Thursday, July 16, 2009
Inner City Baseball Whiffs
Posted by John Branston on Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 10:12 AM
The Memphis Redbirds are revealing more than they know about their internal problems. They're trying to keep a lid on the premature ending of the 2009 season for Returning Baseball to the Inner-city (RBI) by not letting their most credible Memphis baseball insider talk about it.
That's really no surprise. The fact is, RBI was never just about the feel-good story of kids and baseball. RBI was the cornerstone of the tax-free bonds that originally financed the $72 million AutoZone Park. No other city in the country had such an arrangement between sports and charity.
At one time, the Redbirds foundation was spending more on two high-level salaries than it was on RBI baseball. After an audit in 2001, the Redbirds agreed to pay the Internal Revenue Service $1.6 million to preserve their tax-exempt financing.
What do bonds have to do with poor kids and baseball? Good question. It was a convoluted fit from the get-go, and the financing scheme unraveled this year with plunging attendance and the bondholders demanding a change in management of the organization. Founder Dean Jernigan and Blues City Baseball are out, and Global Spectrum is in.
Reggie Williams is vice president of community relations for the Redbirds. When I called him Thursday, he confirmed that he was told by Dave Chase, president of baseball operations, not to speak about RBI calling off the season-ending championship games that were scheduled for this week.
In other words, a feel-good sports story about RBI is fine, but a business story that reveals some unpleasant facts about minor-league baseball and finance is not. Unfortunately, that is SO corporate and SO Memphis Redbirds.
Highly personable, Williams seemed like a perfect spokesman for RBI. He graduated from Southside High School in Memphis and played professional baseball for the Los Angeles Dodgers. He was assistant principal at Ridgeway High School and principal at Ridgeway Middle School. He is, in other words, highly capable of conducting an interview about RBI or anything else.
RBI faced long odds under any circumstances. Baseball is a game of long stretches of inaction with shorts bursts of intense action. Simply put, it's boring to a lot of kids who stand around in the heat while the pitcher struggles to throw a strike. In this age of sports specialization, baseball players cluster at county and private schools with predominantly white enrollment. Memphis City Schools teams that play powerhouses like Germantown or Houston or Bolton are routinely "slaughter-ruled" by scores like 18-0 after three innings.
I was immersed in this world for about 15 years as a coach and parent of a son who, to my knowledge, was the last and only MCS graduate to play baseball in the Southeastern Conference in at least 20 years.
Americans self-segregate when it comes to sports and some other things. Baseball is a case in point. Redbirds games fail to draw large numbers of black fans. RBI is a commendable attempt to introduce the game to a younger generation that prefers basketball and football. It will continue to struggle. It was not a good idea to make it the foundation of a financing plan. There is no point in hiding from the facts, as the Redbirds seem to be doing.
Comments (6)
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This is a sad story on many levels. As Frank Robinson prominently said, "The decline of baseball in many of our urban centers is directly related to the increase in single parent households." Baseball, unlike basketball and football, requires a father or other significant male role model to teach you the game. Great story.
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JB - Not sure what you are really saying here. So if they hadn't done the RBI thing, and we didn't get a team, that would have been better? Was there not a single success story out of the RBI program?
38103: Not saying anything of the sort. "the RBI thing" was not essential to getting a team, it was needed for nonprofit status and the chosen method of financing the ballpark.
Why is it always the children that get let down? This is as skeezy as Jim Rout stealing the Liberty Bell and Time Capsule from the plundered park at the Fairgrounds. He had to steal the Time Capsule because inside is proof that the Liberty Bell belongs to the children of Memphis. But Rout is taking them both to Mississippi...
38141: Yes there are. See this link.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/base…
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