K.C.’s urban ‘jewel’:
Academies prep urban youth for life
Baseball youth academy marries a city’s rich history within
the game with its present desire to empower inner-city kids.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. – There is a neighborhood not far from the city’s business district that is known by the name of its main intersection, 18th & Vine. It was once a prosperous area of Blackowned businesses, where at the local YMCA in 1920, the original charter was signed to create the Negro National League.
Municipal Stadium was on the area’s southern edge. There, the legendary Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues played, featuring Satchel Paige and, in 1945, a young shortstop named Jackie Robinson. On the northern side of the neighborhood was Parade Park, where countless amateur baseball games convened. Frank White, who later earned eight Gold Gloves as the second baseman for the Kansas City Royals, played there while attending a nearby community college.
By 1990, the neighborhood had fallen into disrepair. That’s when Buck O’Neil, a former player and manager for the Monarchs, suggested a museum should be built.
“When we build it, we will help resurrect 18th & Vine,” Bob Kendrick, now president of the the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, recalls O’Neill saying.
The Royals also played an important role in the revitalization of this neighborhood, with team GM Dayton Moore advocating for a baseball academy.
“More important than winning the World Series,” Kyle Vena, now the senior director of baseball operations/administration for the Royals, recalls Moore saying.
The Kansas City Urban Youth Academy now sits where so many Black youngsters once played sandlot games at Parade Park. It is one of 11 such facilities in what MLB refers to as The Academy Network, with the first opening in Compton, California, in 2006.
“The academy in Kansas City is one of our jewels,” says Tony Reagins, MLB’s chief baseball development officer.
Kansas City’s unique setting is at the center of MLB’s initiative to resuscitate interest in the inner cities and among African Americans.
“Its backdrop is the Negro Leagues Museum, so that links the past with the future,” Reagins says.
Fewer Black faces
It’s no secret that executives at MLB headquarters are concerned about the decline in the
number of Black players in the sport. According to a 2016 study by the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), 18.5% of Major League Baseball players were Black in 1975. Forty-five seasons later, the figure has dipped below 8%.
There is one African American running the baseball operations for an MLB team. (Ken Williams is the executive VP of the White Sox.) Only one is atop a franchise’s org chart, as Derek Jeter is the CEO and minority owner of the Marlins.
It’s been apparent for a couple of decades that young Blacks have opted for sports
other than baseball.
“We missed out on an entire generation to other sports,” laments Vena. “Through the ’ 90s and beyond, kids all wanted to ‘be like Mike’ and become Michael Jordan.”
Kendrick points to several causes for the decline in African American participation in baseball. In years past, kids flocked to sandlots to play pickup games of baseball. “That’s now a thing of the past,” he says. “What was once a blue-collar sport is essentially a country club sport now,” with the high cost of youth travel teams and year-round instruction.
Starting in 1947, Jackie Robinson and many other immensely talented Black players broke through the sport’s color barrier, paving the way for advancements in other walks of life. In some ways, though, this integration of society hurt the business of Black Baseball.
As the Negro Leagues disappeared by 1960, teams that were so ingrained in the African American community were gone, taking with them role models for Black youth.
“It didn’t matter how much money Satchel Paige or Buck O’Neil made. They lived in the same neighborhood as us, and
the stadiums were in the heart of urban centers during that era of American segregation,” Kendrick says. “It kind of died with integration.”
Without baseball so ingrained in communities, there were fewer Black businesses to sponsor youth teams and fewer Black churches organizing leagues, he says.
He adds that sports are “aspirational, because you have to see yourself in these roles in order to aspire to be there. With the NFL and NBA, (Black youth) see a proliferation of Americanborn Black faces. Not in Major League Baseball anymore.”
Reversing the trend?
Kansas City’s academy, the newest in MLB’s network, operates with a staff of 24. It features three full-size outdoor baseball fields and one for softball. A 40,000-square-foot building houses an artificial turf infield, training facilities and classroom space.
“This is everything that Buck O’Neil dreamed about, to utilize the park he loved to help kids pursue life-long career opportunities in the sport,” notes Vena.
The outdoor facilities cost $7 million to build, with funds coming from the state of Missouri, the city of Kansas City, Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association. The Royals then spearheaded a $13 million fundraising campaign to complete the complex.
