NewsRBI kids gearing up for championships
Title games to be broadcast on Network, streamed on MLB.comBy Alden Gonzalez / MLB.com
08/04/09 8:25 PM ET
JUPITER, Fla. -- They're some of the best teenagers currently gracing baseball fields, and, on Tuesday, they came here from all over the country -- some even from the Caribbean -- with one goal: win the elusive RBI crown.The 17th annual Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) World Series, presented by KPMG, will get underway with the boys tournament on Wednesday, as 16 teams representing two age groups will go head-to-head at the Roger Dean Stadium complex in Jupiter, Fla. -- the Spring Training home of the Marlins and Cardinals -- until late Saturday afternoon.
Then, on Sunday, a champion from each division will be crowned at the home of the Marlins, Land Shark Stadium in Miami.
"This is what we set our goals for," said Al Williams, a center fielder for the Detroit senior team who will be a freshman at Georgia Southern University this fall. "The rest of our tournaments don't make or break our season. But we come here and put our all into this tournament."
The age groups are the senior division (ages 16-18) and junior division (13-15), and the Senior Baseball Championship will air live on MLB Network at 3 p.m. ET.
The girls softball portion of the tournament (18 and under) will have its championship game on Aug. 14 at Lake Catherine Sports Complex in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. It will be broadcast on tape delay Aug. 23 at 1 p.m. ET on MLB Network.
All three championship games -- for the senior boys, junior boys and girls softball -- will also be streamed live on MLB.com.
And all of the teams' expenses are funded by the RBI program, through Major League Baseball and KPMG.
"It's all about opportunities, to keep these kids involved in the game of baseball, but also to keep them on a positive track in providing them opportunities," RBI program director David James said. "Opportunities to play against the best competition out there, opportunities to interact with kids who are just like them -- from all over the country and in other parts of the world -- and opportunities to interact with professional ballplayers and, probably even more important, professional role models who really care about the choices that they make in life and want them to be successful."
The boys tournament will be played in round-robin fashion, with eight teams in each division, consisting of the defending champions and the winners of RBI regional tournaments in seven geographical areas.
A lot of the teams are from Major League cities, like Los Angeles, Houston, Detroit and Miami. And then there's the underdog junior team from the small town of Montgomery, Ala., which won't have a Major League team's mascot on the front of its jerseys when play begins on Wednesday. Instead, they'll simply have the letters "RBI."
"The other teams, they might have a little more to work with when it comes to the facilities and the amount of kids, but they don't have our passion for the game," Alabama RBI overseer Mark Salter said. "And that's what we bring to the tournament. We bring that passion and that love for the game, and that love of being here in the midst of competing.
"For a city our size, we feel like we're above the learning curve."
The teams competing at Roger Dean Stadium in the senior boys section will be Los Angeles (defending champs), the L.A. Urban Youth Academy (West Region champs), Tampa (Southeast Region), Detroit (East Region), Santo Domingo (Caribbean Region), Houston (Southwest Region), Jersey City (Northeast Region) and Chicago (Central Region).
On the junior boys side, it will be Detroit (defending champs), the L.A. Urban Youth Academy (West Region), Miami (Southeast Region), Jersey City (Northeast Region), Cleveland (East Region), Santo Domingo (Caribbean Region), Montgomery (Southwest Region) and Chicago (Central Region).
For all of them, the objective is to make it to Land Shark Stadium.
"That's the goal," said Detroit senior team coach Mark Brown, whose squad won the regionals at Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati on Sunday. "We want to be one of the last teams standing. It's not going to be easy. We have a lot of good teams here -- everybody is good -- and to play on Sunday, not only do you have to be good, you have to be lucky."
But lucky is something Brown feels his team already is, considering they get a chance to play in professional fields and could eventually be sharing the same stadium Hanley Ramirez, Josh Johnson and other notable Marlins regularly play on.
"It's night and day," Brown said about the difference between the field his team was practicing on Tuesday and those back home. "Just like in most cities, we're in a financial crunch. Our recreational department is struggling just to keep the grass cut. These fields are immaculate. We have nothing close to this in Detroit."
RBI, founded by ex-Major Leaguer and scout John Young in 1989, has had more than 180 participants drafted throughout the program's 20-year history, including notable names like Carl Crawford (Rays), Justin Upton (D-backs), Coco Crisp (Royals), James Loney (Dodgers) and CC Sabathia (Yankees). This year, seven current and former RBI participants were selected in the First-Year Player Draft, including Tyler Skaggs of L.A. RBI, who was the 40th overall pick by the Angels.
RBI programs have been established in more than 200 cities worldwide and annually provide more than 100,000 boys and girls the opportunity to play baseball and softball.
For some of these kids who grow up in rough neighborhoods, baseball is not only recreation, but also a way out.
"It's definitely a deterrent from some of the things that are out there," L.A. Urban Youth Academy junior team coach Carl Nichols said. "A lot of these kids don't have the resources to do the things that maybe some of the other kids do. They end up finding trouble. So RBI provides them an opportunity to avoid some of that, do something positive and not take out of their pocket a lot of money."
Alden Gonzalez is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
