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Seeking to help bring awareness to HBCU baseball, the ATL Metro RBI board of directors recently voted to host a baseball showcase of high school talent in the metro Atlanta area.
Plans call for a 36 team three day tournament in mid-May. The tournament will guarantee each team four games. This will give each team and players a chance to adequately showcase the unique skills they bring to the game.
Stillman College baseball team handed first year coach, Terrance Whittle his first victory as head of the Stillman baseball program. The Tigers of Stillman shut-out the Morehouse Maroon Tigers 5-0 behind a super pitching performance from Shawn Vowell.
In the bottom of the sixth inning, the Morehouse dugout shouted jeers towards Vowell on the mound. His cheeks became flushed and the six foot five inch 200 pound right hander from Birmingham took the jeers personally.
The ATL METRO RBI Board of Directors tapped long-time youth league baseball coach Harold Michael Harvey to serve as a Director on its board. Harvey will begin a two year term on January 24, 2018.
According to John Hollins, Jr. CEO of the group, “The sole purpose of ATL METRO RBI is to bring an awareness of career opportunities in baseball to boys and girls in the Metro Atlanta community who are otherwise underserved when it comes to career opportunities in baseball on the collegiate and professional level.”
Steve Williams, President of Professional Scouting for the Pittsburgh Pirates Baseball Club, was all smiles on a recent chilly Saturday morning. What brought a smile to his face was the sight of 100 young, mostly black, men on the baseball diamond at Westlake High School in Atlanta, Georgia.
There was a gleam in his eyes that matched the radiant smile on his face as he looked across the ball field with the watchful eye of a mentor, coach and scout.
Like many red-blooded American boys, Darien Brown, quickly developed a passion for the game of baseball. He not only enjoyed watching it, but wanted to play the game. Although born in 1998 at the end of the Atlanta Braves impressive decade long run for major league baseball dominance, the hype and hoopla over his hometown team was still going strong when Darien began to focus on his environment, from the walker he used to navigate his world.
James Martin, 1944-2009, was head baseball coach at Tuskegee Institute, now known as Tuskegee University from 1971-1982 and from 1984-1988.
Martin was honored as the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SIAC) Baseball Coach of the Year ten times during his fifteen year baseball coaching career. Between 1976 and 1980, Coach Martin had a .750 winning percentage, winning over 200 games in his first ten years as the head baseball coach. During this decade, Martin doubled as the Assistant Head Coach of the Tuskegee football team. He would later become Head Coach of the football program and Director of Athletics at Tuskegee. Additionally, Martin served as Director of Athletics at South Carolina State University, Long Island University and his Alma Mater, Alabama A & M University.
The Tuskegee University Golden Tigers baseball team is off to a fast start, They started the 2017 season by sweeping Selma University, a perennial independent powerhouse, 11-4 and 15-5 in a double-hitter on February 3. Tuskegee pounded out 11 hits and was led by a two home run performance from Ricky Green, who drove in 4 runs.
The 2016 World Series is now in the books, both the box score archives of Major League Baseball and the historical record books. As a dad I learned an important life lesson. The lesson was taught to me by my son, Coley Harvey. This lesson adds more meaning to the 2016 World Series to me, than it could possibly add to the average Cub or Indian fan’s appreciation for the history that was made this week.
Tuskegee Institute, Alabama Tuskegee University under the leadership of first year Head Baseball Coach Reggie Hollins hosted its first Tuskegee University Alumni Baseball Classic, October 21, 2016, during the homecoming festivities at the historic university in East Alabama.
Hollins, a 2010 graduate of Tuskegee University, where he starred as a middle infielder for the Golden Tigers, took over the helm of the Tuskegee program this summer from Montressa Kirby, who had been doubling as the quarterback coach on the highly rated Tuskegee football team since 2009.
Willie Mays, I am not. I had almost forgotten the day a baseball fan thought I was Willie Mays. I like to think that I was a good baseball player when I was in my prime, but no way as proficient with the bat, the glove or as fleet on the basepath as the “Say Hey Kid.”
What prompted this reflection is the news that the Atlanta Braves, formerly my hometown team, and the Florida Marlins played a game, the day before the 240th birthday of the United States of America. The game was played before 12,500 soldiers and their families on a ball field constructed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina just for this one game.