Marvin Julian Miller was born April 14, 1917, in the Bronx and was raised in Brooklyn. His father sold women’s clothing and was a labor organizer. His mother was a schoolteacher and an early member of a teachers union. He graduated in 1938 from New York University with a bachelor’s degree in economics and had early jobs with the Treasury Department and New York City’s welfare department. A shoulder damaged at birth prevented his military service in World War II. He worked instead for the National War Labor Board and later had jobs with the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service and the International Association of Machinists. In 1950, he began a 16-year association with United Steelworkers in Pittsburgh, eventually becoming the union’s chief economist and top negotiator. He was appointed to labor-management panels by Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. His wife of 69 years, the former Theresa Morgenstern, died in 2009. Survivors include two children, Peter Miller and Susan Miller, and a grandson. After Mr. Miller retired from the players association in 1982, he remained active in baseball as a consultant and a caustic observer. To the end, he and his successor at the players union, Don Fehr — now the head of the NHL Players Association — resisted making any concessions to baseball’s owners. Their staunch opposition to random drug testing during baseball’s steroid era contributed to the alienation of many fans, who thought the union had grown as selfish and intransigent as the ownership it had fought against in the past. “If Marvin Miller’s position had held,” Costas said Tuesday, “there would be no drug testing. There would be impunity for steroid users, and records would be in question.” Still, Costas and other observers — including Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig — said that Mr. Miller’s contributions to baseball were unparalleled and that he deserves enshrinement in the Hall of Fame. In 2010, after he fell one vote short, Mr. Miller said, “It is an amusing anomaly that the Hall of Fame has made me famous by keeping me out.” Matt Schudel contributed to this report.

Why not a daytime World Series?

Greg Harms [“The right time for game time,” letters, Oct. 22] was on the right track in his criticism of Thomas Boswell’s column about when to hold baseball games [“Baseball’s twilight saga,” Sports, Oct. 18], but he didn’t go far enough or include the major bad actors. Yes, a stadium full of kids is a nice idea, but even more enticing would be a nation of young viewers absorbed in the drama of the World Series unfolding on their TV screens without having to suffer from sleep deprivation the next day. I’m old enough to remember coming home from grade school and enjoying the World Series on our black-and-white television. Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra and Sandy Koufax all seemed to prosper playing during the daylight hours. I’d like to see a daytime World Series played at least every third year. Additionally, wresting control from the major broadcast networks and awarding broadcasting rights to PBS every seventh year would help put the focus back where it belongs — on the actual play on the field. To make this a reality, the owners, players’ union and broadcasters should consider the consequences of not nurturing a future fan base. ****Jim Speicher** , Jefferson, Md.**

