The San Francisco Giants are funding a program called the Junior Giants where they allow kids in communities all over California to play baseball for free. The program began in 1994, and has grown tremendously throughout the years. The Giants have 85 separate leagues with over 20,000 children playing in their program.
The organization provides all the basic essentials for the players and allows the league to run successfully. Leo Ortiz, a 2010 CSU East Bay alumnus with a degree in Recreation Leisure Management, is the league coordinator for Redwood City.
The league is broken up into two groups, a tee ball division and an upper division, with age groups ranging from five to 12 years old.
There are five teams for each division with 14 players on each team. Teams play each team in their division twice at the same local field.
The basic ideals for the Junior Giants is putting the kids in a non-competitive environment and giving them all an equal opportunity on the field to play, while still teaching them the core fundamentals of the game.
On game day you can see kids starting with basic stretching exercises. Every player is to quench their thirst right away with their provided Giant’s water bottles, as every child is given a handbook that shows how much water an athlete should be drinking.
Each player gets several chances to bat by a pitching machine controlled by their team’s coach. After a big base hit the kids hustle around the bases, while their teammates and parents root them on. When the game is finished the coaches do a quick motivational talk about all the great plays the team executed throughout the day. They wrap it up with a sportsmanship chant for the opposite team followed shaking hands with their opponents.
The coaches try and develop four fundamental character traits: confidence, integrity, leadership and teamwork.
“The kids are just excited to get out there and play, for them it is a chance to come meet some new friends,” Ortiz explained.
The parents have also really come together to make it a special experience. With a huge financial burden lifted off their shoulders they really appreciate all the hard work put into the league. David Estrada, parent of a child on the team, appreciates the league and all it does for his child.
“It is just so nice to have an experienced coach come out and teach my son the game, I would never imagine he would have ever played, but now he loves it,” said Estrada.
All year the kids have also been looking forward to August 23, where they will go see the Major League team at AT&T Park in San Francisco.
Ortiz remembers being a young baseball player in the area and how youth teams, like the Junior Giants, helped him mature and grow.
“It really was the motivating factor that kept me in school my whole life, it was the perfect outlet for me to use my energy in a positive way,” Ortiz said.
Ortiz used a lot of the tools he learned while coaching with his studies at CSUEB.
“It gave me a huge amount of background knowledge in working with children, and in teaching me how to organize such a big league,” he explained when describing his studies at CSUEB.
Ortiz is a head coach for Redwood City Parks & Recreation. He also just accepted a job as a Physical Education teacher for an elementary school in the area and loves everything about his job.
He has simple goals for what he wants to accomplish in the future.
“Focusing on getting kids active and giving back to the community,” Ortiz said.
