“I am going to do something different now,” former MLB player Reggie Smith said to youngster Elias Abide as he held the baseball in his hand. “Have you ever seen a curve ball? I am going to throw you a curveball, and I want you to try and hit it.”
Smash!
Scenes like this were typical Thursday morning at the Washington School indoor baseball facility.
Smith, who spent 19 years in the majors, was in town once again teaching local youngsters how to play the game the right way. Smith’s baseball clinic was in collaboration with the eighth annual Delta Soul Celebrity Golf and Charity event.
The baseball clinic, which was scheduled for the Delta Sportsplex, had to be moved indoors due to the weather. But, that did not prevent Smith, who played hit three home runs in the 1977 World Series, from teaching the game.
Smith said he keeps coming back to the clinic because he loves teaching children how to play the sport.
“Baseball is a little boys game,” Smith explained. “Even though it is played by adults in the major leagues, the game all begins with little boys who love to play it. I will never turn down an opportunity to share my love of this game with young kids.”
It was also the giving spirit of Delta Soul coordinators Steve and Gwen Azar, Smith said, that inspired him to come back to Greenville and conduct the clinic.
Smith has trained well over 1,000 Division 1 Scholarship Baseball Players throughout his coaching tenure and currently has 26 players in the major leagues on his list of protégés.
Born in Shreveport, Louisiana, Smith finished his baseball career in 1982 after hitting 314 home runs and 1,092 runs batted in.
