FIELDS OF SELF-ESTEEM; INNER-CITY KIDS GROW AT BASEBALL ACADEMY.

Byline: Dennis McCarthy 

Gary Bond looks out over the four baseball diamonds filled with kids at the Hansen Dam Sports Center on Wednesday morning, and allows himself a contented smile that's been a year coming.

``Look at them, out of their environment and out here in the open spaces, playing baseball and getting to meet each other,'' said the 24-year veteran park supervisor working for the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks. ``What could be better?''

Nothing. Not here. Not now.

Especially, not now.

It is here, in this Lake View Terrace park on a beautiful summer day that you get a breather from the recent stories about what's wrong with youth baseball.

From all the recriminations of cheating and ringers - the threats of lawsuits, and skulduggery to find out who lives where, and since when?

None of it has spilled over onto these ballfields or tainted any of these kids bused in from some of the poorest areas of this city.

They're just glad somebody finally noticed them, finally gave them the chance to be invited to a place like this.

Last summer and all the summers before that, these fields were a lot like the kids playing on them right now - overlooked and mostly forgotten.

Not anymore.

``I had dropped off my son at a baseball development camp last summer, and was driving to work thinking how the parents of a lot of kids couldn't afford the $325 a week it was costing,'' Bond said Wednesday, as Dodgers coach and former player Manny Mota stood in the background giving a pep talk to about 100 kids.

When he got to work that day, Bond looked out over all those empty ballfields, and thought what a shame it was they weren't in the inner city for some kids who would use them.

``It's always bothered me that inner-city kids in many ways have been abandoned. They don't have the open space like we had as kids to go out to ballfields like this, and play pickle or over the line.''

The more Bond looked at those empty fields in his park every day, the more the vision began to take on life. If he couldn't bring the fields to the kids, why not bring the kids to the fields?

A summer later - with a $155,000 grant from the city of L.A., and the support of Jackie Tatum, general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks, and Councilmen Richard Alarcon and Mike Hernandez, the L.A. Kids Baseball Academy is up and running.

More than 500 kids from 98 low-income area recreation centers in the Valley, Metro and Pacific regions of this city will receive a week of free, top quality baseball instruction from Mota's son, Domingo Mota, and his staff this summer.

Kids like Greg Lovinson, 9, from Pacoima, and Sammy Sabedra, 9, from San Fernando. A couple of kids from two different low-income rec centers in the Valley, meeting for the first time this week, and finding out they have plenty in common.

``We've never been before,'' said Sammy, as Greg stood next to him nodding sheepishly. ``All the other ones cost a little too much.''

Not this one.

This one, any kid can afford.

From behind a backstop, Matt Cunningham watches Domingo Mota try to teach a couple of kids how to field a ground ball.

``He wants to reach the kids who aren't as privileged as a lot of other kids, like I was growing up,'' says Matt, helping Domingo with the instruction this summer.

Summer baseball development camps, good coaching and plenty of hard work helped Matt develop the skills to be a starter on the Northridge Little League all-star team that made it to Williamsport, Pa., three years ago.

When school resumes in the fall, he will be a sophomore at Notre Dame High School, vying for the catcher position on the baseball team.

Youth baseball's been getting a pretty bad black eye over the Woodland Hills Little League flap, Matt says, but to focus on that small aspect of the game - all-star shenanigans - is to miss the bigger picture of the inside game Domingo has helped teach him.

Teamwork, respect, hard work - the kind of traits we all want our kids to have when they walk off a baseball diamond for the last time, and into life.

``It's not about having the money to buy the best instruction,'' Manny Mota says, watching his son walk from diamond to diamond, helping the kids.

``If it was about money I would have never made it to the major leagues because I was as poor as any of these kids growing up in the Dominican (Republic). It's about hard work, desire, and never taking anything for granted.

``That's what we will teach these children,'' Mota said. ``Those are the lessons they will learn in this baseball academy.''

Amen.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

Photo: (1--Color) Former Dodgers player Manny Mota conducts batting practice Wednesday at the L.A. Kids Baseball Academy.

(2) Players take turns catching pop-ups at the L.A. Kids Baseball Academy, a camp for inner-city youths at the Hansen Dam Sports Center.

Tom Mendoza/Daily News