Baton Rouge, LA (U-WIRE) -- Quinn Stewart sprints to his position in left field, pounds his glove and crouches into defensive position.

It has been a tough game so far at the University of Alabama. The crowd got into him at the start singing the "Sanford and Sons" theme song as he took the field for the first time. He shut them up a bit in the second inning as he started dancing to the music.

"I've always been pretty much the only black guy on my team," he said as he glanced at the stands and at the white expanse of fans in the bleachers.

Stewart is an anomaly in baseball. He is a black man playing what has become a nearly all-white game - college baseball. Six percent of all college baseball players are black.

His singular status on LSU's 43-man roster says a lot about a sport that once boasted heroes like Willie Mays and Jackie Robinson.

It says a lot about what has happened to the structure of the inner city black communities and how those communities have responded to the economic incentives and disincentives that accompany college athletics today.

And it may say a lot about the eventual success - or failure - of a program by Major League Baseball to lure black youngsters into becoming baseball stars and to expand its fan base.

Losing interest

Summer afternoons on the baseball diamond consumed many hours of Stewart's younger years in Orange County, Calif.

Stewart's mother signed him up for tee-ball at age 4. He acquired a taste for the game over the next three years and grew to love it.

That suburban neighborhood in Southern California grounded Stewart in an environment where racial lines barely existed, although the community's make-up was mostly white. Stewart never lived the inner-city life his father endured. The more open-minded West Coast taught him to respect every person.

"My parents always raised me to accept everybody," Stewart said. "I never really felt out of place. As I got older, I got a little bit more conscious about things."

But Stewart soon found another world in the suburbs of Dallas, Texas. His family moved there - a result of his father's Navy assignment.

Stewart played both football and baseball in high school but quickly found that America's favorite pastime was not accepted among the Southern black community. He dreamed of playing college baseball at a major Division I school. Watching games at the University of Southern California and UCLA fueled his passion.

"I'd get some funny looks every now and then," Stewart said. "They'd say 'Why are you playing baseball? Black people don't play baseball.'"

Prejudice and peer pressure did not affect Stewart. He pursued his dream and eventually found a spot on LSU's roster via Odessa Community College in Texas. But this peer pressure in black communities has severely limited baseball participation in the inner city nationwide.

The sandlot baseball approach disappeared with the emergence of "win-at-all-costs" baseball leagues, said Sports Director Marc Palmer of Baton Rouge Parks and Recreation.

Palmer organizes BREC's public baseball leagues in the city but notices a sharp decrease in participation from area youth. The numbers tell the same story. During the 2004 season, 980 tee-ball participants from ages 4 to 5 participated along with 1,278 coaches pitch participants from ages 6 to 7. Only 680 boys from ages 8 to 14 played baseball.

The decline shows a business-type approach to baseball, Palmer said. Parents encourage a competitive spirit in their children and want them to get ahead. That resulted in the privatization of little league baseball.

"I put the blame squarely on the parents," Palmer said. "They take their kids to those leagues specifically for a purpose - put them in those situations where they want to win, win, win."

The privatized baseball leagues encourage teams to play tournaments where they travel every weekend, which adds to the cost.

The Central Area Youth League and Drillers Diamonds are Baton Rouge's privatized baseball leagues. They snatch up most of the supportive parents in the community. Each league sponsors weekend tournaments that showcase up-and-coming talent, while developing a competitive atmosphere, Palmer said.

Costs of these private leagues may exceed more than $1,000 per player. The children in the inner city cannot afford it and are left behind unless grant money providing equal programs exists.

Most inner city children in Baton Rouge compete in BREC's baseball program if they play the sport, Palmer said. BREC also partners with a group from Scottlandville to encourage inner city children to play baseball there. Tax dollars subsidize the league's fee to $20 per player, and uniforms are minimal with a cap and numbered T-shirt required.

The league does not sponsor all-star teams or traveling squads because BREC loses money with the leagues it forms. BREC's less competitive leagues serve a different purpose, Palmer said.

BREC's problems like the privatized leagues come from parents but on a different end of the spectrum. Parents apathetically leave their children with volunteer coaches for two-hour stretches, Palmer said.

A lost community

Remembering his childhood, Southern University baseball coach Roger Cador said baseball was the most important extra-curricular activity. One of the male role models in Cador's neighborhood piled the young black boys into his station wagon and drove them to practice.

Cador remembers Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball during the 1947 season as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers. He became the first black inductee to MLB's hall of fame and laid the groundwork for the likes of Mays and Hank Aaron, which piqued Cador and his friend's interest.

Mays became famous for his exciting over-the-shoulder basket catches in center field with the New York Giants and Mets, while Aaron became the game's all-time home run leader with the Atlanta Braves.

"It was the biggest interest because baseball still had its attachment to Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays and Hank Aaron," Cador said. "The love of it all was still there. Those people don't exist any more in baseball."

Major League Baseball may still look like a hot spot for black players when one considers the likes of Sammy Sosa, Carlos Beltran and Mariano Rivera, but none of them are born in the United States.

