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Baker helps lead ‘Play Ball’ event in D.C.
- Updated: December 7, 2016
WASHINGTON — “My son Darren will get three hits in a game and I’ll say, ‘You know, son, in that fourth at-bat, you took that 2-0 fastball right down the middle,'” said Washington Nationals manager Dusty Baker to a rapt group of parents at the Gallaudet University Field House in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday night. “My wife has to remind me to stay positive. It’s tough being a parent. It’s way easier coaching someone else’s kid.”
Baker’s address was part of the Positive Coaching Alliance’s “parent station” at Major League Baseball’s special Winter Meetings edition of its “Play Ball” initiative. While the parents listened to Baker, their children — 200 of them, ages 7-13, from Kendall Demonstration Elementary School, Washington District 3 Little League, Prince George’s County RBI program and the Washington Nationals Youth Baseball Academy — filled Gallaudet’s gym.
Also in attendance were Tony Reagins, MLB’s senior vice president of youth programs, Chicago Cubs manager Joe Maddon and former Major League outfielders Billy Bean and Curtis Pride. Bean is now MLB’s vice president of social responsibility and inclusion, while Pride serves as both MLB’s ambassador of inclusion and Gallaudet University’s head baseball coach. USA Baseball and USA Softball employees, along with the Gallaudet University baseball and softball teams, staffed the event, which is designed to highlight the variety of informal ways baseball and softball can be played.
“All summer long we would play in the street,” Maddon recalled of his childhood in Hazleton, Pa. “We broke windows, we got kicked out of the parking lots. And if you hit the …
