SO CLOSE YET SO FAR
Astros’ gleaming new complex inspires underprivileged players across the street
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Ernest Nixon marveled at the Ballpark of the Palm Beaches. The vibrant grass and golden dirt glowing under the sun. The towering stadium lights. The crowd of more than 5,400 fans. The players with cannons for arms.
Although he plays the sport and dreams of making it to the majors, Nixon, at 15 years old, never had seen a professional baseball game until this month.
More remarkable, on weekdays he passes the new facility, which is shared by the Astros and Washington Nationals, in the morning and sees it for hours in the afternoon.
He attends Palm Beach Lakes Community High School across the street. The first-base side of the school’s ball field, home to the Rams, has an expansive view of the Astros’ training complex. The 100-foot-high protective netting surrounding the facility looks like mountains in the background while the Rams roam the right-field grass.
Despite its proximity to the millionaire stars, emerging prospects and vacationing diehards, Lakes is on the outside, rarely able to look in.
Lakes’ student body predominantly is black. Its zip code — same as the ballpark — has a median household income below $33,000. Its students tend to have limited futures.
“It’s tough for some of these guys just to buy cleats,” Lakes coach George Powell Jr. said. “A lot of them don’t see themselves going to college.”
The team capitalized on the spring training windfall by volunteering players, like Nixon, on weekends and every day of spring break to run the ballpark’s only ice cream concession. The Rams work in their maroon and white jerseys, swirling soft serve into waffle cones and finishing orders with smiles. They get 10 percent of all sales and ask patrons for donations.
During a game between the Astros and Nationals, Nixon left the concession to take a brief lunch break on the concourse. He did not know any of the players, but since he catches for the Rams, he admired the quick reaction of the Nationals’ catcher on a throw from home to second.
Nixon wolfed down a cheeseburger with fries and returned to work before the inning ended. The glimpse of action showed him plenty.
“It inspired me,” he said. “If I stay in school and stay on the right path, I can be here in a couple of years.”
His teammates echoed the sentiment.
“It’s a big opportunity to play right here, across from famous guys,” said Derrick Kittrell.
“That gives me something to look up to,” said Davidson Marcellus.
Their ambitions to play on the other side of Military Trail are lofty but understandable. They watched a manicured $150 million utopia rise up while they were stuck with a shabby field that has changed minimally since 1989. They use wooden bleachers and a dugout constructed with aluminum siding. They rake the clay-and-sand mix by hand. The team had used cans of white spray paint to line the batter’s boxes and basepaths until Powell drove three hours to and from Miami the day before a game to buy 200 pounds of athletic chalk wholesale for $34. A long way to go
Even if the Rams were bestowed the Astros’ complex, they still would have a problem: They are not good at baseball.
Lakes succeeded in the mid1990s, advancing twice to regional finals. After that, three district schools opened up and siphoned the talent pool. The Rams suffered a 70-game losing streak from 2009 to 2012. They cut ties from district play and went independent after going down 18-0 in the first inning of a game.
This is Powell’s first year as the head coach. He is the only coach. He spends less time refining skills than teaching basics. He said 15 of his 20 players never had played organized ball before this season.
“I get guys that have never thrown a baseball,” he said.
His players drop fly balls, overthrow targets and display haphazard mechanics. Once this season, the right fielder chased down a ball and, instead of throwing it to the cutoff man, tossed it underhanded to the center fielder nearby.
“He wasn’t sure what to do with the ball,” Powell said with a chuckle. “It was one of these: ‘I don’t want it; you take it.’ You can’t help but bust a rib laughing at some of the stuff we do.”
Still, Powell called rebuilding the program his “mission.” A conversation with the 62-yearold former umpire and limousine driver makes it sound less far-fetched. His indefatigable enthusiasm, built on charm and fueled by positivity, is infectious.
He telephoned the Ballpark of the Palm Beaches to get the Rams the concession gig.
“I talk to everybody because I never know when I’m going to talk to the right person,” he said. “That’s how I got to talk to (Nationals manager) Dusty Baker — he was coming out of the toilet.”
