Grassroots Baseball: Route 66
Hank Aaron’s childhood home, Mobile, Ala: This image shows the reverence coaches and players from four historically African-American high schools have for Hank Aaron. Grassroots photographer Jean Fruth left Hank’s rocking chair on the porch empty, out of respect. The home is now located next to the Mobile BayBears Ball Park and has become a museum. (Courtesy of Jean Fruth)
The road is always a good place to change gears.
When I need to refocus I take my camper van to the Driftless Region of southwest Wisconsin. The summer after covering the 1990-91 NBA champion Bulls for the Chicago Sun-Times, I did my first coast to coast trip down Route 66 from Chicago to the Santa Monica Pier. And now here comes Jeff Idelson, the engaging President of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y.
Idelson is retiring after 25 years at the helm of the museum.
And this summer he is heading out on Route 66. In an RV.
The project is called Grassroots Baseball. It is the empathetic vision of Idelson and his journalist collaborator Jean Fruth. She is a San Francisco-based photographer who covered the Giants and the Oakland A’s for the better part of a decade. Fruth also contributed three years worth of archives to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.
Idelson and Fruth will be working on a “Grassroots Baseball: Route 66” coffee table book. It is a follow up to Fruth’s just released 224-page “Grassroots Baseball: Where Legends Begin.” [Sports Publishing.] ” Fruth passionately paired visits to baseball hotspots with Hall of Famers. For example, Dominican Republic (Vlad Guerrero), Cuba (Tony Perez), Mobile, Ala. (Hank Aaron), Puerto Rico (Ivan Rodriguez, Japan (Ichiro) and more.
The Route 66 version began in early May with a detour off the Mother Road to Peoria, Ill. Hall of Famer Jim Thome met with 35 children from the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Peoria. Over the summer
Idelson and Fruth will be hitting and running along Route 66 to visit former Phillies first baseman Ryan Howard (who grew up in St. Louis), Johnny Bench (Oklahoma City) and George Brett in El Segundo, Calif., near the end of the historic road.
“The idea is to visit all sorts of baseball stops along the way of Route 66,” Idelson told me during my WGN-AM show. “We’re starting at the beginning of Route 66 in Chicago and documenting the grassroots game, a passion of Jean’s for years. Part of our program is celebrating the amateur game. We will promote the game but also give back to the community. We’re partnering with the Cal Ripken, Sr. Foundation. (Through the Ripken Foundation) We’re giving Rawlings gloves and baseballs to kids and trying to grow participation for maybe those who don’t have that chance.”
Jeff and Jean visiting me at WGN-AM (720), Chicago. May 2019
Idelson and Fruth have game.
First off, they secured sponsors.
Second, they rented their RV. I bought my van for my Camper Book. So when I need to think about paying my bills, I hop in my van and drive to Starved Rock with a six pack of Joe Maddon’s “Try Not to Suck” beer and count the stars.
Third, Idelson and Fruth know Hall of Famers. I know Abe the Vendor at Wrigley Field.
“This whole van thing is new to me,” Idelson said. “I drive this Honda CR-V that is about six feet long and all of a sudden Jean and I are now in a Coachmen Galleria, wrapped with ‘Grassroots Baseball.’
We’ll go all the way to Santa Monica (Ca.) six months later.” Idelson has to return to Cooperstown now and then to prepare and then host the 2019 Baseball Hall of Fame Induction weekend July 20-22.
Idelson joined the hall of fame in 1994 as director of public relations and promotion, moving on to the vice president of communications and education from 1999 to 2008 when he was named acting and then permanent president. The hall has seen unprecedented growth under Idelson’s watch with crowds above 40,000 attending induction ceremonies every year since 2014. In 2008 the induction ceremonies drew 14,000. I remember just throwing a beach towel on an open space of grass for the Billy Williams (1987), Harry Caray (1989) and Bill Veeck (1991) inductions. These days it is best to have a camper van or RV if you want to find affordable lodging during induction weekend.
As popularity in the Baseball Hall of Fame grew, Idelson wanted to return to the source. He’s only 55 and there’s plenty of numbers left on his odometer. “I appreciated promoting the major league game for the first eight years of my career (in the Red Sox and Yankees PR departments),” he said in a phone conversation. “For the last 25, I’ve promoted hall of famers and their connection to history. It was time to go back and pay attention to grassroots baseball. I want to give back the same commitment that I have to the hall of fame all these years. I want to round out my baseball career that way.”
For me, the beauty of baseball is found in the circular soul of community.
That is why I’ve always been a proponent of minor league baseball.
