Youth baseball alive and well in South Cook County, teaching kids 'so many lessons'

Brandon Bradford has always loved baseball.

“In the 1970s and 80s, I wanted to kind of be like Reggie Jackson, Willie Stargell, athletes like that,” the Cook County resident told Suburban Marquee. “I continued that love of baseball and officially passed it on to my son.”

Bradford's son Brandon started playing youth baseball at age 7 at Jackie Robinson West Little League.

“From there we heard about travel baseball, and started out with a program called the Giants,” the father said.

At 13, Brendon joined the Chicago White Sox Amateur City Elite Program. That program provided extensive training, equipment, uniforms and other help in furthering Bradford's son’s baseball career.

The program also helped Brendon academically, Bradford said.

“Baseball is not a revenue-producing sport in college,” he said. “So you have to have good grades. With football and basketball, they have other avenues to get you in. With baseball, there’s not so much of that going on. You have to have good grades and SAT scores along with athletic ability.”

Throughout his high school career, Brendon understood that good grades were essential if he wanted to keep playing. There were other lessons learned from baseball as well.

“Baseball is a game of complete failure,” Brandon Bradford said. “If you bat .300 – which is 30% success – you’re an all-star. It teaches you how to deal with failure, how to rebound from it.”

It’s also a thinking man's game, Bradford said.

“The biggest, strongest guy isn’t always the best player,” he said. “It’s about technique. There are so many lessons within that.”

Many of the students in the White Sox elite program were offered college baseball scholarships, including Brendon.

“It’s so great to see them become so successful, going to so many universities – Kent State, Michigan, the list goes on and on,” Brandon said. “These kids are everywhere, enrolled in college, which is most important.”

After graduating from Kenwood Academy High School last year, Brandon, now 18, is now a freshman at Jackson State College in Mississippi, where he has a 3.4 grade point average. His father credits youth baseball as a major factor in his son’s success.

“Some families had ambitions for their sons to go pro,” Bradford said. “That wasn’t my primary goal. My primary goal is for him to graduate from college and get a degree. If he happens to be a super baseball player, we’ll accept that. But that wasn’t the goal.”