Powell cut the roster from 42 to 20 dedicated students this season. He implemented a 2.0 or better GPA requirement and a professional dress code. Previous teams allowed players to take the field in different hats or none at all, shorts, and even the opponent’s apparel.
Now, Rams baseball uniforms must be washed and white on game days, with shirts tucked and pants secured above the waist with a belt.
Powell also changed the logo to an “R” for Rams. It used to be an “L” for Lakes.
“Some of the kids on the winning teams got a kick out of calling them losers,” Powell said.
They still lose, but they have made progress. The team is 2-9 a third of the way through the season. It took the Rams until the final game last year to earn their second win.
“It’s not always about the scoreboard,” Powell said. He teaches that while an error is costly, it is an opportunity to uplift a teammate.
Usually, applying baseball lessons to life perpetuates clichés, but Powell said he offers young men in this part of West Palm Beach the mentor they need.
“Most of them don’t want to be like some fathers,” Powell said. “So the next male example is coming from their coach. He’s the perfect example to follow: He’s not on the corner whispering at girls, drinking a beer, swearing and cursing.” Parents scarcely seen
The lack of parent participation with the team concerns Powell. At the latest home game, he noticed two Rams parents and 18 from the visiting team.
He once asked Nixon: “How come your dad doesn’t come to a game?”
“My dad’s in prison,” Nixon replied matter-of-factly.
Nixon’s dad floated in and out of his son’s life until he got arrested for selling drugs in 2012 and was imprisoned in Arcadia, Fla. His release date is July 25, 2021.
Nixon’s mother, Tamica Alexander, 33, endured ghastly abuse to raise six children she had with three men. Nixon is her oldest.
Nixon’s father left Alexander homeless and pregnant with their third child. She said the next man in her life did not want to father her fourth, so he “used to kick my butt all day every day” and “body-slammed me while I was pregnant.”
She found stability the last decade with a loving car salesman. They had two kids together, and he moved the family into a twostory, four-bedroom home in a pristine gated community about two miles from the Ballpark of the Palm Beaches.
Nixon credits his father for introducing him at age 5 to T-ball. He did not take to baseball until Powell repeatedly spotted him quietly watching practice from over a fence and then insisted he try out this season. His late arrival to the sport does not follow the timeline of a typical major league talent. But that is not why he wanted to join the Rams initially.
“So I can spend time with other people and we can get to know each other,” Nixon said. “Because I’m a very friendly person.”
His teammates are the only people with whom he will share the experience. Nixon cannot have his father see him play, and he has never asked his mother. She works unpredictable hours as a manager at Family Dollar.
“So when she does get a day off, she can take that to herself,” he said.
Nixon, a sweetheart with a husky build, grew up adjusting to the turbulent situations of the adults around him. The attendance at games suggests he is not the only player like that.
“Most of these kids are going at it alone,” Alexander said. “Either their parents are always working, or some just don’t care.”
Powell does what he can. He estimated the concession will raise $2,500-$2,800, which he wants to use to upgrade equipment and to send players to a Florida Atlantic University clinic that can expose them to college recruiters. Getting a Ram a scholarship to a junior college would be a major achievement for the program.
“Just so the Rams are represented doing something,” Powell said.
They will be seen daily behind the ice cream concession now that spring break has begun. Nixon will not be there, however. He has to keep his schedule clear for a day the prison will arrange for him to visit his father.
He said he would pick another day to go to the ballpark since he lives so close.
“After spring training’s over, the season starts, right?” he asked excitedly.
He did not know he had less than two weeks before the teams left. “Oh, so they don’t play here?” He did not know major league franchises are based elsewhere.
“Oh,” he said with an embarrassed smile as the reality dawned on him.
Not only was the snippet he experienced during his lunch break the first professional game Nixon had seen in person. He never had caught one on the radio, TV or online.
The only baseball he knew came from the foggy memory of T-ball with his father and the season with the rebuilding Rams.
He considered asking Powell if he could volunteer again.
“And I’mma take a long lunch break.”