It’s Like Déjà Vu All Over Again
I don’t usually circle back on a Dukes Up story, but an old friend, Jimmy Canavan, sent me a link to a New Yorker story about Coach Youman Wilder this week. You remember the coach who took on the masked and armed ICE agents in NYC’s Riverside Park to protect his kids? Wilder has run a youth program called the Harlem Baseball Hitting Academy for 21 years. “We don’t take the best players, we take the kids who get cut,” he says. And he charges no fee. “I’ll tell our kids, ‘Can your mom make some rice and beans this week?’ That’s the payment.”
Here’s the deal. Sadly, most of these kids have no father figure. So Coach plays that role and is also their mentor. And with the kids he’s coached, over 400 have earned college baseball scholarships. Some have even gone on to become Major League Baseball players. He even helped Manny Ramirez with his hitting. His kids have attended colleges like Stanford, Princeton, Columbia, and other great schools. They’ve gone on to become doctors, cops, and even work on Wall Street. Hey—one person can change the world.
Wilder says that for his kids, “Baseball is life, and it teaches important tools.” Just last week, Wilder left town to take four players on college tours in a rented minivan. You know, when you think about it—after what he did standing up to those ICE agents—he deserves the JFK Profiles in Courage Award. This guy has done more to help inner-city kids work their way out than any of these gutless, do-nothing politicians.
I don’t know why, but as I was writing this, I thought of being at a Yankees game with Gainer on one of the 9/11 anniversary days, listening to Ronan Tynan belt out a tune. We sure as hell were all together then. We ain’t that way today. We need more Youman Wilders. He’s got the mojo going. Keep your dukes up.
Keep your dukes up.
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