Empowering Inner-City Youth through Baseball with Gerald Bolden

 Yeah, he's he's pretty good, man. He's a switch hitter, like I said, he's a switch hitter. And I think he's playing JV as a freshman. No, that's good. Yeah. Do all the travel ball and stuff. Yeah.

But yeah, he was my cousin. He was always into baseball. And yeah, it was only right. His son got into it. I think he was, his son was at the Burbs game last night. Oh, for real? Yep. I was on the phone with him and he was getting dressed. He was like, he's finna go to meet his buddies at the Brave game.

That was a heck of a game. Heck of a game. Yeah, I missed it. I was watching the football game. Yeah, it's all good. I like post season baseball. It's a little different than the regular season. Oh, every pitch is intense, right? Yeah. It matters, huh. Everything matters. And that's when the real pros show out.

I got 60 percent on that battery. We may or may not be able to make it. But, I'll come in and change batteries. Yep. Everybody's firm. That sounds good. I'll tap on the window when I'm ready. Okay.

So yeah, I hope the little outline helped you. It did, yeah. Really did. Yep. Good. Yeah, that was, helps to have a little direction. Yeah, I remember I did, I put all this in there and then I think I. I entered it. Did you receive all that information? Yeah, I got all the information. I took all the information and then I put it in.

Okay. So it probably looks like all the information you sent, huh? Yep. Yep. So I just broke it up into the segments. Cool. To try and make it make sense. Yeah. No, that's perfect.

Good to go. Alrighty. Yes, sir. Back at it again. Another episode of the Thorn city syndicate spotlight show where we network and build connections through interviews and discussions. This episode is brought to you by GMP podcast group. I'm your host, Thorn city podcast guy. Make sure you visit www.

thorncitysyndicate. com. Hit that like share and subscribe button. Get your updates, new releases, bonus episodes. Today, I got a special guest in the spotlight. We got Gerald Bolton with Friends of Baseball. How you doing today, brother? I'm doing good. Thanks for having me. Yeah, man. Thanks for coming. So today, we're going to get into a little bit about your early baseball journey, and we'll touch on your playing, coaching career, and then, of course, your great work you're doing with Friends of Baseball.

Perfect. How long have you been involved with Friends of Baseball? This will be my fifth year. I started off receiving I actually went to a grocery store and saw that they were giving away plastic bats at the grocery store. Wow. And so I was like, what is this? And so they said, we're trying to inspire and enhance their lives through the lessons that baseball has.

And so I was like, oh. And so I applied and, here we are. Nice. Can you take us back to some of your earliest memories in baseball and your father was involved with softball? Correct. How did that influence you in the sport? Intensely and in a, and just just in a big way because growing up, if you don't have a family member in your family that plays baseball softball, it's, you're not going to play.

The fact that my dad played softball and I was Every Saturday, that's what we did on the military base. And I was five years old and I said, I think I can play with y'all. And obviously, I wasn't able to. And then I got to be able to play on the t ball. Team on the Air Force Base and I would hit like my dad, but I would hold my hands the opposite way.

And the T ball coach just said, why don't you just flip over to the left hand side? And then that's, I fell in love. Also I went back for a baseball, closed my eyes grabbed the baseball out of the air. And looked at it and I caught it. And so I thought it was divine intervention. Shocked yourself.

That's all I needed. It didn't even have to. be that arduous of a task to say, Hey, you should play this game. It was just already the love of it just manifested in that blind catch. Nice. Yeah, that's crazy because I had an older cousin who played baseball for Riverside growing up and now he, he moved to Georgia and his son's playing baseball.

I was telling you and he's pretty good. He's a switch hitter. And you don't see many young kids switch hitting these days, so I was pretty, pretty surprised. Yeah. Baseball to me at this point is like a fourth or fifth wheel to basketball, football, volleyball, soccer and our mission at Friends of Baseball is to bring that game back as the so called national pastime where it was inclusive with, Everybody that played.

I remember growing up in North and Northeast Portland. They had Peninsula, Sportsman, Riverside, Wilshire, Interstate. Everywhere. Everywhere had a Little League and it had a lot of black folks who participated in Little League back in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. I just wanted to make sure that we didn't bring it back.

