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Rozner: RBI was John Young's towering baseball legacy

It is no simple task to record a positive legacy in professional sports, where those who participate are judged almost entirely on wins and losses.

"In our game, whether you're a player, manager or executive, you are trying to display your competency at the expense of your opponent. If one prospers, the other suffers," Phillies president Andy MacPhail said via phone Saturday morning. "If someone hits a walk-off home run, that means a closer blew a save opportunity. When one team wins a wild-card game, the other's season is over.

"When you consider all of our legacies, it's a zero-sum game. Any success we have comes at the expense of someone else. John Young was that rare exception. His legacy is quite clear."

John Young died in an Orange County hospital last week at the age of 67. His major league baseball career consisted of precisely four at-bats for Detroit in 1971, though he did manage a pair of hits, a double, an RBI and a run scored.

Not exactly Moonlight Graham, but not far from it.

A Los Angeles native, Young was drafted by the Tigers in the first round in 1969 and spent most of the next 10 years in the minors and Mexican League.

Young eventually became a minor league instructor and then a scout, working his way up to scouting director of the Tigers. He scouted for several teams and while working for Baltimore in 1986 he lamented the lack of black players drafted that year, and pitched an idea to Orioles GM Roland Hemond and commissioner Peter Ueberroth.

Ueberroth used his Los Angeles connections to get mayor Tom Bradley to fund a youth baseball program in L.A. It was founded by Young and "Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities" was born in 1989.

The hope was that disadvantaged, minority youth in inner cities would have a safe place to play and would increase participation and interest in baseball, while promoting academic participation and achievement and creating a path toward college and professional baseball.

Young - who played games as a kid against Eddie Murray in a neighborhood that once burned to the ground - started RBI with a 12-team league of 180 players, ages 13 and 14. By 2013, there were 200,000 youths in 200 leagues around the world taking part in RBI and softball programs.

Among RBI alumni who have made it to the big leagues are CC Sabathia, Jimmy Rollins, Coco Crisp, Carl Crawford, Yovani Gallardo, Justin Upton, Melvin Upton Jr. and James Loney.

"If teams spent half the money developing talent in the inner cities that they do in some of their academies in Latin America," Young said in the early '90s, "they`d be just as successful in finding players."

The problem also existed in MLB front offices, and after MacPhail hired Ed Lynch as GM of the Cubs in the fall of 1994, Lynch did his part to change that, hiring Young as his special assistant and David Wilder as minor league director.

"John was a great human being with a great work ethic," Lynch said Saturday. "Solid baseball guy with a world of experience and a different perspective on players. He was a good judge of character, not just talent, but what kind of people they were."

Lynch, now in his seventh year as a major league scout for the Blue Jays, marveled at Young's passion for youth baseball.

"He wanted to do something about the lack of inclusion," Lynch said. "We get so focused on the day-to-day winning in a highly competitive industry, we don't see long-term issues.

"John was a guy who could think beyond today. Most people would say, 'Why is that happening?' John would say, 'Let's change this.' That's his legacy."

When you cover baseball for a living, you meet dozens of people a week, but Young was one of those rare individuals you don't forget spending time around, the kind who always asked about your life with a genuine curiosity about where you came from and where you were going.

It's as if he were searching for answers everywhere he went, a gentle soul who cared about the human condition.

"He was more balanced than most former players you encountered. He had a pretty wide spectrum and outlook on things," MacPhail said. "With RBI, he found a rare opportunity in baseball where everyone benefited, and whether a youngster stayed in baseball or not, they were better for having been around John and been through the program."

Commissioner Rob Manfred offered a fitting tribute when he said, "All of us at Major League Baseball are saddened by the loss of John Young, a trailblazer and champion of both professional and youth baseball.

"The legacy John has left with the RBI program is evident in the impact it has had on young people who have grown to be important contributors to our society as teachers, police officers, doctors, youth coaches and as professional baseball players.

"On behalf of Major League Baseball, I extend my deepest condolences to John's wife Sheryl, their children Dorian, Jon and Tori and their entire family, as well as his many friends throughout our game."

A few years ago, Young remembered having to use "gang fields" as practice facilities in the beginning, and told MLB.com, "(RBI is) like a child to me. To see the magnitude of RBI and what it has grown into is unbelievable. It's like a dream come true."

Young created a field of dreams for so many thousands of poor children, but it never would have happened had he been a successful major league player.

"I look back on it now and I would've loved to have spent more time in the big leagues," Young said a decade ago. "But if I had played 10 more years, RBI never would have happened. No doubt about that. So I have no regrets. Not one."

Burt Lancaster couldn't have said it better himself.

brozner@dailyherald.com

• Listen to Barry Rozner from 9 a.m. to noon Sundays on the Score's "Hit and Run" show at WSCR 670-AM.

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