Yunel Escobar’s long and winding road to the big leagues

Yunel Escobar has told his story before, about how at age 21 he left his family in his native Cuba without warning, gathered a group of close friends and escaped to the United States by boat to follow his dream of playing major league baseball. But Escobar has never talked about the American girl who helped put him in touch with the smugglers. He has never talked about his eight months living and training with the smugglers in Miami until he could pay for his escape. He has never talked, in this much detail, about the dangerous, winding path he took from Havana to Miami to the majors. Long before Cuban players became the hottest commodity in baseball and Escobar became a steady and much-needed presence with the Washington Nationals, he was just a young baseball player dreaming of a big league future and willing to risk everything to get it. “I got to the U.S. and went to work so that I could help my family,” Escobar said in a lengthy interview in Spanish. “My mind was focused on helping my family. Becoming a baseball player in this country was big for me. Not everyone makes it.” Baseball is in the blood of all Cubans. Escobar’s grandfather signed him up to start playing at 8. By his teenage years, he was good enough to travel with the junior national team. Escobar’s love of baseball was fueled by television broadcasts and video games, both forbidden in Cuba. He paid to watch MLB games and favorite players such as Alex Rodriguez, Roberto Alomar, Omar Vizquel and fellow Cuban Livan Hernandez on a TV with a hush-hush antenna at a friend’s house. He also grew to love Ken Griffey Jr. because of a video game he played often in secret. A friend had smuggled in a console and charged the equivalent of 50 cents per hour to play. “Even if the game was in the fourth inning and your hour was up, you were off,” he said. Escobar longed to be like those MLB players. One day, he decided to look like them. In 2004, Escobar, then 21, was playing for the Industriales, a professional team in Havana. The standard uniform included old-style pants with a stripe down the side and high socks, but Escobar decided to wear long pants down to his cleats. Escobar was benched in the fourth inning. His manager scolded him, and Escobar pushed back. He said officials from the baseball commission accused him of subversion and suspended him 21 games. Officials told him he would be sent to a lower-level team and even mentioned early retirement. He also wanted to play shortstop every day but was blocked by veterans. And life was hard already — he was making the equivalent of 10 dollars a month and living with his parents in Marianao, a poor neighborhood in Havana. “I need to get out of here,” he said. “I can’t be in Cuba any longer. I don’t know anything but playing baseball.” But how? Escobar got to know a woman, five years older than him, who was friends with his neighbors. An American of Peruvian descent, she was visiting Havana from Miami, according to Escobar, as part of a church trip. The two started dating. She told him she could him get out of Cuba, and he trusted her. When she returned to the United States, she contacted smugglers and agents, including Joe Kehoskie, then an agent who represented several Cuban players, and introduced herself as Escobar’s girlfriend. “I was trying to make some plans to make that happen without committing federal felonies in the process,” Kehoskie said. “But those guys got impatient and ended up with a couple of smugglers and were brought directly to the U.S.” Escobar said his American friend called one day and put him on the phone with the smugglers. They wanted to get into the growing Cuban baseball player smuggling business and told Escobar to gather a group of five. Escobar told only his non-baseball-playing cousin, Jan Carlos Escobar, and his closest baseball player friends, all similar ages, including his half-brother Yamel Guevara, a good pitching prospect. He didn’t tell his parents. The smugglers told Escobar to be ready to be picked up on his street corner at 4 p.m. on Sept. 24. They hired a truck to pick up Escobar and friends, who had all faked injuries to miss practice that day. The fee was $10,000 per player. “We didn’t bring anything,” Escobar said. “In our minds, we were going straight to the ocean and leaving the country. We thought we were headed straight there.” Instead, Escobar said, they met up with the rest of the group, 36 in all. They tried to leave the country Sept. 27, but the weather was bad. The guides took the group to a different part of Cuba. According to Escobar, they hiked through a jungle and crossed a 400-foot-wide river and slept that night in the trees, where mosquitoes attacked every inch of flesh. “Never again,” said Escobar’s cousin, Jan. Added Escobar: “If we had known what it would be like, I would have stayed in Cuba.” The next morning, they reached a beach. The guide signaled their 32-foot boat with a lantern. The rough passage to Florida took three days. According to Escobar and his cousin, everyone slept on the deck and got sunburned. They ate crackers and drank water. When they ran out of gas, the motor fumes made everyone vomit. Sharks circled the boat. “We were scared,” Escobar’s cousin said. “You don’t mess with the ocean.” Escobar said the boat dropped everyone off at a remote island near Key West on Oct. 4. The Coast Guard picked them up. Escobar said he spent two days at Krome, an immigration detention center in Miami, and kissed the ground when he was released. He called his mother, who feared he was dead. The smugglers picked up the players and took them to their Miami home. For eight months, Escobar and company lived with the smugglers. The original plan was to take the players to another country, such as the Dominican Republic, with fake passports where they could train, establish residency and perhaps command higher signing bonuses by escaping the June 2005 amateur draft. The smugglers wanted to tap into the market that had seen defectors such as Jose Contreras, Kendrys Morales and Danys Baez command multimillion-dollar deals. But Escobar said the smugglers didn’t know what they were doing. He refused to leave the United States because he was scared of getting caught and being sent back to Cuba. And his baseball friends, save for he and Guevara, weren’t prospects. The smugglers — now in prison for other crimes, according to Escobar and Kehoskie — gave the players food, clothes and baseball equipment and treated them well. They took them to daily workouts and tryouts with scouts. Escobar’s girlfriend wanted him to live with her, but he couldn’t leave the house until the smugglers were paid. That meant Escobar needed to enter the 2005 draft. “I was anxious to get out of that house, move on with life, get signed by a team,” he said. “I wanted to get out of there.” The smugglers tried to auction off the players to agents. Kehoskie was invited down from Upstate New York to meet them. He said no to the smugglers’ request of $200,000 up front — “they described it as a referral fee, but it clearly it was a smuggler’s fee or even a ransom payment.” “They were mismanaged for months,” Kehoskie added. “They tried to get free agency for them and failed. They basically dumped all of these guys in the 2005 draft as a way to get rid of them because of the expenses that were piling up and the pressure was on.” Many scouts and agents hadn’t heard of Escobar because he had played in only a few international tournaments and wasn’t a big name in Cuba. But one day while working out, Escobar met former Florida International University assistant baseball coach and Detroit Tigers scout Rolando Casanova, who felt sorry for Escobar and trained him in his free time. Casanova, who died in August, arranged tryouts with other teams’ scouts. “He was the man who did everything for me to get where I am today,” Escobar said. Bart Hernandez, who represented Escobar from just before the 2005 draft until last year, first saw Escobar at a showcase game at Broward Community College. Escobar’s arm, big hands, bat and confidence stood out. “You could see the tools the kid had,” he said. “You could feel the kid was a major league guy.” The Braves drafted Escobar in the second round, signing him for $475,000. Four other players were drafted no higher than the 14th round, falling quickly out of the minor leagues. Guevara, the hard-throwing prospect, hurt his arm because of the many pre-draft tryouts and wound up in independent league baseball. Escobar said he paid the smugglers $50,000, enough to cover the group. He estimated he spent $70,000 more to get seven family members out of Cuba over the years, including his mother, father, grandmother and sister. He longs to return home to visit and see family he left behind. He also said he is no longer in touch with the girlfriend who helped him escape. Attempts to reach her were unsuccessful. “I’ll always be grateful to her,” Escobar said. “When I signed, I asked if she needed anything, but she did it for love.” Since then, Escobar has endured his growing pains and built a career as he matured. He made his major league debut in 2007 with Atlanta and was traded to Toronto in mid-2010, both places where his behavior got him in trouble. He was traded to Tampa Bay before the 2013 season and finally Washington this offseason. While Cuban players are signing for record-breaking deals in the $70 million range, Escobar worked to build his career. He has two children, a big home in Miami and luxury cars, and he can provide for his family — a stark contrast to his beginnings. He is reminded of it all the most when he steps onto the field to play. “I always stop to think about everything, ‘Look at what I’ve got, look at what baseball has gotten me and my family and look at what I’ve accomplished,’” he said. “When I enter that stadium to play baseball, I think about my family. I think about my future even though I know I’m not 22 anymore. I’m 32. I give it my best.”