How many, do you know how many of those programs still around? North Portland is the only, North Portland Little League is the only Little League in that whole area. It goes from Pier Park all the way up towards like Boise Elliott. So it's a big it's a big boundary and Little League is predicated on boundaries.

And obviously with gentrification it has disbanded our participation in the game of baseball due to those boundaries and the boundary is so big that they can't facilitate all baseball or softball for all of the kids in that boundary. Nice. Yeah, I remember I played baseball one year for Peninsula for the Intel team.

Coach Miles was my team, or was my coach, Aaron Miles dad but I played one year. I wasn't good at hitting, but I was a good bunter, so I was a leadoff, so I could bump my way on. Hey, that's all you need to do, there's seven ways to get on base. You can't steal first base, but there's other ways you can get on first base.

Yep. So what were some of the challenges you faced as a young baseball player, and how'd you overcome them? One of the biggest challenges is that I grew up in a broke, I came from a broken home. So my mom and dad divorced when I was 10 and baseball was there for me. My dad was no longer in the home.

My mom raised three of us by herself. She was a waitress and that was hard. What I would do was to relieve any of the tension at home. I would just go out and play with all my friends and we would play baseball. We would play whatever the season was, but my love was baseball. And so that was a challenge in the fact that mentally I was still a kid, right?

And then I looked at my mom and dad as God. But then they broke up, which, which kind of hurt me. I found surrogate fathers in doing little league and junior little league. with community members that, that helped me pursue my goal of becoming a baseball player as well as staying in school.

Yeah. Coaches. That's a good thing about sports is you get involved in coaching and so on. I think all sports help you in life in general. For sure. Also I grew up in the middle of gang land in the eighties. And a lot of my peers went down that road and when they did do that they left me alone.

They said, Hey, you, you might make it. That was. Something growing up in that environment was so negative, but to be able not to be involved in it because of baseball was one of my saving graces in that environment. Yeah, I grew up, my neighborhood grew up with a bunch of kids who end up being in a gang.

When I was in 7th or 8th grade, my parents made me stop hanging out with those guys. They was going left and they wanted me to go right. And so when I got to high school, I didn't have any more friend, any of my guy friends at least. I had some female friends, but it was high school, I had to start over.

So it was, it's pretty tough and challenging. Yeah, it was a trip. But baseball is one of those things you can't play by yourself, right? You got to have somebody to play with you. So it's tough to get into it if you don't have other friends, like you said, friends or family, that's already into it.

Can you speak on some of the financial barriers and limited resources there's out there for the inner city kids? Yeah it costs, to be on the travel team in, just in one summer it requires about 3, 000. And that's not including the baseball bat, which is about 500 and a glove is about 400, a good one.

Also cleats. And then the ability to travel to different locations. So all those are barriers that plague our community in terms of access and having the resources to even play. If you look at it, they, baseball has hats, uniforms, umpires, coaches park permits, field permits. And if you look in the inner city of Portland, our fields aren't as good as the suburbian fields.

Yeah. It's a little rough around here. Yeah. It's a little rough. It's been like that since I've, I played on these fields. It's still the same. Still the same. So that isn't inviting as well. So the barriers are just resources. And so at Friends of Baseball, we try to eliminate that by receiving donations.

Some of our donors actually give resources so kids can be scholarshiped on these teams. Currently, we're trying to we actually did a 10U team called the Monarchs, and they were all black 10U team, a lot of them were 8 and 9. We had a donor from the Corvallis baseball club. And they were able to afford a club team experience without families paying for it.

Oh, nice. Yeah, that community support is important. Very. Yeah. Nice. We're going to take a break here. We're going to get a message from one of our sponsors, GMP Podcast Group. GMP Podcast Group in this lovely studio we are in. But when we come back, we'll discuss a little bit about your playing career professionally and in coaching.

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History in the making from the making of this. Third, I guess it's welcome back to these words. So I'ma come well welcome back words for sure. Yeah. Yes sir, welcome back to the Thorn City Syndicate Spotlight Show. I'm your host, Thorn City Podcast Guy. I got my guy Gerald in the building with Friends of Baseball.

