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Some shades, please Game's future looks plenty bright on a day like thisPosted: Sunday July 13, 2003 10:38 PM
CHICAGO -- There's so much doom and downright gloom surrounding baseball sometimes. You know the drill. It doesn't appeal to kids anymore. It's boring and slow. It's dying, some say. But, still, kids play and people still come to the ballparks to cheer. And, once in a while, on days like Sunday, under a crisp blue sky on a patch of freshly mown grass on the South Side of Chicago, if you looked just so, you could see the future of the game. And, you know, it doesn't look all that bad. Kids -- really, that's what they are -- from all over the world play in Major League Baseball's All-Star Futures Game. They are minor leaguers, riding the busses and playing in places like Myrtle Beach and Huntsville and El Paso and Delmarva, which, if you don't know, is in Delaware. Or Maryland. Or Virginia. Or maybe all three. They are from Canada, these young men, and Taiwan and the Dominican Republic and Venezuela. Australia. Mexico. They are from all over. They love the game. They want you to, too. "I don't see why anyone wouldn't," says Shawn Hill, a 22-year-old pitcher from Georgetown, British Columbia. "It's a great game." It's true, of course, that a lot of Hill's friends back in Canada don't quite get the game. Hockey, they get. But baseball? Hill's friends smile weakly and ask him how things are going. Then they move onto the next topic. But Hill, who toils for the Montreal Expos' Class A team in Brevard County, Fla., loves baseball. And he figures with guys like him doing their part and some help from the people who promote the game, other young people could learn to love the game, too. Hill should know. He's a young person. He knows something about young people. He has ideas. "I'd bring them to a game like this," he said after Sunday's Futures Game. "This and the All-Star Game. Even if they don't appreciate baseball, they can feel the excitement in a crowd like this, and that could bring them back." Bringing them back, of course, is the key. You have to get them hooked. Get them into the stadium, show them a good time. But then you have to get them back. That's how you build a baseball fan for life. Sunday's game was a good example. Because it was an exhibition, it was not particularly compelling. The U.S. Futures beat the World Futures, 3-2, when right fielder Stephen Smitherman, who plays for the Cincinnati Reds' Chattanooga farm team -- Chattanooga, I'm pretty sure, is in Tennessee -- homered off the World's Travis Blackley, who is from Australia, in the bottom of the sixth inning of the seven-inning game. The beauty of the game was not the game, but the players. A lot of good players have come through the Futures Game in its short existence. The first Futures Game was in 1999, but already six players have played both in the Futures and, later, in the All-Star Game. Houston's Lance Berkman, White Sox pitcher Mark Buehrle, Cincinnati slugger Adam Dunn, Milwaukee pitcher Ben Sheets, Yankees second baseman Alfonso Soriano and Oakland pitcher Barry Zito all played in this game. So, somewhere on the field at U.S. Cellular on Sunday, you could almost bet, was an All-Star-in-waiting. It was like seeing Bruce Springsteen at a Jersey bar in 1972. Only a little cleaner. These players, not to overstate this or anything, are the future of Major League Baseball. They will be the ones who fans, eventually, will come to see. But first, someone has to let people know they're out there. "I think a lot has to do with getting out in the community, holding clinics, getting with kids and teaching them the game, stuff like that," says Clint Nageotte, who plays for the San Antonio farm team of the Seattle Mariners. "Minor league baseball is great about that. I think that helps a lot." Nageotte, a pitcher, has friends that like baseball, but he has plenty of friends, too, who would rather watch something else. Like, say, the NBA for example. "But, hey, I'm from Cleveland," Nageotte said, "so I'd probably go watch the NBA, too." LeBron mania knows no boundaries. No one said selling baseball to a young audience would be easy. It never is. But on a beautiful day like Sunday, with a bunch of excited, fresh-faced youngsters on the field, you could at least see the possibilities. After the game, a smiling Hill slipped his nameplate out of the holder over his locker and readied to walk out. His Brevard County team has a game Monday at 6 p.m. He's expected to be there. Hill is still a year, at least, away from the major leagues. He may never make it. Or he could become a major league All-Star some day. No one knows. As he stood around after the game Sunday, signing a program for a teammate, taking in the last moments of his Futures Game appearance, he could barely check his enthusiasm. "This," he said, "was a great experience. It's something I'll never forget." Hill was scheduled to pitch the last out in the bottom of the seventh inning Sunday. He was set up to get the save. But the World team didn't get the lead, and the bottom of the seventh never came. Hill never got in the game. But he gets the game. He gets what it's all about. And if he can just pass that on to a few people, then baseball's not that bad off after all. John Donovan is a senior writer for SI.com. Comments? To e-mail Donovan, click here. |
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