Poor kids who do everything right don’t do better than rich kids who do everything wrong

America is the land of opportunity, just for some more than others.   It's an educational arms race that's leaving many kids far, far behind. It's depressing, but not nearly so much as this:  Specifically, rich high school dropouts remain in the top about as much as poor college grads stay stuck in the bottom — 14 versus 16 percent, respectively. Not only that, but these low-income strivers are just as likely to end up in the bottom as these wealthy ne'er-do-wells. Some meritocracy.   It's not quite a heads-I-win, tails-you-lose game where rich kids get better educations, yet still get ahead even if they don't—but it's close enough. And if it keeps up, the American Dream will be just that. Related links:

Little League World Series: Mo’Ne Davis and Jackie Robinson West have a big impact

In a hamlet along the Susquehanna River, regal atop a pitcher’s mound at just 13, The _Girl_ of Summer wound and delivered. Her dreadlocked braids flowing beautifully behind her ballcap, she fired in fastball after fastball for strikes. Throaty roars followed, from South Williamsport, Pa., to every tuned- in, awestruck viewer. When Mo’ne Davis was through transfixing us, the kids from Jackie Robinson West on the South Side of Chicago took the baton, churning all the way to the championship game of the Little League World Series, where no all-African American team has won the title. Together, they galvanized a sport and a nation while simultaneously taking many of the Grand Old Game’s stereotypes deep, over the center field wall of Howard J. Lamade Stadium: Girls _can_ beat boys, sometimes by shutout as Davis did, becoming the first female player in Little League World Series history to blank a team as she pitched the Taney Dragons to a victory in her first game. It was a feat that made Sports Illustrated turn its cover over to the youngest athlete ever featured. And larger still: Given opportunity and facilities, young black schoolchildren in America still _do_ care about baseball. In the middle of a diamond, in the middle of every 12- and 13-year-old’s Little League fantasy — in the middle of, sadly, a bubbling racial cauldron in Ferguson, Mo., site of so much black-white tension the past two weeks — something happened in Williamsport that shouldn’t be committed too soon to memory. Seven-year-old Caucasian boys, sliding on cardboard behind the stadium’s outfield fence, asked for autographs from pre-pubescent boys and girls. African American boys and girls. They didn’t care whether their heroes for the week looked like them or came from the same neighborhoods — or that Mo’ne Davis rides a bus an hour and 20 minutes every day to attend a prestigious private school. No. They bonded over baseball, the national pastime in name only now, where three of the game’s greatest living players — Willie Mays, Hank Aaron and Mr. Cub himself, Ernie Banks — now have to look around major league clubhouses and realize that not many African Americans ply their craft anymore in the sport that deified them. In the mid-1970s, 27 percent of major league baseball players were black. By 1995, the number had slipped to just 19 percent. Opening day rosters this past spring showed just 8.3 percent of all big leaguers were African American. The days of kids claiming to be the Say Hey Kid or Hammerin’ Hank, playing stickball in a Harlem street or an Oakland playground, are probably gone forever. But why, we all asked. Because basketball and football involve more immediate gratification and seem to move at warp speed next to four-hour, multiple-switch yawners? Because Michael Jordan and LeBron James are much larger than Ken Griffey Jr. or Mike Trout ever will be? That’s intellectually lazy, since every kid of every ethnicity is drawn to faster and more popular on every level. Economics? Sure. There are 85 scholarships for a big-time college football school to dole out; there are just 11.7 baseball scholarships, traditionally a non-revenue sport in college. For two decades youth baseball has been co-opted more than ever for monetary gain in America, where pay-for-play teams require year-around fanatical commitment, where well-heeled parents pay for individual instruction in what ESPN’s Tim Keown wrote has become “a business enterprise designed to exclude those without the means and mobility to participate.” Jimmie Lee Solomon saw this when Commissioner Bud Selig named him executive vice president of baseball operations in 2005 and then baseball development in 2010. “It’s the old adage, ‘If you build it, they will come,’ with a little twist to account for socioeconomic disproportion: If you build it where they are, they will flourish,” he said. Solomon oversaw Major League Baseball’s first four urban academies, including the first in Compton, Calif. The Washington Nationals have their own now in Fort Dupont as Selig has tried to rectify the problem of luring more African Americans to the game before his January retirement. Six players from Jackie Robinson West belonged to the Chicago White Sox’s ACEs program. The team was a member of the Little League Urban Initiative. Formed in 1999, it supports Little League in needy urban areas. “It’s extremely gratifying to see the programs we started begin to pay off,” Solomon said. “The pride is something so immense it’s hard to verbalize.” Jackie Robinson’s widow did her best. Rachel Robinson, the First Lady of the Grand Old Game whose life is dedicated to making people remember her husband breaking the color barrier in 1947, penned individual letters to members of the U.S. champions from Chicago, including star player Pierce Jones. _Dear Pierce,_ _To have an African-American squad from Chicago, the first from the city to qualify for the Series since 1983, succeed and inspire other young men and women is so meaningful._ _Thank you for upholding the legacy of my husband Jack, your namesake, through your hard work, dedication and excellent teamwork._ Jackie Robinson West fell in the title game to South Korea, 8-4. The Chicago kids were a batter away from bringing the tying run to the plate in the bottom of the sixth inning. Still, at the end, there were no visible tears on the ABC broadcast, mostly smiling, proud kids understanding they simply got beat by a better team. The end hardly dampened the significance of the moment. Let’s be clear: The Little League World Series is grist for so many issues involving our youth every year. It’s fair to argue, for example, whether children should have to risk nationally televised failure in front of millions. It’s also fair to point out the inequities between the competitors and the people who pocket the money, especially after a Mo’ne Davis-signed baseball reportedly went for $300 on eBay last week. Really, should kids with bedtimes double as unpaid commercial endorsers? Mo’ne’s game Wednesday night against Las Vegas had a larger viewing audience than every major league telecast on ESPN besides the Home Run Derby the past seven years. It was network’s biggest baseball draw since 5.3 million watched the Red Sox-Yankees in April 2007. But the past two weeks, so many of those questions felt like they were best answered another day. This summer, Williamsport was treated to something utopian: a tournament that reflected the demographics of the nation — a 13-year-old fireball right-hander named Mo’ne Davis, Pierce Jones and the power and grace of one of the first all-African American teams to make the championship game. And the people who watched them heal so many fractured souls. Among them were members of the 1955 South Cannon Street YMCA All-Stars in Charleston, S.C., an all-black team that all 61 white teams in South Carolina refused to play at the time. All past 70 years old, their members sat dignified at Lamade Stadium on Sunday afternoon. John Bailey, one of five members of the team who attended the game, added, “I felt kind of exonerated.” The 71-year-old grandfather of six spoke at 9 p.m. from his Kensington home after he returned from Williamsport. “To see the boys from Jackie Robinson West represented and do the things we could not do in 1955, I finally felt closure.”