That was a little tune, little tunes from the unreleased project of third twin artist I managed. My best friend got me into this led to this spotlight show. I was helping him out. Get his life back together and growing up. He was a rap artist and he stopped. He stopped doing music.

And so I wanted some music from him. And so I decided to pay for my own album. And so that's what we did. Helped him turn his life around. Go check out episode one. It'll give you the back story of how it all started with me and him. He was my first guest. But yeah, that's why I started the Spotlight Show.

It's basically an advertising marketing platform to give people a chance to get their message out. For businesses, brands, entrepreneurs, and organizations like yourself with the Friends of Baseball. Like you was telling me earlier you don't think a lot of people know about you.

So that's why we created this platform to bring people along like you and, get the message out there and try and get some spotlight on it, I appreciate that. Yeah, definitely. So tell me some of the highlights and challenges you encountered during your professional career in the frontier league and what, where is the frontier league?

The frontier league is on the East coast from West Virginia to Kalamazoo, Michigan. Everywhere in between there. Independent ball is also professional ball, but it's not affiliated with any major league team. And a lot of the guys who are affiliated with the major league clubs would go to these independent leagues.

And they're no longer, or there's some out there, but not as rampant as they used to be. And they would go down on to rehab their inju and then get back on. So a filler. It was short se

Three months. Wow. That's a lot of games. Yeah. Short period of time. Yeah. Baseball. I'm gonna play that baseball for you. They played back to backs and doubleheaders sometimes. You can't do that in no other sports. I think I was wearing cleats more than I was wearing regular. Yeah. So what led to your transition from playing to coaching and how did your experiences as a player I played

semi pro ball here in Portland and called the Taylor Electric it was a company team, right? The manager ended up getting a pro job in Johnstown. He invited me to come. He said, there's no guarantees. You're gonna have to go to spring training and earn it. And I said thank you for the opportunity.

ear. At John, in Johnstown in: 1996

To take it and run with it is how it shaped my coaching into what I'm doing today because I think there is opportunities not just to play the game of baseball because not everybody's going to make it to the league. But what the lessons that baseball give as you're playing and learning how to be your best version, because it's a craft that you have to work on, it then translates into your real life.

I don't know other sport is around to where as you're failing seven out of 10 times. Yeah. And that's good. That's the trip about baseball. Yes. The only one you succeed. When you're failing to a certain extent. And how do you deal with your failure to be successful? Yeah, that's tough. That's a tough one.

And when you can be okay with failing. And failing is a harsh word. It is a harsh word. Not doing as well as you, baseball is allotted, is the thing because Hall of Famers, who hit 300, that's really good. That's really good. Really good. And baseball's tough. It's virtually impossible.

You can't hit 100%. Hit that ball. It's coming that fast. So yeah, like you said, If you batting 300, you at the top of the food chain, and so yeah, that's one thing about baseball. I don't have any kids, but if I had kids, I would definitely push them towards baseball. Less wear and tear on the body, and they're making a lot of money.

Yep, longevity, guaranteed contracts. And that's if you make it, but if you don't make it like myself. These lessons just permeate throughout my life in terms of relationships going, applying for a job and not getting it how do I talk to myself the next day? It helps you bounce back.

It helps you bounce back. Yeah. Nice. So it sounds like coaching took you all over the world. And you coached in London, England, and South Africa? Yes. What are those experiences like? The, before we get to that experience, I want to expose how that happened. Yes, please do. Okay after my playing, I played two years of minor league baseball.

After those days were over, I reached out, and this is before the internet, I reached out to every major league club, and I... Stamped put it in an envelope. And it said, I would like to be invited to try out for your team. And so I sent all 30 of those out. I received four back Marlins, Cubs, Dodgers.

And another one, I can't remember right now. Anyway. I planned on driving there, and this was in Vero Beach, I was gonna go to Florida Marling Camp and the Dodger Camp, and that was it. That's all I had time for during spring training. It was about end of February. So I would, I planned on driving there because I didn't want to go there without a car.