MLB recently released a report that 29.2 percent of its players are foreign born. Many players are from these Latin American countries, including the names mentioned above, appear to be African-American in pigmentation. This adds to a misconception that there are many African-Americans in the sport.

MLB does not provide statistics on black, American-born baseball players. But clicking through all 30 teams' Web site rosters on opening day 2005, the total came to 69. That equals 9 percent of MLB's player population.

Cador emphasized lack of leadership from the black community as a cause for the lost interest in baseball. The people who strongly supported baseball in the inner city are gone or have other interests now, he said.

"When you lose coaches, you lose leadership," said Cador, a 21-year veteran coach. "The money issue is a big issue, but I don't think that's what's keeping the kids away. "

Doc Flowers - a 25-year volunteer coach and rare commodity in the black community -coaches basketball, baseball and football teams at BREC.

Flowers came from a single parent home in south Baton Rouge with no male role model. He remembers a man named "Mr. Billy" who coached his little league baseball team and offered a challenge to the children.

"He told us when we grew up, it was our turn to give back to the community, and that's why I do what I do," Flowers said.

Many people in the black community did step up to the plate during those decades, but not anymore.

"We couldn't wait to get to the practice field," Flowers said. "We had a lot of other people who cared besides the coach. But now you can't find that because people are just being selfish."

G. Washington Eames, former NAACP president of the Baton Rouge chapter, bolstered the effort for an inner city league in Baton Rouge in 1987. The community began restoring its vacant baseball parks and raising funds to sponsor the youth teams.

Once Major League Baseball's Reviving Baseball in the Inner City program established itself, Baton Rouge also earned grants from the program in 1994. Its expenses were refunded if a receipt was provided, Eames said. The league began with 18 teams in 1987 and grew to 40 teams by the 1995 season.

The league collapsed after that eight-year span, and the community became lax. The Fourth District Baptist Association pulled its support from the project and decided to start a summer basketball league. The NAACP also withdrew its support. Current president Alvin Washington failed to see the value of the program, Eames said.

"Have you heard or seen anything positive [from the NAACP] yet?" Eames said. "Keep watching and listening."

Former LSU baseball coach and current Athletics Director Skip Bertman promised Eames $10,000 in an attempt to rebuild the program in 1998 a few years back, but the black community failed to rally behind the effort.

Another attempt in 2003 also failed. Eames had volunteer coaches and donations lined up with a program called the Delta Baseball Association. The plug was pulled by BREC's director at the last minute after miscommunication. The black community became aggravated and pulled its support from baseball again.

"I had to give the money back because I couldn't get the people to act the way they should," Eames said.

Baseball's team concept became the social glue of the community, Eames said. It drew the full family unit to the baseball park, and black male leaders stepped up to the plate, unlike years past.

"Baseball teaches discipline," Eames said, comparing it to other sports that lack a total team element, such as basketball and football. "It trains black men to interact with the kids. That's where the problems came from - these kids didn't have a strong male influence in their lives."

Losing the recruiting battle

Blue-chip recruiting that takes place in high school football and basketball is nearly impossible in baseball because of the game's nature, Bertman said.

The mechanics of quality baseball players also take a while to observe, Bertman said. Unlike football and basketball, a coach cannot look at a videotape to judge a player's skills. Instead, major Division I college coaches visit "Area Code" tournaments across the nation designed for recruiting.

"These tournaments are made up by professional baseball scouts so only the best kids are invited. It's a coach's dream," Bertman said.

Many of Bertman's black baseball players came from Area Code games or their equivalence. Former LSU outfielder Albert Belle, who played professionally in MLB, was spotted at the Louisiana High School All-Star Game, Bertman said. Center fielder Cedrick Harris, who played on Bertman's 2000 national championship team, came from Area Code Baseball.

While Area Code Baseball may be a dream for college coaches, the opportunity to compete in such leagues proves difficult for players outside the scouts' scopes. The Area Code organization offers free camps to teach techniques, but tryouts are limited only to invited players. According to the organization's Web site, a player earns an invite with the recommendation of a scout.

College baseball's limitation to 11.7 scholarships, which are mostly partial scholarships also adds to the problem. As a result the inner city youths focus more on basketball and football where full scholarships are offered, Bertman said.

The NCAA ethnicity report for the 2002-03 season showed that 43.8 percent of Division I football players were black, while 57.9 percent of men's basketball players were black. Football programs may offer 85 full scholarships, while basketball offers 13. These two sports also make millions of dollars in revenue, while baseball puts NCAA programs in debt.

"Black youngsters and black adults in the community don't see college baseball as the way to go," Bertman said.

Young black athletes also see basketball and football as a quicker way to turn professional with the emergence of Michael Jordan-like players in the NBA and Michael Vick-like players in the NFL, said RBI founder John Young.

"Everyone wants to be like Mike now," Young said.

Southern University avoids recruiting at Area Code events and their equivalents because it cannot offer the financial benefits like major colleges, Cador said. The historically black school uses a series of contacts throughout the country to find raw talents with great heart. Cador never considers these offers risky because college athletics to him is more than winning games.

"The risk thing is what people use when they don't want to give people an opportunity," Cador said.

Southern affords those same opportunities to a handful of white players even though they dominate the sport nationally.