Mr. Sanders ignores reality, and his followers get hurt

The studies by the Urban Institute and the Tax Policy Center  referenced in the May 10 editorial “Too good to be true” are the latest and perhaps most rigorous analyses of the extreme fiscal irresponsibility of major policy proposals from Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Mr. Sanders most likely will ignore the details of this reality check, as he has done with previous analyses. The tragedy is that he continues to exploit the idealism of the young and the desperation of the victims of economic inequality knowing full well that his promises are hopelessly utopian. It is one thing to spin pipe dreams when one is content to be a marginal figure in Congress. It is quite another when one proposes to take the highest position of responsibility for the welfare of our nation. In the end, it becomes a matter of character. Is Mr. Sanders a realistic progressive reformer or another in a long line of utopian dreamers indifferent to the fates of their followers? ****Roderick French** , Bethesda**

Baseball’s manufactured sensibilities

_“Baseball just doesn’t have rules from another time. It has an old-fashioned code, too. When you score in baseball, the code says: ‘You better not look too happy about it.’ . . . It’s the only game where there’s a ‘right way’ to play the game . . . the way it was played 100 years ago. This code doesn’t exist in other places where they play baseball, like Korea, where bat flipping is an art form, or the Caribbean, where the game is a carnival.”_ — Chris Rock, HBO’s “Real Sports,” April 2015 Baseball imitated Chris Rock’s searing humor Wednesday after Jose Bautista launched a pitch from Sam Dyson into the furthest reaches of Toronto’s Buck Rogers Centre. Bautista glared at the baseball he had turned into a missile and ever so briefly stared at some of his Texas opponents who witnessed it. He then defiantly flung away his bat as if it was a sword with which he slew a dragon. The home run proved to win the playoff series for Bautista’s Blue Jays, and Bautista’s bat flip provoked anger from Dyson, some other players, a number of fans and some of my colleagues in the media. “Jose needs to calm that down,” Dyson said he told one of Bautista’s teammates in the wake of the moment. “Just kind of respect the game a little more. “He’s a huge role model for the younger generation that’s coming up and playing this game,” Dyson expanded later. “He’s doing stuff that kids do in whiffle ball games and backyard baseball. It shouldn’t be done.” Dyson is a 27-year-old white Floridian. Bautista, whom Dyson scolded and lectured as if he were a child who had acted out in fine restaurant, is a 34-year-old from the Dominican half of Hispaniola, the first stop in the transatlantic slave trade. It was an anecdotal reminder of the culturally paternalistic nature of baseball, which became this nation’s pastime during the first half of the last century when it overtly supported racial supremacy norms of the times. In baseball, there aren’t just reasonable expectations on the field of play like fair play and honesty. There are demands for humility and restrictions on calling attention to yourself. And it all gets camouflaged under the cloak of sportsmanship, no matter that baseball was anything but sportsmanlike to generations of men simply because of the color of their skin. But that is what baseball’s keepers hearken to when they sound their mantra to play the game the way it was meant to be played. It is back to a time when the game didn’t include players — 29.3 percent this season — from Afro-Latin countries like Bautista’s Dominican Republic, Yoenis Cespedes’s Cuba or Carlos Beltran’s Puerto Rico and another 8.3 percent from the progeny of enslaved Africans in this country. It is the imposition of its manufactured sensibilities, no matter how nonsensical, on others. Indeed, a USA Today Sports study earlier this month quantifiably evidenced the cultural dissonance in baseball. It found that of 67 bench-clearing incidents in the major leagues over the past five seasons, the main antagonists hailed from different ethnic backgrounds in 87 percent of the events. A little more than half of the events — 34 — pitted white Americans against foreign-born Latinos, while four more featured white Americans vs. U.S.-born Latinos. There is disingenuousness in baseball’s American-only way of comporting yourself, too. As Bautista and his organic emotional reaction of bat flipping were being harangued around the country, the game itself was virtually promoting the act on its Web site with a video of another player trying it as if he was engaged in the time-honored practice of shagging flyballs. Then there was the not so small case coming into this season of Cuban slugger Yasiel Puig, who caused quite a kerfuffle last season with his frequent exercise of bat flipping. It drew him criticism and scorn. It also earned him the cover of one of baseball’s most popular video games, MLB The Show, which included a special feature for him: bat flipping after hitting home runs. Baseball isn’t our only sport that appears to force conformity upon those who once were locked out of its fields and arenas of play. In the aftermath of the brawl at a Pacers game in Detroit that also included fans, the NBA essentially sought to cleanse its game, as Williams College political scientist Stuart Alan Clarke once observed, of “black men misbehaving.” It imposed a dress code to make its melanin-rich x-generation athletes look less like the stars of the hip-hop culture in which they were born and more like the New York lawyers who worked all around Manhattan near the league’s offices. It airbrushed the tattoos from superstar Allen Iverson when it featured him on one of its league magazine covers. It dared for a moment to seek the employment of GOP image- maker Matthew Dowd to recast the league’s look. Once football began letting players groomed at historically black colleges onto its fields, it began to legislate against the style they brought to the game — celebrations considered gratuitous were flagged, as was incessant banter interpreted as trash talking, genuflecting seen as taunting and accessorizing uniforms in a way viewed as distracting attention from the concept of team. But no sport dug in so deep for so long to withstand the gradual but seismic deviation from what was its norm as baseball. No wonder, Chris Rock added, that teams build “fake antique” stadiums. It’s yet another reminder of how much it loves its problematic past. Kevin B. Blackistone, ESPN panelist and visiting professor at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, writes sports commentary for The Post.