The connections with fans are stronger than MLB, the game is more affordable and you can still buy paper tickets for your road scrapbook. The major league game has to keep its eye on the ball. My friend Mike is a full-season ticket holder with the Cubs. During the summer when he sells his regular seats, he finds a cheaper seat in the upper deck. Adult tourists to Wrigley Field often ask him, “Where are all the kids?” You don’t have to be a Mr. Rogers to see that families are priced out.
“Grassroots Baseball and Route 66 is about tying in the culture and Americana,” Fruth explained. “As I travel throughout the United States and the world shooting baseball–whether it is minor league baseball or little league, it brings the community together. That community may only have that baseball team in their town. With Johnny Bench in Oklahoma, they had no football team. It was only the baseball team.”
Fruth grew up on 17th Street in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood and the borough of Queens. She is a Mets fan. Fruth worked on “Grassroots Baseball: Where Legends Begin” for a decade. “Any time I’m shooting baseball, whether it is in the major leagues in the U.S. or the World Baseball Classic in Japan, I try to make time to shoot kids baseball,” she said. “Sandlot baseball. Kids playing on the street and there’s plenty of that in the Dominican Republic.”
Grassroots Baseball RV
What do kids say when Idelson and Fruth show up in a colorful RV filled with Big Chew bubble gum and baseball equipment?
Fruth answered, “In Peoria, the kids were a mix of kids who played baseball before and kids who had never held a baseball, never had a glove. That’s kind of the point. Baseball has become an expensive sport. Kids are playing basketball and making other choices. A lot of very athletic kids might play baseball if they had a glove, if they had an opportunity. Travel ball and expensive instruction leave some kids behind. Grassroots Baseball would like to grow that. And we did get that reaction in Peoria. It was encouraging.”
Idelson added, “For each stop, we tried to pick a star that at least grew up close to Route 66. Billy Hatcher from Williams, Az. Ozzie Smith is going to do an equipment drop with us in St. Louis, Adam LaRoche in Kansas.” After LaRoche retired from the Chicago White Sox in 2016 he took his family on a cross country RV trip where no visit was planned more than a day in advance. Their first stop was the Big Bear Ski Resort in California where LaRoche snowboarded for the first time since he was 20. He did not pay any attention to baseball.
Hall of Famer Rich “Goose” Gossage is the national spokesperson for this summer’s Grassroots journey. Of course, his 2000 biography was titled “The Goose Is Loose.” In an e-mail Gossage said, “Growing up in Colorado I had a dream of playing in the big leagues. My dad would always say I was going to be there someday, but deep down I didn’t believe it would happen. Well, it did and it all started at the grassroots level.”
Idelson said, “Route 66 is just the first incarnation of the grassroots program. We’ll pick a new location in a year or two, continuing in the U.S. or looking outside the U.S. to promote the game. It will be an ongoing thing.”
A very old catcher’s mask from the Dominican Republic depicts the plight of the country’s aspiring baseball players. Despite these socioeconomic challenges, more than 100 D.R. players were on major league opening day rosters, the first time a country outside the United States has cracked the century mark. (Courtesy of Jean Fruth.)
Fruth was recently recognized by Sony as one of its 45 Sony’s Artisan of Imagery program, joining SeaLegacy conservation society co-founder and National Geographic Magazine photographer Paul Nicklen among others. She will teach workshops and mentor photographers. She shoots with all Sony equipment. Fruth explains, “There’s sports equipment and Sony has an incredible 400 lens, great for sports. But there’s also all these wide angle and portrait lenses. It’s not about action, really, it’s more about the culture and what happens off the field. You want to tell the story of what baseball means to everybody in the community. I get a lot of variety with Sony lenses.”
Fruth is also a traveling photographer for La Vida Baseball, a digital media company that shares stories of Latino baseball across the United States and Latin America through original video, written and social content.
Idelson reflected, “In helping Jean put together ‘Grassroots Baseball: Where Legends Begin,’ we started with concepts of guys who might introduce the chapters. There’s 13 hall of famers in that book and 16 stars overall. Every hall of famer we approached was either familiar with Jean’s incredible work or the idea of giving back to their own community: the civic pride of, ‘Hey, I grew up here. This is what it is like.”
The Grassroots Baseball RV is wrapped with a Route 66 icon and all of the trip’s sponsors. Idelson smiled and said, “I’m digging this. I’m navigating city streets. I can’t imagine what the open road is going to be like.” Dreams and anticipation are the beauty of travel. And for Idelson and Fruth, home plate is where the heart is.
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