KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Vinny Esparza is a high school senior with a curly mop of hair, big brown eyes and a future he’s just starting to understand. “Baseball can change my life,” he says.

It is a simple motto, of course. But he likes the way it sounds, and he’s comfortable with it now — and perhaps you need to know the whole story. It’s an afternoon in December, and Esparza is standing by a batting tee inside the Kansas City MLB Urban Youth Academy, a sparkling year-old facility that sits a block over from the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and the historic Paseo YMCA, where the Negro National League was formed in 1920. Esparza is hitting baseballs in a batting tunnel and talking about what comes next. He’s hopeful that means college, a path to education and a baseball scholarship. He’s hoping that means peace, too.

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When Esparza is here, he doesn’t think about his older sister, a boxing prodigy who died in a car wreck when she was 15. He doesn’t think about the absent father who has spent time in prison. He doesn’t think about his devoted mother who works two jobs, including one in the bakery of a local grocer, to keep the lights on and the bills paid.

Or, come to think of it: Maybe he does.

“It’s like, ‘I’m hurt. My family’s hurt,’ ” Esparza says. “But you know, it just helps me go forward even more. It gives me motivation.”

Esparza is a senior infielder at Bishop Ward High School in Kansas City, Kan., where he plays varsity baseball. He spent part of his childhood in Argentine, a working-class neighborhood 15 minutes from Kansas City’s East Side. When school gets out and there is little to do, he hitches a ride from a friend and brings his siblings here to this million-dollar indoor facility and outdoor fields, where all the coaches and staff call Vinny by one name: “Yolo.”

“I believe baseball saved his life,” says Cle Ross, the baseball program coordinator at the academy. “It gives him that structure. If you take baseball out, he might be into things he shouldn’t be doing. But baseball gives him that sense of brotherhood, that sense of belonging.”

The story of Vinny Esparza is just one of many, of course. Yet it’s what Royals general manager Dayton Moore envisioned when he spearheaded a project to plant an MLB Youth Academy in Kansas City’s urban core. It’s why the Royals, Major League Baseball, the players’ association and the city ponied up $7 million for the first phase of construction. It’s why Royals players Chris Young, Alex Gordon and Salvador Perez pledged donations to the project. And it’s why Moore, in a meeting with MLB commissioner Rob Manfred in the spring of 2015, made his case for the academy in the plainest terms possible:

This will be the most important thing we do in Kansas City, including winning a World Series.

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The goal was simple: offer affordable access to baseball and softball in the city’s urban core, where the sports have atrophied across the last three decades, where kids had flocked to football and basketball. Yet as the walls went up and the fields were renovated and the academy came to life, Moore kept wondering: Could the project be something more? Could baseball and softball help bridge the racial divides in both Kansas City and elsewhere? Could the sport save lives?

These are big ideas, of course, so let’s slow down. Let’s start at the beginning … with one idea. That’s all it was, really. Moore didn’t start with a plan to save the world. He just looked around and saw a problem to solve.

It was maybe eight or nine years ago, and Moore’s son, Robert, was just entering the youth baseball machine. Moore had spent more than a decade grinding in a professional front office, and he couldn’t believe the evolution in the youth game: the exorbitant costs and the barriers in place; the travel ball, private instruction and expensive equipment. Perhaps, Moore says, it’s no different than AAU basketball or competitive dance or a number of activities. This is modern life in America. Yet, as he looked at the structures in place in youth baseball, he saw a wall for any family without means. In a way, he took it personally.

Moore, 51, was once one of those kids. Without baseball and scholarship money, his parents couldn’t afford college. Without the game, he says, the trajectory of his life would have been different. He would not have started at Garden City Community College or transferred to George Mason. He would not have had the baseball network that led to a scouting job with the Atlanta Braves.

At first, Moore says, the idea was small. He founded a local non-profit organization in 2014 — “C You in the Major Leagues” — and focused on youth initiatives. He pondered ideas for kids in Kansas City. Maybe it would be a small indoor facility, a batting tunnel or two. Maybe they could renovate a field. Then one day in late 2014, Moore and assistant general manager J.J. Picollo found themselves at an event at the MLB Youth Academy in Compton, Calif. Darrell Miller, a former major leaguer and vice president at the Compton facility, posed a simple question: Would Kansas City be interested in a youth academy?

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The visit intrigued Moore. The Royals soon took the lead. Ownership pledged an annual $500,000 for operating expenses. Sly James, the mayor of Kansas City, threw his weight behind the project. Moore sat in a meeting with Manfred and offered his famous declaration: He’d rather have an academy than a World Series trophy.

