POSTED: May 13th 2009
NewsUpdate
Pitch In For Baseball supplies the need
KEIR RADNEDGE & LAURA WALDEN / Sports Features Communications
TAMPA: The IBAF is working with Pitch In For Baseball to grow baseball even further throughout the key continents of Europe and Africa. IBAF's mission is to grow the game as a sport for all young people, and this partnership fits perfectly with that mission.
IBAF’s worldwide network of member federations have pitched in to share used equipment to pass to developing grassroots areas. Baseball has seen a sharp increase in developing nations in the past five years under the leadership of IBAF Federations, and these efforts will continue to grow the game at that level.
“The IBAF is proud to be working with Pitch In For Baseball to grow the game of baseball worldwide by getting equipment into the hands of children who cannot afford it,” said IBAF President Dr. Harvey Schiller.
“Baseball is a simple game that knows no restrictions on age, color or social status, and by getting equipment into the hands of children we will help raise not just the awareness of the sport, but their self-esteem and physical condition as well.”
Executive director David Rhode spoke to SportsFeatures.com to explain the work of the four-year-old organization and its worldwide effect.
He says: “I’d come across a gentleman, Bill Piszek, in the Philadelphia area whose family had been heavily involved with Little League baseball and when they went over to his European base of operations in Poland they noticed that some of the players didn’t have their own gloves – and these were games at the highest level there.”
So they started collecting gloves for the kids in Poland and the programme was called Pitch In A Glove. This struck a chord with Rhode as he was looking for an initiative which combined his two passions, community service and sport.
So Rhode tracked down Piszek and asked if he would be willing to expand his idea, not just in Poland but to help children everywhere. Piszek happily agreed and that led to the creation of Pitch In for Baseball.
The launch of this new global organisation was 2005 but when it got rolling in September this was only three weeks after Hurricane Katrina had hit the Gulf Coast region.
The original plan for international assistance was still the underlying foundation but, given the circumstances, Rhode and his team felt it was important that contributors should be allowed to direct their support where they wished.
Thus the initial partner agreement with Little League Baseball focused not so much, initially, on the lofty goal of helping kids internationally but much closer to home - throughout the gulf region.
That became the launch focus of the initial donations into Pitch In For Baseball and thus the organisation’s first efforts were “at home” in the United States.
That had its advantages. As Rhode says: “The challenge of helping kids in New Orleans, while significant, was minimised by the fact that the equipment could be boxed up and delivered two days later without the complexities of trying to get it through customs.”
The first year in operation was the baseball season starting in the spring of 2006. The goal was set that year of sending equipment to three different programmes but PIFB ended up shifting 5,000 pieces of equipment to 16 different programmes.
Little League, meanwhile, encouraged its own people to direct assistance through PIFB to reach out to more children – with dramatic results. In 2007 the number of programmes rose to 65 and then, last year, to more than 200.
Rhode says: “It’s been quite startling and we have struggled to maintain the pace of demand. We have shipped equipment now to 60 countries in the last four years. These include not only places you think of as baseball hotbeds such as Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, maybe Panama, Nicaragua, but also lots of places where baseball is just getting started throughout Latin America and the Caribbean but also in Africa and Asia.”
PIFB does not choose where to go. Rhode says: “In 99 per cent of the cases what happens typically is that we receive an via email from somebody somewhere in the world who gives us a little background on who they are and what their needs are.”
Fifty per cent of the donations stay in the US and 50pc are international. Most of the support is directed into existing programmes, where a certain level of infrastructure already exists.
Rhode says: “It’s not somebody saying: ‘Can you put me some equipment together, I’m hoping to start a baseball programme.’ Almost invariably it’s further along the path, when someone has a recognized programme they want to expand. They might say: ‘We have the interest but could really use some more equipment.’ Or, in the US it could be: ‘We’ve had a setback – mother nature or economic – and we have 18 teams and need X, Y and Z.’
Thus Pitch In For Baseball does not send out equipment in the hope that local contacts can plant a baseball seed; applicant organizations need to demonstrate a structured plan about its prospective use.
Many programmes are intended to be competitive at some point - whether in Vietnam or Slovenia or elsewhere – but others centre on a recreational, quality of life aspect.
Rhode says: “For example, this might be about kids in Colombia where they have a lot of counter attractions, most of which are bad such as drugs, gangs, violence. So the baseball programme is a safe haven for them, a chance to do something positive compared with some of the other choices presented to them.”
PIFB has shipped more than 50,000 pieces of equipment already and will be approaching 100,000 by the end of this year - not only equipment but also uniforms - and 75,000 children and young people will have been involved in countries as diverse as Pakistan, Uganda and Brazil. Equipment has also just been sent to Iraq.
Pitch In For Baseball combines with the US State Department on some projects and works through the US Embassy in many countries to ease the difficulties of importing and moving equipment internationally.
The IBAF and Pitch In For Baseball thus appear natural partners to expand the sport’s development across the world. Bringing baseball onto the world stage demands everybody’s participation and both organizations have a desire to see the sport grow from the grassroots level forward.
Pitch In For Baseball perfectly compliments IBAF’s strategic desire to bring the youth of Europe and Africa to the game of baseball.
Picture (above right): Dreams of glory - a little girl in Puerto Rico / Image: Pitch In For Baseball
Keywords · IBAF · Harvey Schiller · Pitch In For Baseball · David Rhode
For more information contact:
Laura Walden ()
All original materials contained in this section are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of Sports Features Communications, Inc the owner of that content. It is prohibited to alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content.