Expect a trickle, not a wave, of major league baseball talent from Cuba

Given the ceremony and emotion surrounding Tuesday’s exhibition game in Havana between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Cuban national team – a game billed as “historic,” what with President Obama’s appearance alongside Cuban President Raul Castro at Estadio Latinoamericano — there is a tenor that normalized relations between the United States and Cuba could not only offer a better, safer path for Cuban players to the big leagues but could also fundamentally change the talent level in Major League Baseball. But among major league clubs, as well as player agents who are also looking for new pipelines of talent, there is some level of consensus that the best Cuban players from this generation are already in the United States. Box scores are filled with them: Yoenis Cespedes and Jose Abreu launching homers, Jose Fernandez and Aroldis Chapman recording strikeouts. The talent that remains in Cuba at the moment wouldn’t be enough alter the sport, according to baseball executives and agents. “We see it as an older, lesser established Dominican Republic,” said one major league general manager who, like others, requested anonymity both because of the sensitivity of the political situation and the negotiations. “Most of the young talent has been identified and signed.” The symbolism of Tuesday’s events in Havana — a U.S. president addressing the Cuban people, a baseball game between major leaguers and the Cuban national team, American and Cuban flags flying side-by-side – is inescapable. The Rays’ trip to play the Cubans further solidifies the idea that if diplomacy between the two countries continues to rise, baseball will be the public representation, because the sport is woven into the history and culture of both countries. All baseball parties on the Rays’ trip, led by Commissioner Rob Manfred and players association chief Tony Clark, are preaching caution and patience. This is a delicate diplomatic process involving, as Manfred pointed out Monday at a news conference in Havana, at least four parties – Major League Baseball, the players association, and the governments of both countries, not to mention the state-run Cuban league. “It is a complicated issue that implicates policies that are far bigger than baseball,” Manfred said. Signing players from Cuba has been somewhat risky for major league clubs and downright dangerous for the players. The only way for Cubans to play in the majors was to defect, sometimes in ill-equipped boats, occasionally in deals made with agents that amount to human trafficking. Last month a grand jury in Miami charged agent Bart Hernandez with human trafficking surrounding the case of outfielder Leonys Martin, alleging that Hernandez smuggled Martin out of Cuba for financial gain. Normalization of relations between the two countries would be a huge step toward eliminating those cases. “I think we are all on the side of discussing the safest way for players to realize their dream perhaps of playing in Major League Baseball,” Clark, the players union chief, said at the news conference. Once players reached other countries – the Dominican Republic is a popular stop – agents would arrange tryouts for major league clubs. But that gave scouts just snippets of information with which to evaluate players. Yes, the Cuban national team might play in overseas tournaments and be evaluated there, and statistics were readily available. But big league clubs, officials say, don’t have a deep understanding of the talent that remains. “We have knowledge, but it’s in bits and pieces,” another major league general manager said. “If relations are normalized, it may not necessarily lead to a big influx of talent, but rather a more informed assessment of said talent.” There are also questions about how that talent, even if it’s more accurately assessed, would be acquired. MLB has disparate systems for players to join clubs – a domestic draft that also covers Puerto Rico; an international free agent system in which players from Latin America are signed as 16-year-olds; and an international posting system for those playing professionally in Japan and Korea. That last system, officials say, seems to make the most sense for Cuba. But there’s an issue: to procure a player from Japan, major league teams pay a posting fee, usually of several million dollars, to a player’s Japanese team for the right to negotiate with the player. The Cuban teams are all state-run. As another major league general manager said: “Would we be paying $20 million to the Cuban government? I’m not sure how that would work.” What is plain is that Cuban players have had an enormous impact on the American game, dating back to Luis Tiant and Tony Oliva and Minnie Minoso and beyond. This year’s All-Star Game in San Diego could be dotted with any number of Cuban players. There is also a next generation that has already defected, led by Yoan Moncada, a 20-year-old shortstop signed by the Boston Red Sox for $31.5 million last year. And there are players, such as brothers Yulieski and Lourdes Gourriel, who have already left Cuba in hopes of signing with a major league club. According to baseball-reference.com, 192 Cuban-born players have made it to the majors since 1900. How many major league-caliber players remain on the island, including those who face the Rays on Tuesday, remains to be seen regardless of the status of relations between the two countries.

Meet The Post’s four female reporters covering D.C.’s sports teams

To me, the best sports stories reveal a sense of place. They also see beyond the heavily marketed pomp and pageantry of sports. This story, set in a small, impoverished pocket of Johannesburg known as Alexandra, where most of the 180,000 residents live in cramped shacks without running water, was my best effort to do that. I wrote it at the end of a six-week assignment in South Africa that took me from Johannesburg to Cape Town and back and taught me much about the country’s tremendous strides toward reconciliation post-Apartheid, as well as the scourge of poverty and joblessness that persists in so many townships in Apartheid’s aftermath. Against the backdrop of Alexandra, I marveled at the power of the World Cup to bridge racial, ethnic and socio-economic divides and confronted its profligate expense and the windfall of glory and riches that accrue to relatively few.

