THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, April 16, 1996 TAG: 9604160427
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Tom Robinson
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 83 lines
Having had no shut-eye on his redeye from Denver, New York Mets general manager Joe McIlvaine turned to a topic he can discuss in his sleep Monday when he addressed the Norfolk Sports Club - player development.
Short of accepting a World Series trophy, nothing delights McIlvaine more than finding, teaching and ultimately turning raw materials into millionaire athletes who win baseball games.
And so his talk had a disconcerting undertone, because it is well-documented that mining American resources is an increasingly fruitless chore.
Our baseball reserves are shrinking, the percentage of imports, especially from Latin America, is booming, and there are any number of Great Satans to blame; our boys are lost to video games, air conditioning, cyberspace, fatherless families, soccer, basketball ... you know the drill.
Mentioning the baseball drain in public, however, is an immediate invitation to the nickname ``Pops.'' And that's only if you're not summarily dismissed as irrelevant by the mall rats and rollerblade jockeys.
But when the subject inevitably arose Monday in a question from the floor, McIlvaine had in the Sports Club - whose average meeting-goer is, shall we say, seasoned - a sympathetic audience. And away he went.
``Back in the '30s, 40s, '50s and '60s, if you ever drove by a baseball field in this country there were always kids playing on it,'' McIlvaine said. ``Drive by those same fields today, you don't see it. They're not there. We're having trouble getting the best athletes to come play baseball because there's so many things they can do.
``But if you go to Latin America and drive by the fields, they're filled with kids playing baseball, 24 hours a day it seems like.''
That's not nostalgic longing blurring McIlvaine's vision, either. According to a recent Sports Illustrated story, there were 77 natives of the Dominican Republic, with a population of 7.8 million, who played in the big leagues last season.
Of U.S. states, only California (pop. 29.8 million) produced more players, 218. In nine years, the magazine predicts, up to a quarter of all major leaguers could be of Latin origin, not considering the flooded market a political change in Cuba could produce.
McIlvaine has no specific solutions, either, but that's not his job. He's got to go where the players are, which is why the Mets and everybody else are broadening their presence in the Dominican, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Australia and elsewhere.
``All you can do is try to promote your game and try to get kids interested in baseball so they want to go out and play,'' McIlvaine said later. ``The trouble with kids today is they want everything to be organized.
``They just don't go out and play stick ball and wire ball and step ball and all the games that we played growing up. Half ball, any kind of ball, be adventurous. If they're not playing little league, you don't see them.''
Not to indict organized ball at early ages and the scads of industrious volunteers who give it life. But it could be, if kiddie ball isn't run so it promotes activity, that it turns off as many youngsters as it prompts to play on.
More and more popular around the country, McIlvaine said, is the use of pitching machines in leagues so 8-, 9- and 10-year-olds can hack at pitches delivered at a consistent speed and location, with the intent of putting more balls into play and getting kids moving.
Nostalgia's nice and all, but raise your hand if you have fuzzy childhood memories of standing around picking dandelions as your pitcher walked an army of batters.
``That's a boring game, for the most part,'' McIlvaine said of the dandelion example. ``It's OK to have organized ball, but kids need more encouragement just to go out in the lots and yards and play and throw.''
To encourage baseball viewership, ESPN's new slogan is trying to hit a frozen rope to where we live: ``It's baseball and you're an American.''
It's a noble try. But McIlvaine and baseball's other restless disciples know it's too easy anymore for kids, at play or vegging out, to zap to something else. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN/Staff
Joe McIlvaine: ``We're having trouble getting the best athletes to
come play baseball.''
by CNB