He Puts On a Clinic in How to Give Back

So who will follow Eric Davis?

Not on the path that took him from South Los Angeles to the pinnacle of the major leagues, but on the journey that led him right back here, to the park on Hoover Street where it all began.

This is where Davis and his brother watched a baseball team practicing, until the coach looked over and said, “Y’all want to play?”

“He put me and my brother on the team,” Davis said. “I might have been about 7. Been playing ever since.”

Hard to believe his attention-grabbing seasons with the Cincinnati Reds, when he brought a unique combination of power and speed to the ballpark, came almost 20 years ago. He won a World Series with them 14 years ago, and took his last big league swing three years ago.

Now it’s about giving others a chance to play. He wandered around the fields Wednesday at Algin Sutton Recreation Center, giving advice to the almost 200 kids who participated in the first of a two-day clinic Davis put together after Nike’s L.A. brand manager, Drew Greer, agreed to sponsor the event. Youngsters 8-13 went Wednesday, teenagers 14-18 attend today.

Gerald Pickens brought over an SUV full of kids from his baseball academy in Compton. Former big leaguer Tony Tarasco scooped up four kids from his hometown in Santa Monica and brought them.

The excitement among the children, best exemplified by the perpetual smile on 7-year-old Joseph Herrera’s face, was a reminder of the simple joys the game can bring.

“I get to play with my friends at the park,” said Michael Sapp, 10.

Brien Anderson felt compelled to step up and say, “Hi, my name is Brien, and I want to talk about the game of baseball.”

“It’s a good sport,” the 10-year-old said. “Baseball is good exercise for me, and you can meet a lot of people.”

Wednesday, he learned that to be a good pitcher, “you’ve got to have balance, you’ve got to bend your back. When you catch a grounder, whatever base you’re throwing to, you have to turn your shoulder to it and throw.”

Sprinkled among the high school coaches providing instruction were former Dodgers Tommy Davis, the two-time National League batting champion, and Jay Johnstone, and Brad Lesley, a reliever for the Reds and Milwaukee Brewers in the early 1980s, who helped pitchers.

“Don’t stab at it,” Davis advised a kid handling pitches behind the plate. “Catch it. Let the ball come in to you. Like you’re catching an egg.”

See, Davis started out as a catcher way back when, before he moved to the outfield and climbed the ranks. He won three Gold Gloves patrolling the Riverfront Stadium outfield for the Reds in the late 1980s.

That’s the kind of talent that used to come out of this city, which was a gushing oil well for African American baseball players. Bob Watson, Eddie Murray, Ozzie Smith, George Hendrick, Chet Lemon, Darryl Strawberry and Chris Brown came flowing through. Now it’s drying up, as is the production of black players throughout America.

As The Times’ Eric Stephens wrote during the College World Series in June, African Americans made up only 6.1% of the 9,807 Division I baseball players last season, and only 10.8% of the major league players last year (down from 19% in 1995).

“I knew it was going to drop off, but I didn’t know it was going to drop off that dramatically,” Davis said. “When Darryl and I were playing, we created so much havoc that the scouts had to come. We did things that created a buzz for the scouts to come.”

Today, Davis said, “There are some jewels down there. They just need to be polished and signed.”

For a long time the problem was a lack of playing spaces. That’s changing. Former agent Dennis Gilbert helped pay for the construction of a field at L.A. Southwest College. In June, Major League Baseball, in conjunction with the Dodgers and Angels, broke ground on a baseball academy in Compton.

The Dodgers upgraded Davis’ old park on Hoover and debuted the “Dodger Dream Field” in January 2003. Now there is a nice diamond with a well-defined infield, chalked lines, a warning track and everything.

“You should take advantage of it,” Davis said when the kids gathered for a question-and-answer session after a spaghetti lunch. “You guys don’t know how good you have it.”

Davis wants to keep it going. He wants to get another league established, ready to play in May, that will give kids more options, the way it was back in his day when you could play in “as many [games] as your mama would let you play.”

You can look down the road and see the trend. Diminished interest now means diminished interest in the future, fewer people dedicated enough to the game to come back and instruct the next generation.

“What they’re doing is wonderful,” said Phil Pote, a Seattle Mariner scout dressed the part with his aviator sunglasses and woven hat. “But in addition, I would like to see an inner-city baseball coaches academy, where this could be sustained. We had it years ago for a brief spell. As wonderful as these clinics are, they come and they’re gone. If you had 15, 20, 25 youth coaches, young guys going into the community, every January and February, about four to six meetings once a week and the basics -- how to hit infield, how to plan a practice, how to motivate -- then you’ve got 20, 25 guys right in the community that know the playground directors, know the parents, and it sustains it.”

That’s Eric Davis’ goal.

“It’s time for me to pick up the pieces and make something positive happen, to bring the tradition back to South Central,” Davis said.

Three years into retirement and he’s still ready to step up to the plate.

Now, who’s on deck?

J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Adande, go to latimes.com/adande.