Noteworthy donations came from Garth Brooks, who helped pay for an elevated, state-ofthe-art press box, and $3 million directly from Royals players. The team’s front office has committed $500,000 a year for the next 20 years to cover the administrative overhead so that all additional money raised goes directly to the kids through programming.
The complex was designed by local firm Populous, known internationally as the architects of major stadiums and arenas. Populou discounted its normal fees significantly for Kansas City’s project.
“What the academy stands for is something that Populous was happy to contribute to however we could,” says firm princi
pal Steve Boyd, lead designer of the facility.
Placing more importance on developing Black players, MLB and the Players Association announced a $10 million commitment to The Players Alliance in September. The mission of The Alliance, a nonprofit comprised of more than 100 current and former Black big leaguers, is to create more opportunities for the Black community in and out of the game.
Now that The Alliance has the funding from MLB and MLBPA, “we can collectively bring our voices together and really go out there and make change,” organization president Curtis Granderson told the MLB Network.
“The Players Alliance and the Academy Network are certainly aligned,” Reagins says. “I think both the MLBPA and Major League Baseball can do a better job in changing the narrative. At the end of the day, if we want our country to be better, our athletes to be better (and) our society to be better, we have to in
vest in our young people.”
Raising ‘citizens’
The objective of the 11 academies goes beyond converting young inner-city athletes into major leaguers a decade from now. While acknowledging the need for more Black players, Reagins explains that “it’s probably more important that we develop the ‘major league citizen.’ A lot of the young people aren’t going to make it to the major leagues, but they can go back to their communities and share what they’ve learned amongst their peers and family.”
Adds Steve Arocho, senior director of communications & youth engagement at MLB headquarters, “The academies aren’t just to make a pipeline of pro players. They’re to make communities better.”
Darwin Pennye, who had a five-year career in pro baseball, is the executive director of the academy in Kansas City. While the facilities are in place to maximize a young player’s athletic
talents, he points out that the academy’s “first job is to determine the basic need of every kid here. Then you can address the whole person.”
This is why 10,000 square feet of the indoor facility is devoted to classroom space, training rooms, individual study areas, meeting space and the kitchen for a concession stand. It encourages young people to get interested in becoming a trainer, broadcaster, sportswriter, coach, groundskeeper or umpire, working in the entertainment or hospitality aspect at games or becoming a member of an MLB team’s front office.
Royals employees volunteer as mentors at the academy, teaching about career options in the business of baseball.
All the academies provide tutoring and homework assistance.
“We see the kids grow fourfold,” says Pennye. “There’s the physical component, the social component, the academic component and the spiritual component.”
Success stories
In its first decade and a half, MLB’s Academy Network is paying dividends. Outfielder Aaron Hicks and catcher Kyle Higashioka were major contributors during the Yankees’ playoff run. They both played at the original academy in Compton.
“The academy was great because it gave me a place with professional-caliber coaches and facilities to work out and play against top quality competition,” Higashioka told USA TODAY Sports. Though he lives in Oregon, he traveled to Compton to speak at the academy.
Malachi Moore, who hails from Compton, made his major league debut as an umpire this season. He umpired at the academy, and returns there in the offseason to teach umpiring.
“Everybody thinks the pathway to a baseball diamond is being a player. Sometimes you can get there other ways,” says Reagins about Moore.
Pennye loves to talk about two success stories in K.C.
C.L. Stacker came to the academy as a teenager. His refined skills resulted in a scholarship offer to play baseball at Kansas Christian College. He signed his letter of intent at the academy, but 30 minutes later, Stacker suffered a gunshot wound to his abdomen when he intervened on behalf of a relative in a domestic dispute.
“He recovered, but the old C.L. would’ve wanted to get even,” says Pennye. “The new C.L. is on track to graduate college.”
And then there’s Elijah Rush. He started playing as a youngster in MLB’s Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) program. He arrived at the academy as a 17 year-old “with no goals in life,” says Pennye. “We helped him establish a path to go to college while working here. He’d take a bus an hour each way to get here. He’s now a studentathlete at Kansas City Kansas Community College and works at Kauffman (Stadium) as a bat boy and clubhouse attendant.”
Says Vena, “We need to turn that one Elijah Rush into five Elijah Rushes.”