Diamonds In The Rough

As baseball field diamonds go, the two at the coiner of Division and Sedgwick streets near downtown Chicago would never be mistaken for the Friendly Confines. The outfields suffer from chronic pattern baldness and weed infestation. The infields aren't made of dirt but of a thin coating of dust and bullet-sized rocks laid down by the overworked souls of the Chicago Park District. About once every seven minutes, the rumble of the elevated train rearranges the glittering glass shards on the sidewalk and sets the battered wooden bleachers to creaking. Some would call Carson Field run-down, a rough-edged, green-tinged testament to urban blight, but to others, it's beautiful.

"I like it here," says Julio Mason. "All the other fields is taken. You go there, you have to run 'cause of all the shooting. Here, you don't."

Julio, a naturally cheerful 12-year-old with a Babe Ruthian body, knows the neighborhood as well as anyone. Over there—he points north of the fields—it belongs to the Cobras and Black P Stones. Over there, pointing south, it belongs to the Disciples and the Vice Lords. Carson, right in the center of this dangerous geography, is home base for Julio and 450 other kids and, more important, center stage for a small, but promising, attempt to bring organized Little League baseball to Chicago's inner city.

"Around here, you don't have to figure out where you can go and where you can't," Julio says, his eyes widening at the ignorance of his questioner. "You just know."

You have to know. This is Cabrini-Green, two square miles of cinder block high rises and row houses that rank among America's more notorious public-housing developments. Though it lies only a half mile west of Chicago's exclusive Gold Coast district, for all practical purposes Cabrini-Green may as well be on another continent. In this area, according to police estimates, 70% of all crimes go unreported. Liquor stores outnumber banks 15 to 0, and the annual homicide count regularly exceeds that of Vermont, North Dakota and Montana combined.

On May 30, Julio and the other 450 kids living nearby will don their uniforms and line up at Carson Field for Opening Day of Chicago's Near North Little League, a.k.a. the African-American Youth Baseball League. The program, built on an alliance between black community leaders and white businesses, already qualifies as a success by some accounts. In its first year, 1991, it drew six major league teams (ages 13-15) and 14 minor league teams (ages 9-12). More than 20 corporate sponsors kicked in $675 each, enough for gloves, helmets, uniforms and a piece of paper straight from Little League of America headquarters in Williamsport, Pa., certifying that the league was officially registered. Seventy or so coaches, mostly corporate types and white, volunteered their services. Camera crews from CNN and ABC World News Tonight visited Carson to gather footage for suitably affecting two-minute segments. At the end of the year, there was a banquet with trophies, special awards and optimistic speeches, all offered up to answer the implicit, inevitable questions: Will the league last? Or will it, like many other well-intended efforts, be eroded by the realities of the street beyond Carson Field's fences?

"I think this can work." an emotional Rev. Nelson D. Willis told an overflowing crowd in the auditorium at Saint Matthew United Methodist Church the night of the league banquet. "You kids and you volunteers out there tonight are living proof that it will work—and that we will make it work."

Half an hour after the banquet another scene took place, this one on a crumbling sidewalk in front of a high rise at 1117 North Cleveland. Eleven-year-old outfielder Deangelo Durham stood outside a car.

"Mom!" he called up to a darkened fourth-floor window. "Mom!"

The other three Little Leaguers in the car—much to the dismay of the white coach who had volunteered to give them a lift home from the banquet—had their heads pressed flat to the floorboards. They had heard about the 13-year-old boy who got shot near this building the day before, during a basketball game. He hadn't been doing anything, they said, he just got shot.