Perhaps it was good karma. The plans were unveiled in 2015. The Royals won the World Series that October. The facility sprung up just off 18th & Vine, the famed district that was home to jazz icons and the birth of the Negro National League. That the academy was located five blocks east of Troost Avenue — the indivisible dividing line in a segregated city — was also paramount. Moore and the Royals did not want an academy just for city kids. They wanted it in the heart, offering access to kids in the urban core and a centrally located home for others.

“How can we bridge the gap between urban, suburban and rural in Kansas City?” Moore says. “The greater vision is we want kids from all different backgrounds playing baseball together.”

In its first year, the academy offered an introductory “Sandlot” T-ball league for 125 local kids in the community. It provided a home for the local RBI (Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities) programs. It launched after-school educational initiatives and a cohesive development process that academy coordinators and Royals officials believe can serve recreational players and those that begin to show elite skills.

In essence, the Royals and the staff at the Urban Youth Academy are seeking to battle against the factors that have led to a dwindling number of African-Americans in Major League Baseball and an even smaller percentage at the power-five conference level. The first goal, of course, is not to create major leaguers, says Darwin Pennye, the academy’s executive director. Yet Pennye, a former Pirates minor leaguer, sees value in expanding the talent pool. If the academy can reach more kids in Kansas City, it can create lifelong baseball fans and grow the game. And if the pool is expanded, they are bound to discover and develop elite level players who can leverage the sport for an education or something more.

“We have the ability to make the first experience a great experience,” Pennye says. “If you get more kids playing, you’re bound to develop elite-level players.”

In 2018, African-Americans comprised 7.8 percent of Major League Baseball rosters on Opening Day. The number represented the largest percentage increase in a decade, according to annual surveys from USA Today, and the majors can boast a number of success stories. Red Sox outfielder Mookie Betts claimed the American League MVP in 2018, and top Reds prospect, Hunter Greene, the No. 2 overall pick in 2017, began his development at the MLB Academy in Compton. Yet the overall numbers still pale in comparison to the 1970s and ’80s.

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There are many theories for the decline. Pennye, who became a coach and high school athletic director after his playing days, points to factors ranging from access to cost to sport specialization to a baseball culture that skews more traditional while leagues such as the NBA have embraced personal expression and hip-hop culture.

“The opportunity to be like LeBron is a lot more affordable,” Pennye says. “I can go out and buy one pair of sneakers that I can wear not only to the court, but I can wear them to school, I can wear them to church. I can’t wear baseball cleats anywhere but the ballpark.”

Pennye believes the Kansas City academy is positioned to change the paradigm in the community. There are no costs associated with equipment, no barriers to access. If the instructors can teach the game and the players can touch and feel the sport, perhaps that’s a start. If kids from the city and suburbs are taking ground balls together, all the better.

“Baseball is a game where the constant movement begins in your mind,” Pennye says. “If you’re not stimulated by mind growth, then you don’t really understand it.”

Then, of course, there are kids like Vinny Esparza. It’s been more than seven years since Esparza’s older sister, Raina, a gifted amateur boxer, was killed in a car wreck on a highway outside Kansas City. It was shortly after that when Esparza met Cle Ross, a coach with the local RBI program. Esparza always loved baseball. It challenged his mind. It tested his focus. In 2012, just a year after his sister’s death, he attended the All-Star Game at Kauffman Stadium. Ross nicknamed him “Yolo.”

“I realized Vinny was a little bit different,” Ross says. “I nicknamed him ‘Yolo’ because I knew he understood what that meant.”

In the first year of the youth academy, Yolo became a staple at the facility. He showed up after school. He took soft toss from his mother, Agustina. He became fast pals with Moore’s son, taking ground balls and instruction from the Royals’ general manager.

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Last summer, one of the Royals’ elite scout teams needed an extra body for a tournament. Somebody suggested Yolo. And then, in July, he traveled to Washington D.C. to play for a Kansas City academy team in the annual Commissioner’s Cup at the MLB All-Star Game.

The trip opened his eyes. He chatted with kids from across the country. He represented Kansas City. He even met Mo’ne Davis, the former Little League star who was at the event.

“It was a good experience,” he says.

For now, Esparza is focused on his final season of high school ball at Bishop Ward. But he’s already thinking about the future. An opportunity at a junior college could beckon. He could study and play and stay close to home. He’s hoping for a future without limits.

“That’s why I come here,” he says. “I just like thinking about baseball.”

(Top photo: courtesy of MLB Urban Youth Academy)