Green Peace Has Arrived in Compton

The boys and girls in the dugouts, their chins on their palms, their baseball gloves on their laps, were told the Major League Baseball Urban Youth Academy could be their future, if they let it be.

They stared out at an infield, carved perfectly from a field of emerald green.

In a far corner of Compton Community College, where the roofs of a trailer park peeked from over the left-field wall, Councilman Isadore Hall asked Tuesday afternoon if there was anything good that could come out of Compton. He answered for them, “Hope.”

The children gazed past him to the lights that ring the field, that will bring them from their homes after dark and illuminate their ballgames.

Hall of Famer Dave Winfield gave them permission to dream, baseball Commissioner Bud Selig encouraged them to reach, Congresswoman Juanita Millender-McDonald asked them to celebrate their gift, and Dodger owner Frank McCourt urged them to walk over the bridge that had been laid.

The boys and girls, in caps and uniforms, from places such as Compton High and Long Beach Jordan and Dominguez and Lynwood, they just wanted to play baseball.

“This means a lot,” said Manuel Meza, a junior outfielder at Compton High. “It’s a good opportunity.”

He stood in center field, finally. By mid-afternoon, the speeches done, the ribbon cut, the plaques handed out, they all did.

Around them rose the first U.S. baseball academy, a $10-million investment by Major League Baseball laid over 10 acres. Organizers hope it will be a place where neighborhood kids will get a square meal, a firm push and a true hop.

When the dignitaries were mostly gone, Lorenzo Gray, in an academy shirt and cap, spoke earnestly with a local principal. Gray played 58 games for the Chicago White Sox more than two decades ago, then became a school district police officer.

He agreed to serve the academy as a part-time instructor and, he said, “teacher of life skills.”

Gray grew up in Compton, attended Lynwood High, learned the game on fields at Campanella Park on Stanford Avenue and Gonzales Park on Rosecrans.

“That’s where we were grounded,” he said.

He wondered where today’s children find such comfort. It was that question that led him back to Darrell Miller, the former Angel player who since August has served as director of the facility.

“Things can work in this city,” Gray said. “We can show them that people do care about you, that Compton is not a forgotten city. There are some caring people here. If we start with this one grain of sand, pretty soon we can bring them the whole beach.

“I’m hoping other people, other companies, will realize this city can thrive. It’s not a place everybody makes it out to be. It has its issues, but there’s a lot more good than bad.”

Miller has overseen the final months of a two-year project, which included the construction of four fields and a 12,000-square foot building that houses clubhouses, showers, weight and training rooms and a small kitchen.

He estimated that half the kids who show up will be raised by neither a mother nor a father, and that all of them will be eligible for state-assisted breakfast and lunch programs.

“Compton’s leading the state in murders again,” he said soberly. “We won last year.”

Miller’s plan is to invite all ages, all skill levels. He’d like to send a bus to the local schools, gather kids, pass out some sandwiches, run through their homework, and hand out the gloves. He calls it “academizing” the community’s boys and girls, just as the Dodgers first did in the Dominican Republic 20 years ago.

“We’re going to be that brick-and-mortar presence in the inner city,” he said.

The complex, at an operating cost of about $1 million annually, also will play host to the RBI World Series in August and serve as the full- or part-time home to Compton Community College, Compton High and other nearby schools.

Eddie Murray was raised across the street from Locke High. Two brothers, including Leon, who attended Tuesday’s ceremony, still live in the same house. So he still drives the streets of Compton, past familiar places, but has lost track of the children there.

“You just can’t believe the game you love, they’ve completely stopped playing it, just about,” Murray said on a recent afternoon in Vero Beach, Fla. “Some of our kids have forgotten how to dream. People are doing the best they can. Now you open it up for somebody to dream.”

Meza, the Compton outfielder who lives near the corner of Compton and Oleander, is willing to give it a shot.

“Hopefully,” he said, “it’ll help take us to the next level.”