By Elizabeth Husted, originally posted by The Post and Courier North Augusta on May 26, 2025
NORTH AUGUSTA — The breezy sunshine of a Wednesday morning at SRP Park had a couple dozen kids out playing ball with the lieutenant governor, a couple of the GreenJackets athletes and pro staff with Major League Baseball.
“They love coming here and what better way to learn?” Aiken’s Danielle Hand said, admitting she pulled her 6-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter out of school for it, something she wouldn’t normally do. “But today, this is hands-on learning, so I thought, let’s take advantage of this.”
Major League’s Play Ball event wasn’t meant to be on a school day, not originally. But then, a near hurricane wasn’t supposed to hit the day before, either. The kids’ baseball clinic that was held May 21 had first been set for the day after Helene.
So, there was Hand’s daughter, out there on left field, going through some drills and making friends already, Hand observed – a lot of socializing, but she is interested in trying softball, she said. And her son, two days after his sixth birthday. “He loves all the sports and if he can run – even better.”
The Play Ball initiative started 10 years ago, with a first event in the Bronx. It was just six months after Rob Manfred assumed office as commissioner of Major League Baseball.
“It really kind of emanated from his new administration at the time, having a focus on growing the game at the youth level, at the grassroots level,” Bennett Shields said.
Shields is senior manager of baseball and softball for MLB and was on the field at SRP Park this week.
MLB has brought its youth baseball clinics to minor and major league parks, to community rec centers and high school gyms, “from Alaska to Japan to North Augusta, South Carolina,” he said.
Play Ball, at its core, he said, is meant “to introduce young children to the game of baseball and softball, to diamond sports; to provide a non-competitive, accessible opportunity for them to come try the sport; re-invigorate their love for the game if they’re already playing; and give them an opportunity to work with professional athletes at times and our staff of professional coaches.”
Or to kick it with the lieutenant governor, South Carolina’s Pamela Evette saying she was “all in” when she heard about this new partnership between MLB’s Play Ball and states’ seconds in command.
“Getting our kids outside, getting those cell phones and computers and Gameboys out of their hands and [giving them] a bat and a ball and getting them running and playing… that is really the secret to having really healthy, well-adjusted children,” she said.
Evette played second base for softball growing up.
“It was a few years back,” she laughed – then recalled riding her bike to the rec enter for both the softball and the rec ball and then going on to play in middle school.”
“It was fun; it was great relationships,” she said. “It was learning how to work with a team and work as a team. Great life lessons are learned right here, in organized sports.”
Lisa Reeves, of North Augusta, brought her grandson, now 5, to SRP Park for the morning’s fun.
“He was very excited; I told him this morning,” she said, eying him from the stands, a Red Sox cap on his head as he readied himself for a swing at the T-Ball.