And I had 1, 500 in my pocket, and I was driving a Honda Civic 4 cylinder, so in order to go across the country in February, you have to go down south because you're gonna hit all these, it could be black ice or, snow, who knows, in the higher elevations, right? As I'm going over Mount Shasta, I lose fifth gear in this manual Honda Civic is what I had.

And I ran it, it burnt out in Bakersfield California. I stopped at one transmission place. They said it would take a, it would cost about 1, 200 and we wouldn't be able to do it in three days. And so I needed to be in Bureau Beach, Florida in three days. I was planning on driving 12 hour shifts a day to make it.

And so I went to another mechanic, they said, Oh, it's going to cost you about 1, 400 and we're a week out. I said, No, thank you. So I went to this last one and the secretary said, It's going to cost you 1, 500 and we're a month out. But I do know this guy who's working at this, who owns this baseball academy.

I'm going to call him for you. Because there's three other players that are going to spring training. She calls him, puts me on the phone with this guy, his name is Bobby Matia. I'll never forget this guy. He he says, Oh, you sound like a cool dude. Meet me at the this restaurant. I don't know, I think it was like Applebee's or something.

We meet, we talk, he says, Guess what? This is what I'm going to do for you. Why don't you just leave your car with me at my apartment. Take the 1, 500. Buy an airplane ticket. Do your thing. If you make it, I'll see you in nine months. If you don't make it, I'm still gonna take care of your car. Watch over your car.

But if you don't make it, come back and I'll give you a job. Oh, wow. And I said, at his baseball academy. Oh, yeah. I said, okay. Cool. So I did it. I went and did it. Came back. I said, give me two weeks, I'm gonna go fix my car, I'll come back. Came back, worked at the baseball academy. Eight kids a day, one hour a kid, and this Filipino dude comes in and says, Hey, I really like how you're working with kids.

ach. And at that time, it was: 2000

But before you go to South Africa, he set up this job with this softball company called Meteors. And so I worked there for two and a half months. And then from there, I went to South Africa for two and a half months. Nice. And I would be in a different province. Every week of those two and a half months in South Africa, and I didn't stay in the hotel because I didn't want to, I lived with the people, and the people didn't have running water.

Oh, wow. It was an eye opening experience and it made me feel grateful that we have what we have here, but at the same time they had less and did more. Yeah. Going out of, I haven't been out of the country, but I'm sure it changes your vision of what's going on in America. You really see how blessed we are over here.

For sure. And there's some downfalls too, but, take the good with the bad and yeah, it seemed like they were more happier with less. Yeah. Yeah. You appreciate life more. They're just happy to be living. And that's what baseball afforded me not just the game to play the game, but to be around the culture of baseball garnered these opportunities that I wouldn't have never saw for myself.

Nice. So always be ready when opportunity is knocking and you're not ready, then you don't get those experiences. Yeah. That's that's it man. Wow. That's crazy. We're gonna take one more break here get a Message from thorn city syndicate the management team When we come back, we'll get into the friends of baseball's mission vision and how it all came into existence

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Cause this syndicate lyricist exists. Don't blink one eye baby, you just might miss. History in the making from the making of this. Third, I guess it's welcome back to these words. So I'ma come well welcome back words for sure. Yeah. Sir. Welcome back to the Thorn City Syndicate Spotlight Show. Friends of Baseball.

I love the sound of it. Tell me a little bit about the mission and vision of the Friends of Baseball and how did it come into existence? That's a great question. We wanted to give kids the ability to... have baseball enhance their lives, do the baseball lessons that and softball lessons. Because what we do with the boys, we want to do with the girls as well.

And kind of the boys are a little up here a little bit, and the girls are just getting off the ground. But Friends of Baseball is Wanting every child who wants to play this game have the ability to, without any barriers such as resources or money or anything of that nature.

I know that here in Portland, we don't have a... Major League Baseball team per se. We do have a minor league team, but that makes it a little harder to not sell, to sell the game to the youth because basketball and football kind of dominate this area, but there's other kids and that don't play basketball or football that we would like to reach and encourage and inspire them to play the game so they can actually Get the experiences that, that I had.

