CABRERA AN ANGEL TO HIS COUNTRYMEN ACADEMY DEVELOPS YOUNG PLAYERS.

Byline: IVAN OROZCO

Staff Writer

ANAHEIM - Every time he steps into the batter's box and jogs onto the infield from the dugout, Orlando Cabrera is more than the Angels' starting shortstop.

He's not just a Gold Glove winner and a World Series champion. He's a symbol of the possibility of major-league success for countless of young baseball players in his native Colombia.

In a country where major-league teams rarely tread, Cabrera funds his own baseball academy, called Prospect Sport, for boys ages 15-17, and a Colombian professional winter league team named Indios de Cartagena.

While earning $8.5 million with the Angels this season, Cabrera is dedicating more time to his 3-year-old academy in his hometown of Cartagena.

"What I've always said is that I came out of a winter league in Colombia," Cabrera said in Spanish. "I developed myself as a player there. I think that doing this for the community, we'll have more Orlando Cabreras that will help more people and will bring satisfaction to a town that's suffered for a lot of years."

Cabrera figured baseball would take off in his homeland after the 2004 World Series, in which each team featured a Colombian at shortstop: Edgar Renteria for the St. Louis Cardinals and Cabrera for the Boston Red Sox, whom the Angels play at 7 p.m. tonight in the first of a three-game series at Angel Stadium.

Renteria and Cabrera, the only two Colombian players in the majors, created a buzz amid baseball fans and non-fans in Colombia during that World Series, but there was no surge in interest for the sport there.

"There's hope in Colombia, but they don't know what the World Series is," Cabrera said. "It's the coverage. And at the same time they compare it to the World Cup of soccer. There's no comparison. It's not the same thing, but the coverage that is given worldwide draws attention to the World Series, and that causes people to compare it to the World Cup."

Colombians continue to monitor Cabrera, who is putting up All-Star type numbers during a solid season, although he was not selected to the mid-season classic. He's hitting .306 with seven home runs, 63 RBIs and 12 stolen bases, and the Angels are 31/2 games ahead of Seattle for first place in the AL West.

But Cabrera doesn't want being left out of the All-Star game take away from what he calls the best half of baseball in his career.

"In the beginning, I couldn't understand it," said Cabrera about not being selected. "I'm really disappointed. I mean, I feel like everybody else in the league, I'd like to be there. I think I did enough. I deserve to be on the team."

All-Star or not, the youngsters in Cartagena see Cabrera as the role model that keeps their hopes alive.

Luis Piterson, a 5-foot-10, 145-pound, 17-year-old shortstop in Cabrera's academy, has faith he one day he will play in the major leagues. Piterson watched the 2004 World Series and said he pictured himself at the plate and scooping up grounders at a ballpark in the majors.

"Watching (Cabrera and Renteria) on TV made me think that I can be there too," Piterson said in Spanish from Cartagena through an Internet camera interview. "Without this academy it would have been difficult to become a prospect and a good baseball player. If I didn't have this, I would be training on my own. Here, they offer me things that help with my development. Things I could not do by myself."

The academy also helps players understand the ramifications should they one day receive a lucrative contract.

"The common denominator is that most of their families live in impoverished areas of the city, such as San Francisco, NariIllegal 'X-value' for character STYLs voided here o, Nuevo Paraiso and Olaya Herrera, which are barrios of high rates of poverty," said Ever Perez, the man responsible for running the academy and for monitoring the young players' progress, during a phone interview. "The family's monthly economic income is so low that it doesn't allow them to make ends meet."

Located on Colombia's northern coast, Cartagena is known as a tourist city with its high-rise hotels next to the Caribbean Ocean, and is often compared to CancIllegal 'X-value' for character STYLs voided here n, Mexico and Miami for its year-round warm weather, high humidity and tourist attractions.

But Perez said there's also a high rate of delinquency and crime in the city.

"Drug use and child prostitution is a great threat to the development of these young ballplayers," he said. "That's why our worry is to provide these kids with a place to protect them from a problematic society.".

That's why Prospect Sport not only instructs peloteros (baseball players) on the game's fundamentals and conditioning but also prepares them for life's challenges. Cabrera's academy pays the fee for those who cannot afford school or have not obtained the equivalent of a high school diploma.

The academy is in its early stages compared to those in the Dominican Republic, where major league teams have established several camps that include dormitories and feature their own stadiums.

Young baseball players in Cartagena spend their day going to school in the morning, then go home to eat after school, then head to a local gym for workouts. Perez then walks with the players to 11 de Noviembre stadium for practice.

A person in charge of the stadium, where winter pro-league baseball is played, gives the group special permission to use the field that is off-limits in the offseason. After practice, each player is given a subsidy for transportation to get home.

"This academy means everything to me because this sport can be my future," Jonathan Barrios, a 15-year-old shortstop prospect at the academy, said in Spanish through an Internet camera interview. "I got here because of Mr. Orlando Cabrera when he and a Dodgers scout saw me play four or five years ago."

Barrios' mother works a part-time job to provide for her family. Barrios' dad is unemployed.

Cabrera said he has invested $250,000 in Prospect Sport and has been helped by equipment donations from American bat and glove companies.

Perez said there are plans to buy a building that will have a dormitory, gym, conference rooms, kitchen, bullpen and batting cages. But for that, the program needs more funding from Cabrera and other potential sponsors. There are also talks with local government officials of the possibility of renting a stadium for the academy to use.

Cabrera grew up in a middle-class family. He didn't have much, but he had a father to guide him in life and in baseball.

"My father taught me about baseball all his life until he died," Cabrera said. "He always had something to teach me. I always had someone to tell me what to do and talked to me about what I didn't know. That's what a lot of players in Colombia don't have. They don't have determination, don't know which decisions to make under different circumstances and always make mistakes."

Perez said scouts are interested in 56 prospects with a chance at minor-league contracts since the academy's birth. Ronald Ramirez and Gustavo Martinez have signed minor-league contracts out of Prospect Sport. Ramirez is a left-handed pitcher in the Chicago White Sox organization and Martinez is in the St. Louis Cardinals organization.

Only seven Colombian-born players have played in the major leagues, according to baseball-reference.com, and Cabrera and Renteria are the only active Colombians in the majors.

Renteria, a shortstop for the Atlanta Braves, and his brother Edlison started their own academy, "Team Renteria," in 1999 in their hometown of Barranquilla, just north of Cartagena.

"If there are more people establishing academies then they'll be more kids playing baseball, and that's what we want," said Renteria, who won a World Series in 1997 with the Florida Marlins.

Compared to the Dominican Republic, a country where major league teams operate individual academies and spit out players like a Detroit car-assembly line, finding Colombian players is as rare as finding water in a desert.

The Colombian professional baseball league is said to have solid players but lacks support from a country in which soccer is the dominant sport. La Liga Professional de Beisbol Colombiana is made up of five teams, Caimanes de Barranquilla, Cardenales de Monteria, Toros de Sincelejo, Tigres de Cartagena and Cabrera's Indios. The other four are owned by Renteria. The teams compete from late October to early January.

Cabrera and Renteria are trying to get their country represented in the Serie Del Caribe (Caribbean Series) and the next World Baseball Classic if there is one in 2009.

"There will be more and better players coming out of Colombia," Renteria said. "That's what our goal is. We want to have more Colombian beisbolistas (baseball players). People know that there's good baseball being played in Colombia and that there are good players representing the country."

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The Angels' Orlando Cabrera funds a baseball academy and professional winter league team in his native Colombia.

Lisa Blumenfeld/Getty Images