How the Nationals found Clint Robinson

Before he became the feel-good story of the spring, a darkhorse candidate that was the last man standing, Clint Robinson was a minor league free agent. The 30-year-old spent the previous season with the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Class AAA team in Albuquerque. In 119 games, he hit .312, par for the course of his career. In 921 career minor league games, Robinson is a .302 hitter with 141 home runs. He once won a triple crown At Class AA Northwest Arkansas in 2010. As far as minor league hitters go, Robinson was among the most accomplished available.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Robinson, with only 13 major league at-bats to his name, just needed an another opportunity. So one December day, he opened his inbox and found an e-mail out of the blue from Nationals director of player development Mark Scialabba. The Nationals, in search of left-handed hitters, told Robinson they thought he could be a fit and wanted to talk to his agent. After a chat with the Nationals, Robinson’s agent called to tell him to call Doug Harris, the Nationals’ farm director. The two talked — “a good conversation,” Robinson said — and, soon after, Harris finalized Robinson’s minor league deal with his agent. Teams sign many minor league free agents every winter and few make the big league team. After the 2014 season ended, Harris, Scialabba and Nationals officials put together a list of minor league free agents to target based on scouting and advanced statistics reports. They wanted a left-handed bat to complement as the Nationals’ major league team is heavy on right-handers. “His track record stood out against the rest,” Harris said. “He was very highly-ranked on our list.” Harris had seen Robinson play before but in the lower levels of the minor leagues. Other Nationals minor league coaches knew a lot about Robinson, who was a 25th round pick out of Troy University by the Royals in 2007 and spent six years in that system. The Royals scouting director who drafted Robinson? Former Nationals’ special assistant Deric Ladnier, who was hired by the Diamondbacks this winter after Robinson signed with Washington. Minor league coaches Mark Harris, Jeff Garber and Patrick Anderson had coached in the Royals’ system and spoke highly of Robinson’s left-handed swing and character. Doug Harris, too, was a former Royals farmhand in the 1990s. Robinson said he received mild interest from the Dodgers after the season ended but their front office changed this winter. The Twins, White Sox and Reds called, too, but the Nationals showed the strong interest and first, too. A former Albuquerque teammate, Brock Peterson, a former Washington farmhand, spoke highly of the Nationals. Robinson thought he had a good chance of making the Nationals because of the departure of left-handed first baseman Adam LaRoche. “And then all the other moves happened and I was like, ‘Oh well,'” he said. Robinson wasn’t disheartened. After all, he hit .333/.404/.608  with nine extra-base hits in 51 spring at-bats. Primarily a first baseman, he worked diligently in the outfield as the Nationals asked. And after Saturday’s exhibition game, Manager Matt Williams called Robinson into his office to tell him had made the team. Before Monday’s season opener, Robinson was beaming as he walked through the clubhouse and chatted. “The simplicity in his approach allows him to hit each and every pitch,” Harris said. “He’s always hit but now he’s so simple, and that helps put him in a position to hit a lot off different types of pitches. It’s gratifying to see him make the most of his opportunity.” An opportunity that started with an email.

Aiming to be an Olympian? Long-shot goals may make you ignore small victories.

My favorite baseball team lost this weekend, and that made me think about the goals we set for teams and for kids who play sports. My favorite team is the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) Retrievers because my son, Liam, is the team’s pitching coach. The Retrievers qualified for the 2017 NCAA tournament by winning their conference (America East) tournament for the first time. But in the NCAA tournament, UMBC was eliminated when the Retrievers lost to Wake Forest and the University of Maryland. The Retrievers didn’t expect to win the NCAA competition, which includes such baseball powers as Oregon State, Louisiana State and Florida. Those schools and others have much bigger programs and spend more money on baseball than UMBC. Lots of teams start the season with brave talk about going to the Super Bowl or winning the NCAA title. Surprises happen in sports, but most teams do not have a real chance of winning it all. Take a Major League Baseball team such as the Philadelphia Phillies. Philadelphia has a bunch of young players who are a long way from a championship. Forget the World Series or even the playoffs: A realistic goal for the Phils this year would be to get better as the season goes along and win maybe half their remaining games. (As of Wednesday, they had won 21 games and lost 35.) It’s the same with kids who play sports. I know that lots of kids dream of competing some day in the World Cup, the Olympics or the Wimbledon tennis championships. Those dreams are a long shot at best. A more realistic goal for any 10- or 12-year-old who loves sports is to play on a high school team. Then if you keep getting better and you still love to play, you can think about a college scholarship or playing in the pros. Kids should aim high, but coaches and parents should be reasonable in the goals they set for the kids and what it takes to reach those goals. Improving your skills, being a better teammate and helping your team to have a winning season are all good goals. Sometimes the folks on television and even in the newspapers pay so much attention to world champions, national champions and even state champions that they send the wrong message to kids — that those big championships are the only goals worth celebrating. Sixty-four teams qualify for the NCAA baseball and softball tournaments. Only one team in each tournament wins it all. Does that mean the other 63 teams are losers? I don’t think so. A good season, a first conference championship, some surprise wins are all worth celebrating. The truth is that you don’t have to win it all to be a winner. Bowen writes the sports opinion column for KidsPost. He will be speaking at Kensington Park Library in Maryland on Saturday at 11 a.m.