Nice. Is that the Pickles? The Pickles are a college team. Is that a college? I didn't know that. Yeah. And there's a, they have to have college eligibility. But the Hillsboro Hops. Oh, the Hillsboro Hops. Gotcha. Play out in Hillsboro. Gotcha. Nice. You share, can you share any specific stories or examples of young athletes lives that was transformed through the Friends of Baseball program?

Yeah, there's one child named Dakari. Dakari came. Dakari Evans is the name and his dad Aaron Evans is hugely into baseball and currently when, currently Dakari plays for our club team in North Portland and he's doing well. But when we first when we first met him, he was seven years old.

And was just brand new into the game of baseball and loved it. And that's the piece, too, is that we just want to be the spark, and hopefully the child can hold the charge of the passion. So we're just... Giving the hitting, throwing, pitching, catching, fielding spark. And then it's up to that child, like myself, when I blindly caught the ball.

It empowered a passion within me. And I see that with Dakari. 12. He's about to age out a little league. And once they are 12 and they age out a little league, they go to the big bases at 13, which is 90 foot bases. So we've worked together one on one and I've seen him exponentially grow of not only his love for the game, which is important in terms of him working on his craft to get To the talent level he's at today.

Nice. Nice. The full court, full count. Nike, R B I program. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Yeah. R B I stands for reviving baseball within the inner city. For the last 25 years, major League has had this program but to me it's only been a slogan. With no actionable steps and Friends of baseball here with the full count program is putting in action.

With that slogan you can put something out there and have it be a sl a saying, but the actionable steps are required for it to be a saying. So that Jackie Robinson's name isn't in vain because he did integrate society, but baseball still hasn't been integrated especially with African Americans people players of color born in America.

And that's lacking and talking about that back in the seventies and. Sixties, seventies, and even though the eighties, the percentage of black American born ball players were about 18% and now we're less than 6% in the major leagues. Yeah. A lot of the majors leagues, the blacks are from overseas.

It seems like they're good too, though. Yeah, they are good. Yeah. And rightfully if you're good enough to play . Cool. But the RBI programs are heavily in those countries, when they could be heavily in the inner cities. Our program puts Major League Baseball, holds Major League Baseball accountable to what RBI really means.

Gotcha. Any upcoming events or initiatives that Friends of Baseball have coming up? Yes, on November 18th we're working with Adley Rutchman, who is the starting catcher for the Orioles. He grew up in Sherwood. Okay. And he wants to be known more not just a baseball player, but somebody who's giving back to their community and those who live in Sherwood already have everything.

So he really wanted to work with Friends of Baseball because we're taking a direct line to inner city youth. Nice. Nice. Man, I enjoyed you coming through and sharing your story with me. I'm just going to recap what we got going on today. Today we talked about the Friends of Baseball, and they're empowering the inner city youth through baseball.

Got a little bit about your early journey in baseball. Your passion for making the sport accessible to the inner city youth. And then we talked about your transition from player to coach. How can listeners get involved to support the Friends of Baseball? You can go to friendsofbaseball.

org and then there's a website we have. And also we have events on that website that then you could register for League Apps. And League Apps when you register for that opens you up to all of the up and coming events that we hold. We do community center work. We do after school program and summer camps as well as we're doing like a Halloween thing as well as a holiday, before we go on holidays a giveaway to help the Jefferson Food Pantry.

So we're accumulating donations for the Jefferson Food Pantry before the winter break. Nice. Nice. I want to encourage our listeners to explore their passions, embrace innovation and pursue entrepreneurship in your own unique way. Thanks for joining us. Explore the power of networking and find inspiration by following me at Thorn City Podcast Guy for updates, exclusive behind the scenes content, and to join the conversation today.

Stay tuned for upcoming episodes of Thorn City Syndicate Spotlight Show as we continue to highlight individuals, businesses, brands, and podcasters. Don't forget to subscribe at the Thorn City Podcast Guy YouTube channel. Follow at Thorn City Syndicate, the management company, at GMP Podcast Group, the production company as well.

And be sure to stop by www. thorncitysyndicate. com and schedule your free strategy session. I'm the Thorn City Podcast Guy. Holla at ya boy. Thank you. Thank you brother. Appreciate it. Appreciate it. Yes sir. Let's get a picture. Oh, yeah, for sure.