"We're not going to be racist like some of those people and deny the kids opportunity," Cador said. "People will never make me believe that there's not racism that plays a factor in why there hasn't been more African Americans [in college baseball]. They will not take them because of the color of their skin."

Saving a lost cause

With expensive equipment and upkeep, baseball compares to golf, tennis or swimming, Bertman said. Blacks also make up less than 6 percent of NCAA athletes in those sports.

"Baseball is a country club sport," Bertman said.

When asked about increasing the number of black college baseball players, Bertman referred back to the "country club" analogy.

"Maybe a solution isn't necessary like swimming, golf and tennis. Nobody seems to care," Bertman said.

But Bertman pointed to the Reviving Baseball in the Inner City program, the only group focused on the problem nationally.

When former Major League Baseball player John Young became a scout, he returned to his stomping grounds in South Los Angeles where baseball ruled during his childhood. He found an inner city population disenchanted with baseball - and education.

"When I'd go to scout the games, I noticed the inner city leagues were inferior," Young said in a telephone interview. "I quickly realized that we had lost a generation-and-a-half of inner city baseball talent."

Many children came from single parent households, and some became involved in street gangs. Saddened by the outlook, Young looked deeper into the situation. An intense study of the 1987 Major League Baseball draft showed that most draftees attended four-year colleges.

The inception of Reviving Baseball in the Inner Cities (RBI) began. Young desired to restock Major League Baseball with black American players, but he also wanted to emphasize the value of a college education. Baseball plus academics equaled success, Young said.

The Los Angeles Dodgers and MLB helped fund the program, and in 1989 the program's inaugural season saw 180 participants in the nation's second-largest city. RBI's success started a nationwide epidemic in MLB cities.

St. Louis picked up the program in 1990, while 10 other major cities joined the crew by 1995. Now more than 200 cities are affiliated with the program. RBI funds both boys baseball and girls softball from age 8 to 18.

The RBI program builds character while unifying the community, Young said.

RBI instituted a national component into its program in 1993 by hosting its first World Series. It gives inner city children a competitive traveling tournament it would not have otherwise.

The program followed with a national education objective in 1997 and partnered with the Boys and Girls Club of America. The organization created a curriculum for RBI that reinforces the importance of education. It also addresses the issues of alcohol, tobacco, illegal drugs and HIV/AIDS prevention.

"Our success stories have a consistent theme," Young said. "Someone in the child's life - whether it's the mother, father, aunt, uncle or grandparent - has provided support throughout the program."

Other states fighting the battle

Other little league programs exist in Louisiana, but only three - Napoleonville, LaPlace and New Orleans - take advantage of RBI funds. These three cities provide baseball opportunities to approximately 625 inner city children, but New Orleans' black population equals nearly 500,000 itself.

But even the states with similar total populations and smaller black populations support more inner city children than Louisiana.

Four other states - Alabama, Colorado, Kentucky and Minnesota - share common population characteristics with Louisiana but also utilize the RBI program more effectively.

These states all have a total population between 4 million and 5 million. But the black population of Alabama (25 percent) most resembles that of Louisiana (32 percent).

Five cities in Alabama house RBI programs of some sort with more than 1,300 participants. The Boys & Girls Club of South Central Alabama runs a RBI program for 325 children in Montgomery, Ala. The city is half the size of Baton Rouge but supports more children in the RBI program than the New Orleans chapter.

Colorado's black population spikes at 3.8 percent, but the state is home to three RBI programs with more than 11,000 participants. Denver almost doubles the population of New Orleans but supports almost nine times the inner city children with its RBI program.

Kentucky's black population reaches only 7 percent, but the state has two RBI programs with more than 2,600 participants.

Similarly, Minnesota's black population is 3.4 percent, but the Boys & Girls Club in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area runs a RBI program with more than 3,000 participants. The metropolis doubles the size of New Orleans but supports more than 20 times the RBI participants.

The Minnesota Twins and the metropolis community support the program, unlike Louisiana, and have for the past 10 to 12 years, said RBI organizer Stoney Hays. The community must have a strong base before supporting such a league, but basketball and soccer still challenge the program to market baseball as another option.

"It's like pulling teeth," Hays said. "But the Boys & Girls Club and the community baseball parks make it a priority."

The Minneapolis chapter also supplies gloves, bats and other equipment to the children it supports, Hays said. It gives the children a sense of importance.

"When you run a program like this, it has to be done right," Hays said. "It can't be scrub club."

Once the children feel a sense of belonging and importance, the Boys & Girls Club teaches them the importance of education and life lessons - the underlying objective and most successful component of the program, Hays said.

"Baseball is a game that teaches discipline and patience," Hays said. "Every one of our accomplishments come because of a healthy partnership between the community and our kids."

Despite the program's success, many inner city communities like those in Detroit and Chicago continue in a downward spiral, Cador said. But southern cities like Houston and Atlanta continue to provide consistent, talented players from the inner cities, Cador said.

"When one city dries up, we've been able to go to another one," Cador said. "But how long can we sustain this type of merry-go-round type of system?"

(C) 2004 The Reveille via U-WIRE