Part 2 — Gordon Beckham…Where Are You?

Posted on October 6, 2011 by admin

Millions of kids still play America’s favorite pastime, for sure.  But the numbers of young
people who play baseball seriously into early adulthood has steadily declined over the years.  Some of the reasons given online for this situation in which American kids have become disconnected from the game include:

— The rising popularity of football and basketball, and diversions like watching TV
(on 72-inch, hi-def screens) and playing video games.

— Poor diets and the increase in obesity among young people.

— In the inner cities, long a source for athletic talent, subpar feeder systems, fading
playing fields that are not maintained, poor lights and perhaps the most important factor: the absence of influential baseball mentors.

— Baseball is becoming an East Coast niche sport—when ESPN covers baseball it’s basically “YANKEES, YANKEES, YANKEES, RED SOX, RED SOX, RED SOX!!!”

— In comparison to other sports, baseball is personally expensive to the player: a baseball glove costs 10X what a basketball costs. A baseball bat costs the same as two CDs at suggested retail price and it would be of the lowest quality. A baseball costs about what a football costs but lasts one-fourth as long.

— There is no glamor in it. You don’t see Albert Pujols in commercials as much as you see stars from other sports like LeBron James, Peyton Manning, etc.

This situation is one of the reasons why we developed the Hitting Jack-It™ System—to
encourage young American kids to take up the sport of baseball and become good hitters, the essence of the game.

Online news site WestWard Patch took a look at baseball in Newark, N.J. in May 2011 — http://westward.patch.com/articles/newark-revives-participation-in-baseball

Erick Silvestre, baseball coach of Newark, New Jersey’s Arts High, is of Dominican descent — the Dominican Republic has historically been a hotbed for baseball talent.

“We may have had one or two kids here at the high school who have actually played the game before—some of them have never played it before and the first time they have played is the first year of high school,” he said. “You have to start from scratch. It’s tough when you have to go from square one as high school kids.”

One of the problems, Silvestre said, is that kids don’t have a parental push to help get them into the game.

“If you don’t have anybody to push you to play it, you’re not going to play it, especially now that you have all of these video games and you can stay home and play instead of going out to play,” said Silvestre. “A solution would be to start kids early.  Don’t wait until high school.  You have to train them in sixth, seventh grade, that way when they get to high school, they already know the basics.”

Silvestre said that African-American youngsters likely play football and basketball as elementary school kids, but not baseball. The Arts team is made up mostly of Hispanic players and a minority of black players.

“African-American kids don’t get pushed into baseball like us Dominicans — when we’re born, we’re playing baseball,” he said.

Can We Reverse the Trend?

It hit me hard when I watched the very first World Baseball Classic with my son, and he could name every player on the Dominican and Venezuelan teams but could only name five players on the U.S. team.

Baseball has gone global and close to one-third of today’s MLB players are foreign born.  (In comparison, foreign-born players from 40 countries make up 20 percent of today’s NBA players.)

If we don’t want a future in which we have to outsource offshore to find our MLB players, we’re going to have to start seriously addressing the obstacles to playing baseball currently confronting American kids.

That’s why we developed the Hitting Jack-It™ System – to encourage the next generation of Gordon Beckhams to pick up the bat and join the game to take it to the next level.

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