Afternoons at Harlem's, Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities, are obviously the busiest time of the day. Children coming from school rush through the door and crowd into a small library almost across from it. There they put their bookbags and jackets down only to walk out the door again and across the street. What is across the street is the whole center of Harlem’s RBI, a baseball field (The Field of Dreams)
“Across the street there was a lot, it was a garbage lot,” Natalie Farrar, the Director of Development, explains about their beginnings. “And we took over that. Now it serves the kids surrounding the lot.” Harlem's RBI is only one of the 280 RBI centers across the nation and was the second RBI established. These centers have the same beginnings with a baseball scout in Los Angeles. There he decided to start up a center where inner city kids can attend after school. The idea then started to spread across the country. According to Richard Berlin, executive director, RBI “ gives a positive alternative to the street and just hanging out…that is why we started, by building a baseball field. There are special things about baseball."
Over the years RBI have made many changes and have evolved into the organization that it is today. When it first started, Harlem's RBI was all about baseball and only for boys. Now, a decade later, RBI serves [both] boys and girls by providing after school programs such as homework help. Making sure that the teens and kids who attend know the importance of education is one of RBI's goals. Anyone, kid or teen, who attends receives a mixture of work and play with an hour and a half of homework help before an hour and a half of baseball. On top of that, there is a year-round quarterly youth newspaper and other after-school programs, such as team mentoring and work with the Harbor for Girls and Boys, another youth program.
RBI offers free programs year round. The softball and baseball teams that RBI runs travel every year to an event that allows the team to play with the other RBI teams across the country. The team almost serves as a connection between the 120 cities, which have set up RBIs to work with inner city kids and teens. RBI provides all team clothing and equipment. With incidents of unruly parents in the bleachers and sports in general being taken too seriously, Harlem's RBI also provides a code of ethics, overall respect for each other.
RBI's success depends solely on the community. Since it is a non profit organization it depends on volunteers to help them with the team and after-school programs. The amount of people who volunteer their time is a direct appreciation from the community and shows how important RBI has become to East Harlem over the years. There are about 4 or 5 coaches for each of the three teams they run, the Grays and the junior Mets and Yankees. "The players learn how to cooperate in a team with their peers, work with adults," Farrar states about the connection that RBI brings. "They learn how to have respect for each other and value everyone. They belong to one group that a common goal."
RBI has proven itself to be a very strong factor in the community. Hundreds of teens and kids attend RBI's programs after school. The numbers of success stories from alumni are numerous and continue to grow. The plans and goals they had when they first turned a garbage lot into their own Field of Dreams have worked and continue to evolve. However the formula they have continue to use has been very basic, as Farrar explains it is simply to provide a place where kids can belong to. "We give the children a place to be, to have fun."