N4 | NEWS | THE Nica TIMES – January 21, 2011

Baseball Academy Adds Big Names to Lineup

Roberto Clemente Jr. and
Dodgers pitcher Vicente
Padilla join academy board
By Tim Rogers
Nica Times Staff

VILLA EL CARMEN – When Roberto

Clemente Jr., son of the Hall of Fame base-
ball legend who died in a plane crash while
bringing relief aid to earthquake victims in
Nicaragua in 1972, first stepped onto the
field at the modest ballpark named after his
father in Masaya, he had a ghostly flashback
to his youth.
“Going to the stadium last week remind-
ed me of going to the Sixto Escobar Stadium
in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and I swear when I
walked in and saw the base paths, I saw dad
running the bases,” Clemente Jr., 45, told The
Nica Times during a visit to Nicaragua this
week. “It was a very special and weird feeling.
It was very emotional for me, because he
loved that stadium (in Puerto Rico). It was a
special place for him and the people loved
him and he loved them back. And that’s the
way the whole thing started, and that’s how it
ended.”
Clemente’s brilliant baseball career for
the Pittsburgh Pirates ended tragically on an
ill-fated humanitarian trip destined for
Nicaragua. But for Clemente Jr., a former
Yankees and ESPN Spanish-language broad-
caster who manages several baseball charity
foundations in his family’s name, the work in
Nicaragua is only just beginning.
Following his trip here last weekend,
Clemente Jr., a former minor league stand-
out who suffered a career-ending back injury
shortly before his scheduled Major League
debut with the Baltimore Orioles in 1989,
got a taste of the country that his father had
fallen in love with 40 years ago.
After a few days of visiting here, he didn’t
need much convincing to rekindle his father’s
legacy in Nicaragua.
On Jan. 18, Clemente Jr. agreed to join
the board of directors of the International
Baseball Academy of Central America
(IBACA), which will be Nicaragua’s first
baseball academy. Then Clemente went a
step further, and convinced his friend,
Nicaraguan Major League pitcher Vicente
Padilla, to join the board also.
“It is such a pleasure for me to be part of
the board of directors of IBACA and to be
able to open some doors for the youth in
Nicaragua,” Clemente said. “Obviously there
is a great connection between Nicaragua and
the Clemente family.”
Clemente’s enthusiasm for the aspiring
Tim Rogers | Nica Times
Ready to Play Ball: Roberto Clemente Jr., left, is continuing his father’s legacy in Nicaragua. At right, IBACA’s Bob Oettinger
shows off the field at Gran Pacífica that soon will be home to Central America’s first baseball academy.
baseball academy also gives a special feeling
to the rest of the IBACA board, which
already includes former Major League greats
Reggie Smith, Dave Stewart and Brad Lesley,
as well as former amateur player Roger
Keeling (NT, Jan. 8, 2010). With $400,000 in
funding already raised, IBACA – a regis-
tered nonprofit organization – hopes the
additions of Clemente and Padilla will help
them raise the other half-million dollars
needed to break ground in the coming
months on its 11-acre lot at Gran Pacifica, a
residential development project on the
Pacific coast.
“It means everything having these guys
onboard,” said IBACA board member and
vice president Bob Oettinger. “Padilla is a
national hero in this country, and the
Clemente legacy here is incredible. Roberto
is a very dynamic guy and having him get
involved is tremendously important to us.
He has tremendous contacts both in the
sports world and the business world, so we
are counting on him.”
Young Nicaraguan baseball prospects,
such as 17-year-old Kenny Alegria, are also
counting on him.
Alegria, a power-hitting second basemen
from an impoverished Managua barrio, gets
up every morning at 4:30 a.m. to jog the
streets of the capital before returning home
to take batting practice with his dad, hitting
a bucket of tattered balls into a net, or swing-
ing an axe handle into a tire.
Alegria says he gets his passion for base-
ball from his father, a taxi driver who used to
play shortstop in the Nicaraguan amateur
league, and his swing from watching former
Red Sox slugger Manny Ramírez on TV.
And he’s done a pretty good job emulat-
ing Manny’s swing so far; Alegria, who won
the Nicaraguan Youth League Triple Crown
at age 14, won IBACA’s youth-league home
run derby last October.
For winning the national derby, Alegria
got to travel to the United States last month
to participate in an international home run
derby at the Arizona Diamondbacks’ Chase
Field, where he managed to knock two ding-
ers into the bleachers.
While Alegria aims to play for Managua’s
Boer in this year’s first division baseball
league, his bigger hope is to enter the base-
ball academy next year and try to catch the
eye of a Major League scout.
“I hope to have the blessing to go farther
with baseball, to make the AAA or the Big
Leagues,” the soft-spoken Alegria said.
At IBACA, the enthusiasm about Kenny
is mutual.
“Kenny personalizes what we are trying to
do,” Oettinger told The Nica Times. “We have
an interest in him and want to see him suc-
ceed. And we hope that he may be one of the
first kids that we bring into the academy.”
Baseball Humanitarianism
The all-inclusive, residential baseball
academy, which will also provide kids with
education and English classes, will take a
more humanistic approach than other team-
Tim Rogers | Nica Times
affiliated academies in the Dominican
Republic, Oettinger says.
Oettinger said that unlike the cutthroat
Dominican academies, where coaches have
only 30 days to decide whether to keep or
release young players, the Nicaraguan acad-
emy will invest more time, training and edu-
cation in each kid, so he has a better chance
of success afterwards.
The IBACA board members don’t expect
all the young players to become pros; only 11
Nicaraguan players have ever made it to the
Major Leagues.
So that’s why it’s so important for the
academy – which plans to start with 50 kids
in phase one – to invest in their educations,
so some of the kids can try to get baseball
scholarships to U.S. colleges, Oettinger said.
“Each kid who leaves the academy is
going to be in a better position educationally
to pursue a career that wouldn’t have been
available to that person before they came,”
Oettinger said.
He added, “When we first started looking
at this, it was a baseball project. But this is
really a humanitarian project at this point.”
It’s that combination of humanitarian-
ism and baseball – something that Roberto
Clemente Sr. was so passionate about – that
now allows his son to fulfill his father’s
promise in Nicaragua.
“It means a lot to me to be able to come
here and make a difference,” Clemente Jr.
said. “It’s something that has made my moth-
er very proud. And it gives me a very special
feeling.”n

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