Ryan Howard Training Center could wind up being his legacy
A building promised for years has risen at the corner of a gentrified neighborhood in South Philadelphia. The blue-paneled structure is 7,500 square feet, and inside it will have four retractable batting cages lined with artificial turf. It will be a place, at the intersection of 17th and Fitzwater Streets, where young baseball and softball players in the city can practice all year.
A building promised for years has risen at the corner of a gentrified neighborhood in South Philadelphia. The blue-paneled structure is 7,500 square feet, and inside it will have four retractable batting cages lined with artificial turf. It will be a place, at the intersection of 17th and Fitzwater Streets, where young baseball and softball players in the city can practice all year.
It will be called the Ryan Howard Training Center.
"It's cool to have a building named after you," Howard said last week. "But it's really about what happens inside - people being able to take advantage of what's going on there and better themselves."
Legacy is a loaded word, especially when you are batting under .200; when investigators from Major League Baseball have poked into reports of your alleged performance-enhancing drug usage; and when you have filed a defamation suit against the media company that reported said ties.
Howard has hit more home runs than every player in Phillies history except for one, Mike Schmidt. With the Phillies between eras, and Howard's $125 million contract as the symbolic object of a failed regime, it is harder and harder to remember the dominant times. He is a polarizing figure.
The end will be unceremonious.
But, when Howard departs Philadelphia, his building will remain. Howard donated what team and city officials described as a "substantial amount" toward the $2.4 million cost. Bill No. 160301 circulated last month through City Council to formalize the name of the building on city-owned land.
The training center is a part of the Phillies Urban Youth Academy. When it opens this summer, it will add to the facilities at the Marian Anderson Recreation Center, where some of the city's best youth baseball has thrived.
If there is one place in this city where Howard's legacy is not complicated, it might be here.
The league announced plans on Sept. 22, 2010, to build an Urban Youth Academy in Philadelphia. Bureaucracy delayed it. Howard had been aware of the project and stayed in contact with team officials to see if they could partner.
Last season, the Phillies RBI (Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities) Program enrolled 8,600 children. The Phillies provide equipment and uniforms to teams across the city. The most interested and talented players then advance to the Urban Youth Academy, where they will receive year-round instruction free of charge.
Rob Holiday, the Phillies' director of amateur scouting administration, said Howard often asked about the academy's progress.
"We were really hoping he would ask us about it because he was the perfect person to be involved," Holiday said. "The more that we talked about it, the more excited he got about it."
Howard's donation will add an education component to the academy's offerings. The staff next door at Anderson will tutor those involved in baseball activities.
"I do it to give back," Howard said. "I do it to try to provide opportunities for kids who want to make more of themselves.
"I don't know. It's hard to put in words. I really just do it so it can help these kids have a chance to pursue whatever their dreams may be. It can open different doors. It may help a kid get a college scholarship somewhere. They may not make it in baseball, but it's getting into school with an opportunity to go to the next level and get a degree."
It is not lost on Howard that three potential pieces of the next great Phillies team are black men. J.P. Crawford, who honed his game at MLB's Urban Youth Academy in Compton, Calif., is one of the best prospects in baseball. Nick Williams and Roman Quinn could roam the outfield at Citizens Bank Park.
"With those guys and their future potential, that's an exciting thing," Howard said. "You hope they can help to pave the way for the next generation."
Hasn't Howard, along with longtime teammate Jimmy Rollins, paved the way for a generation in Philadelphia?
"I don't know," Howard said. "I hope so. I would like to think that I did."
The percentage of African American players on opening-day rosters has flattened around 8 percent in recent seasons. In 1986, 19 percent of major-league players were black.
The goal of the academy is to make baseball more accessible to children in the city, where finding space to play is sometimes difficult. The Anderson Monarchs, the rec team that fueled Taney Little League's success two summers ago, call 17th and Fitzwater home. Steve Bandura has grown that program despite one indoor batting cage in the basement of Marian Anderson Recreation Center, which was built in 1953.
"Now," Holiday said, "we just have bigger and better facilities where we can do more."
And if that is Howard's legacy, at least in one corner of the city, then he is happy. Howard recalled how his teammates on the last great Phillies team viewed it as a responsibility. The first baseman is not part of the team's future, but he hopes to supply one more lesson.
"Pay it forward," Howard said. "That was one of the things we did as a team. All of us. Hopefully, these guys, they'll learn about giving back to the community."
@MattGelb