Stargell: College job tough choice
On the northside of Pine Bluff, a child can find his field of dreams at Townsend Park.
Sebastian Stargell Sr. helped many children reach their dreams as their coach there since coming to town in 1990, and he’s spent the past two to three years as a city-employed caretaker of the baseball complex.
“Wow, that’s like a second home,” the Cleveland, Ohio, native said. “When you spend 30 years at one spot … me and my wife’s anniversary is June 30, and we spent many June 30ths over there at that field because of being in tournaments. Around that time, there are state and regional tournaments, and we made it to the [Babe Ruth] World Series. Townsend Park is like a second home.”
That, then, is why taking the job as Arkansas Baptist College’s next head baseball coach was not an easy decision.
“That was one of the hardest decisions I made in taking the job, feeling that I was leaving Townsend Park because I had been there so long,” Stargell, 56, said. “So many kids that are playing professional ball — your Gionti Turners, your Gabe Starks, your Tink Hences, all these kids who came through that area — like I said, I’m almost like I’m leaving home and going up the road, even though it’s 30 minutes up the road to Little Rock.”
Stargell learned at an early age that he bears the name of a star.
His uncle, Willie Stargell, finished a 21-year major-league career with 475 home runs, presently tied with Stan Musial for 32nd all-time. Willie Stargell, who died in 2001 at age 61, won two world championships with the Pittsburgh Pirates (1971 and
1979), was named an All-Star seven times and is the only player ever to win the National League season, NL Championship Series and World Series most valuable player awards in the same year (1979).
“I remember my T-ball days,” Stargell said. “My first coach was my dad. Going to the Pirates’ baseball game and seeing they had a Willie Stargell Day and they had all the jerseys at the back of the chairs with the name and number on it, that really let me know my name meant something. It was special to be kin to Willie.”
Yet, Stargell’s football talents, in addition to his baseball acumen, helped him earn scholarships to Tennessee State University in 1982 to play both sports. He was a defensive back-turned-wide receiver on the football field and a shortstop on the diamond.
FINDING STARGELL
Stargell, a longtime paraprofessional in the Pine Bluff School District, accepted his first college baseball coaching job earlier this month, but it’s not his first time coaching in college. He was football defensive coordinator and softball assistant at Texas College, a historically Black Methodist college in Tyler, from 2009-11.
Somehow, Arkansas Baptist, another historically Black school in Little Rock, came calling for him a decade later.
“I got a phone call that they were interested in a head baseball coach, and my name had come across the table three different times,” he said. “[Athletic director Bill] Ingram said they were interested in getting somebody who was going to take the program to another level, and he said my name came up several times. We got to meet and greet with each other, and we hit it off, so the next thing you know, he named me the head baseball coach.”
Ingram said he met Stargell through a mutual acquaintance and explained what made Stargell the ideal choice.
“Just his commitment to work with young people and better them all the way around, baseball, off the field,” Ingram said. “That right there assured me he’s concerned about them on and off the playing field.”
The ABC Buffaloes competed in the National Junior College Athletic Association until May, when it finalized a move to the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, meaning the four-year college can compete in a fouryear sports league.
Ingram said the school will compete as an independent for the 2021-22 school year and possibly join the Sooner Athletic Conference, which hosts a number of Christian colleges including Siloam Springs’ John Brown University.
“That’s huge for baseball,” Ingram said. “That helps us in recruiting, stabilizes us where kids won’t leave in two years, and it’s great for school overall. That’s why we needed a guy like Sebastian, a guy that understands the recruiting aspect, that’s grounded and can have grounded young men. That’s what we need.
“We were lucky to get a guy of his caliber. He’s exactly what we need to get this program going.”
The Buffaloes practice at Kanis Park and local high school fields, and will play games at the high schools, Ingram said.
BUILDING A TEAM
Stargell not only has taken three Junior Babe Ruth teams from Pine Bluff to the league’s World Series, but he and Cassandra Stargell — married since June 30, 1986 — raised four boys, three of whom played collegiately.
Brandon and Jordan followed their dad’s two-sport path, and played football and baseball at Mississippi Valley State and Grambling State universities.
Sebastian Jr. played baseball at Texas Southern University and became a college and high school coach, and Trey attended Southern Arkansas University.
Sebastian Stargell is quickly assembling his first team at ABC and landed one of his pupils from Pine Bluff, David Carroll. The recent Pine Bluff High School graduate is a second and third baseman, and received an Ed Brown Scholarship from community members and a Presidential Scholarship to ABC.
“Coach Stargell is like a second dad to me,” said Carroll, who played under Stargell at Townsend Park after his little league days at nearby Martin Luther King Jr. Park. “I’ve known him since I was 12 years old. He helped me realize that it takes hard work to be successful at every level. I know he’s going to do right by me, and I’m going to do right by him. We’re going to go there and work hard. I can’t ask for nothing but success.”
During Carroll’s signing ceremony at Taylor Field’s Jim HIll Center on Friday, Sebastian Stargell remarked Carroll is the type of student-athlete he wants in his program.
The coach has also reached into Puerto Rico and Venezuela, as well as the Little Rock neighborhoods to find his new players.
“The kids have to buy into the system of going to school, being coachable and getting out and putting hard work in,” Sebastian Stargell said. “I have a saying that everything that you want is on the other side of heart. In other words, you have to put a certain effort and certain want in to something that you want. There’s a certain level of extra you have to put in. You run at 5 o’clock in the morning. You do the sit-ups. You watch what you eat, that kind of understanding.”
Heart is what he poured into the kids and their fields of dreams at Townsend Park.
“Once you take care of something for so long, you feel like it’s yours,” he said.
“Coach Stargell is like a second dad to me. I’ve known him since I was 12 years old. He helped me realize that it takes hard work to be successful at every level. I know he’s going to do right by me, and I’m going to do right by him. We’re going to go there and work hard. I can’t ask for nothing but success.”
— David Carroll, Arkansas Baptist College player