Michael Gerson: New tactics for a renewed War on Poverty

Assessing the outcome of the War on Poverty — announced 50 years ago — has always been complicated by the hopes it initially inspired. After his election in 1964, Lyndon Johnson proclaimed that Americans were living in “the most hopeful times since Christ was born in Bethlehem.” Which raised expectations pretty high — and placed LBJ in the manger. Elsewhere in the same vein, he said, “For the first time in our history, it is possible to conquer poverty.” The actual result — as in most complex endeavors — is mixed. Programs such as Medicare and Medicaid are woven tightly into the fabric of American life. Both are costly and need serious reform — and represent some of the most admirable, humane moral advances of the 20th century. The War on Poverty’s increase in Social Security benefits dramatically reduced poverty among the elderly, with few unintended social or behavioral consequences. Nutrition programs have fortified generations of children, while encouraging dependence on . . . food. Other efforts, such as the expansion of Aid to Families with Dependent Children, became political shorthand for unintended social and behavioral consequences, leading a Democratic presidential candidate to promise an end to “welfare as we know it.” For decades, the federal role in improving education for low-income children was a resounding, embarrassing, scandalous failure. Some of LBJ’s ideas, such as Head Start, still seem so promising that we keep trying to get them right, even when social science finds modest results. Political judgments on the War on Poverty are generally little more than an ideological Rorschach test. But beyond simple pronouncements of failure or success, a few things are clear: The federal government has met some human needs on a vast scale; it also does not know how to conquer poverty. The United States, at all levels of government, spent about $1 trillion on transfer programs last year, while more than 40 million people remain below the poverty line. If you were making a judgment about the War on Poverty in, say, 1968, it would have seemed an unqualified success. A decline in the poverty rate seemed closely correlated with increasing expenditures. But progress quickly ran into economic and social obstacles that are not addressed by government payments. Advancing technology and globalization began draining the country of decent-paying, lower-skill jobs. Many American educational institutions proved incapable of imparting higher skills — or basic skills, for that matter. At the same time, social trends began undermining family structure and community health. (The tie between single-parent households and poverty is an economic, not a moral, assertion. Poor single parents naturally find it harder to hold full-time jobs and invest in the welfare of their children.) This is a type of poverty that Johnson could not foresee: a decline in blue-collar jobs, rooted in global trends, requiring workers to gain skills that schools could not reliably impart, leaving whole communities economically depressed and isolated, while many children were deprived of economically stable and supportive two-parent families, leading to dangerously stalled social mobility and creating divisions of class that are inconsistent with the American ideal. These problems — which reinforce and complicate each other — still require the effort and idealism of the War on Poverty. But the methods will need to be very different. Neither traditional safety-net programs nor economic growth alone is sufficient. A new (and hopefully renamed) War on Poverty would require improvements in labor markets — increasing the skills of workers and the rewards of work, and reaching many who are entirely alienated from the workforce. And it would require encouraging the norm of marriage before childbirth and catalyzing the work of community institutions (including religious nonprofits), which give people the skills and values to succeed in a free economy. Note that a comprehensive effort would require flexibility on both sides of the ideological spectrum. For liberals, there is a difference between using social mobility as a unifying national goal and employing economic inequality as a political cudgel. For conservatives, a preference for the work of markets and civil society can’t be used as an excuse for inaction when civil society is beleaguered and overwhelmed (in part) by powerful economic trends. Recent Republican anti-poverty initiatives have been rhetorically promising but substantively thin. Yet given the seriousness of persistent poverty, any president, or aspiring president, must take the stage that LBJ mounted — and still dominates half a century later. _Read more fromMichael Gerson’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook _. **Read more about this issue:** Dana Milbank: The GOP’s War on the War on Poverty Katrina vanden Heuvel: The impoverished Republican poverty agenda Robert Rector: How Obama has gutted welfare reform

American League surprise teams, good and bad, of the 2013 season

There’s an old saying in sports: “That’s why they play the games.” There are plenty of games remaining in the 2013 season, but for many clubs, expectations have already been exceeded — or are out of reach. Some disappointing clubs are clinging to a glimmer of hope, but the standings in mid-August already tell some of the season’s story.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **AL West**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University When the Houston Astros made the AL West a fivesome before this season, some front-offices grumbled that the expected struggles of the Astros coupled with the unbalanced schedule would create plentiful easy wins for the teams ahead of them and a glut of playoff teams from the division. Texas and Oakland have held steady, but the unexpected result in this division belongs to the Angels. Considered to be one of the three playoff contenders in the division, Los Angeles is in fourth place behind the Mariners. The Astros have a lot of games within the division (17-36), but so have the Angels (18-33). Seattle has actually played over .500 (27-24) in the division, while falling 10 games below .500 overall. Nothing went right for the Angels this year. Some of it may have been expected, but, for the most part, the epic struggles of Albert Pujols and Josh Hamilton went beyond even the most cynical projections. **AL Central**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University There are few surprises in the heartland of the American League. The Tigers have established themselves as one of the best — if not the best — team in the league. the Indians and Royals upgraded this winter, and it seems to have worked, at least for now. The Twins and White Sox struggled, as most anticipated. But the South Siders have put  their worst performance in decades. Some times a bad team is even worse than you expected. **AL East**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The premier division in baseball has lived up to its billing. The Red Sox and Rays are in their typical positions, with 2012’s darlings, the Orioles, hanging on behind them. Still, things haven’t exactly gone as planned. The Blue Jays made major moves to pull themselves into contention, but they have floundered and are the only AL East team play sub-.500 baseball. Given the Yankees’ roster issues, it’s a surprise they are above .500. Is it possible that Joe Girardi has had his best year as a manager? Without Derek Jeter or, for the most part, Alex Rodriguez, the Yankees had an abysmal left side of their infield. Until they acquired Alfsono Soriano they had a nearly complete lack of power from the right-handed batter’s box. While not in serious contention, the Bronx non-Bombers have kept their heads above water. That’s an impressive feat with a weakened lineup and a tough division. **Setting Expectations**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The next six weeks should see a big battle for supremacy in the AL East. No one wants to be the wild-card race and risk being knocked out in a single-game playoff. The AL West is setting up much like the AL East, but without the third contender. On the flip side, Cleveland and Kansas City are anxious to chase down either Tampa or Oakland to nab their golden ticket. So while fans in Boston or Arlington, Tex., mght lament a wild-card bid, folks in two Midwest cities may be looking to that shot as the season’s great hope.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

She’ll pitch to the big boys: Knuckleballer first woman in collegiate West Coast League

