Games Are Showcase for Inner-City Players

About 80 high school baseball players, most from City Section schools, will take part in a one-day series of games before a crowd of professional scouts, college coaches and fans Sunday at Biola University.

The George Genovese Games are named in honor of the longtime Los Angeles-area scout who has signed 43 players that reached the major leagues, among them Bobby Bonds, Gary Matthews, Chili Davis, George Foster and Jack Clark. Genovese, 77, worked 34 years for the San Francisco Giants. He is a scout for the Dodgers.

The event is sponsored by Children of Promise, a Calabasas-based nonprofit organization. George Voita, director of the organization, said all proceeds from the event will be distributed as cash scholarships to several of the participants.

Voita said representatives from all 30 major league organizations and more than 50 colleges will attend.

“We have two goals,” Voita said. “We want to honor George Genovese, who has done so much for so many kids--especially those who don’t always get exposure--and we want to give a lot of the inner-city kids a chance to play in front of a captive audience of coaches and scouts.”

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The Interscholastic Athletic Committee will meet Monday, and one of the agenda items is discussion about the impact basketball showcase events sponsored by outside entities have on the section.

Athletics Commissioner Barbara Fiege said the Games committee will present recommendations to IAC regarding the matter.

The Fairfax and Westchester boys’ teams played Western League contests at multigame events Saturday at Long Beach City College and Monday at the Long Beach Pyramid. Manual Arts and Crenshaw played nonleague opponents Monday at the Pyramid and the Washington girls played in an event Monday at UC Riverside.

“[IAC] will be looking at the impact these events have on the schools, the student body of each school, the financial implications of playing games somewhere other than the school sites and the JV teams that seem to get lost in the shuffle,” Fiege said.