A female knuckleballer will be joining the ranks of college baseball players hoping to make an impact this summer in the West Coast League. Claire Eccles, a 19-year-old who plays softball for the University of British Columbia, will play for the Victoria HarbourCats in the 11-team league that attracts some of the best collegiate players in North America.   She played baseball on boys’ teams growing up but was made to switch to softball when she reached high school. But she picked up the sport again as a player in Baseball Canada’s women’s provincial program. A spot on the Canadian national team soon followed, along with appearances in the Women’s Baseball World Cup and Pan-American Games.   “We’re just going to get everyone involved and show that in 2017 this isn’t different, this isn’t weird. It’s normal.” Normal might be a stretch, which is what makes this pretty cool. Eccles will be the only woman in a league that counts several notable MLB players as alumni, including the Orioles’ Chris Davis, the Royals’ Jason Hammel, the Angels’ Bud Norris and the Yankees’ Jacoby Ellsbury. “You have to wonder: ‘Is this just for their own publicity?’ ” Eccles said, also mentioning that she thought of the recently canceled TV show “Pitch” when Norris-Jones reached out to her. “[But] Brad said I’d get fair opportunities and it’s not just for show.” The knuckleball gives Eccles a wrinkle most pitchers won’t have. The erratic pitch, which Eccles said took her about a year to develop, “dances” as it leaves the pitcher’s hand and can be difficult to read for batters. It’s a difficult pitch to master, and there have been relatively few knuckleballers in the major leagues. Only one pitcher, R.A. Dickey, has been awarded the Cy Young, and the all-star pitcher was one of the first to jump on social media to wish Eccles luck following the announcement.

MLB committee to name Selig successor

NEW YORK — Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig moved a step closer to the end of his 23-year tenure Thursday, announcing the formation of a seven-person search committee, made up of team owners, tasked with identifying his successor ahead of his scheduled January 2015 retirement. “I know a lot of people, including my own family, have had a hard time accepting it,” Selig said of persistent speculation that he would remain as commissioner. “But 23 years is enough. I’ve accepted [the notion of retirement], frankly, over the last five or six months. I’m not sure this [announcement] is going to make it any more real.” The committee, chaired by St. Louis Cardinals owner Bill DeWitt Jr., began meeting secretly this spring, and DeWitt vowed to conduct the search process in complete confidentiality. To that end, DeWitt declined to provide specific answers to questions about potential candidates or timetables. The ideal next commissioner, DeWitt said, would be “a visionary leader who has passion for the game, and will look to maintain integrity of the game, grow the game of baseball and build on the tremendous achievements and legacy of” Selig. Rob Manfred, baseball’s executive vice president for economics and league affairs, is viewed within the industry as the leading candidate to succeed his current boss, and Tim Brosnan, MLB’s executive vice president for business, is another strong internal candidate. Several prominent team owners and top executives could also be candidates, including Detroit’s Dave Dombrowski, Milwaukee’s Mark Attansio, Toronto’s Paul Beeston, Arizona’s Derrick Hall and Sandy Alderson of the New York Mets. DeWitt would not say whether the committee — which also includes the owners of the Colorado Rockies, Philadelphia Phillies, Los Angeles Angels, Pittsburgh Pirates, Minnesota Twins and Chicago White Sox — would consider candidates from outside the sport’s current power structure. But there is certain to be speculation regarding former President George W. Bush, who owned the Texas Rangers prior to becoming governor of Texas. **Note:** Selig said he is “very worried” about the increase in elbow injuries among young pitchers across baseball, but stopped short of advocating specific remedies.

We tell ourselves sports are politically neutral. That’s a lie.

Let a thousand raised fists bloom.    Patriotic displays are hardly the only political thing about professional sports.   More broadly, professional sports leagues are also places where we work out big, complex social issues. Leagues’ decisions about how to handle domestic violence and sexual assault, for example, help set the tone around discussions of these issues and make stark statements about what kind of behavior fans will excuse from the players they love. The continued gap between the attention and financial investments devoted to men’s and women’s sports speak to a lingering gender divide. Professional sports were the site of major public conversations around integration. Once men of color were allowed to play alongside their white counterparts, sports became evidence that conservatives could point to when they wanted to argue that America offered equal opportunity to everyone, regardless of color. College athletes’ experiences raise important questions about fair compensation, whether the colleges that recruit them are failing to provide them with adequate educations, or raking in money earned by athletes who aren’t paid and can’t even accept favors or hire agents to advocate for their interests. And for all that fabulously wealthy professional athletes may not inspire much pity, their contract negotiations force the public to confront who ought to benefit from players’ work on the field. In this context, athletes like Kaepernick aren’t injecting politics into sports. Rather, they’re joining a series of conversations already in progress, some of which have been designed in ways that marginalize dissenting views. Even beyond the specific issues of racial injustice they’ve embraced, the work they’re doing to puncture the apolitical facade that hovers over professional sports like an expensive, hermetically sealed dome on a taxpayer-financed stadium is a profound public service.

Yoenis Cespedes, Yasiel Puig hang Jose Fernandez jerseys in their dugouts

The death Sunday of Marlins pitcher Jose Fernandez stunned the baseball world and those far beyond, but it was arguably felt most deeply by the Cuban community, including several MLB players. Two of Fernandez’s compatriots, who also fled that country to become baseball stars, paid a special tribute to Fernandez on Sunday during their respective teams’ games. The Mets’ Yoenis Cespedes and the Dodgers’ Yasiel Puig both hung a Fernandez jersey in their dugouts. The jerseys were of New York and Los Angeles, respectively, but they bore the late pitcher’s name and uniform number.  Puig also took to Twitter to honor Fernandez, whom he got to know after both had made it to the MLB level. Each player had made numerous attempts to defect from Cuba before succeeding in harrowing fashion, Fernandez in 2008 and Puig in 2012. https://twitter.com/YasielPuig/status/780090281286696961  Cespedes, who defected from Cuba in 2011, added that Mets executive Jeff Wilpon had the idea for the jersey tribute, but the outfielder wanted to be the one to hang it in the dugout “just to let everyone know how much his loss meant to us.” “All of baseball is shocked and saddened by the sudden passing of Miami Marlins pitcher José Fernández,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement. “He was one of our game’s great young stars who made a dramatic impact on and off the field since his debut in 2013. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family, the Miami Marlins organization and all of the people he touched in his life.”