Ãngel Franco/The New York Times Students at a summer program in the South Bronx responded during a lesson taught by a staff member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. The course uses the history of baseball to teach about other things, like civil rights. On a recent morning in the Longwood neighborhood of the South Bronx, residents on Fox Street were starting their day. Reggaeton played from a second-story window. A man whistled a nursery rhyme while briskly pushing a toddler in a stroller. A woman stood on the corner with rollers in her hair, smoking a cigarette. And in a room at the end of a hallway on the first floor of 830 Fox Street, about two dozen children, ages 6 to 12, sat before a big-screen TV mounted on the front wall.
There was a sharp sound and the screen switched on. A woman named Julie Wilson, sitting in a sunny office, appeared on the monitor, her voice echoing across the room on Fox Street as she asked the children if they knew where she was. Four hours north, she said, in Cooperstown, N.Y., at the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
She pointed out a statue of the Yankees legend Babe Ruth crouched on the lawn outside her window. “How many Yankee fans are in the room?†she inquired. Most hands shot up.
On Thursdays throughout the summer, Ms. Wilson, the Hall of Fame’s manager of digital learning and outreach, takes virtual command of this classroom and brings slices of baseball history from Cooperstown to the borough of the Yankees.
John A. Crotty, a founding partner of Workforce Housing Advisors, which rehabilitates buildings in struggling neighborhoods and is a sponsor of the course, explained, “The program is about people, America, their collective histories and lessons from hall of famers on how to excel in whatever you do in life.â€
Mr. Crotty and his team are no strangers to the neighborhood.
When the firm started working in the Bronx about three years ago, the blocks surrounding the Fox Street classroom were considered among the more hardscrabble in the Bronx. With financial help from Morgan Stanley, Workforce Housing Advisors bought the mortgages for five tenements, foreclosed on the properties and renovated the buildings.
About half of the students enrolled in the Hall of Fame class live in those renovated tenements, which were once marked by mold, graffiti and collapsed ceilings, and are now sparklingly renovated, with a community garden soon to come.
Ãngel Franco/The New York Times Isabella Alvarez, 9, with her drawing of the uniform for the Girls Rock baseball team she is creating as part of the Hall of Fame program.“Renewal transcends the building,†Mr. Crotty said, emphasizing the importance of programs like the Hall of Fame course. “It has to be about the residents as well.†The program is in its first run, and the sponsors want it to continue as an after-school program, and eventually expand the course across the city.
The idea is to keep the neighborhood’s youth engaged and enthusiastic about learning. And engaged the students did seem, especially when learning about some of the Bronx’s biggest celebrities.
Bradford D. Horn, the senior director of communications and education at the Hall of Fame, took over for Ms. Wilson for a few minutes and told the class he had some artifacts to present. Donning white protective gloves, he held up a hat with his fingertips â€" the pitcher Mariano Rivera’s cap from this year’s All-Star Game. The Yankee die-hards in the class beamed and a few cheered.
Next Mr. Horn presented a pair of huge shoes â€" the size 15 spikes of the Yankee pitcher C.C. Sabathia from his 200th win. “That’s a pretty big shoe, right?†Mr. Horn asked. “Yeah!†the kids exclaimed. “Baseball history happens everyday,†he said.
The course is largely focused on tales of years past, using them as starting points to explore other topics, like the civil rights movement, gender diversity, character-building and health science. And as a subtle way to inculcate early business smarts, the class puts students hard at work creating their own teams, assigning themselves roles like owner and manager, making uniforms and brainstorming about how to build and maintain a stadium.
James Parrales, 8, said, “We’re learning about goods and services,†James Parrales, 8, said.
The next Thursday, Ms. Wilson was back on the screen. “Who has heard of Jackie Robinson?†she asked.
All hands went up. A 12-year-old named Daniel Abney was called and explained, “He was the first black person to play in the major leagues.â€
Not quite, Ms. Wilson said. Mr. Robinson was the first to be signed to a Major League team in over 60 years. The first black player to be signed, she said, was Moses Fleetwood Walker, in 1884.
From there Ms. Wilson spoke about Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 case in which the Supreme Court upheld segregated but equal railroad cars; the Jim Crow era; and Mr. Robinson’s road to breaking the color barrier when the baseball executive Branch Rickey signed him to the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1948. Besides a player with talent, Ms. Wilson said, Mr. Rickey had been looking for someone with character.
“What do I mean by character?†she asked. Francis Asamoah, 11, responded slowly and thoughtfully. “How a person acts and their personality,†he said, adding, “It’s about perseverance and hard work.â€
Behind the students was another Hall of Fame â€" their own. Each of them had pasted a self-portrait to the wall with a description of what they wanted to be when they grew up. In crayon and colored pencils, they wrote about their dreams of being architects and track stars, fashion designers and chefs.
After class ended, Isabella Alvarez, 9, who is the “owner†of the Girls Rock baseball team in class and wants to be an artist, was still talking about Mr. Robinson. “I hope there can still be players who can play as good as him,†she sighed. When asked why she picked her team name, she whispered, “It makes me feel like we can play good.â€
Ãngel Franco/The New York Times The students in the Hall of Fame program have created their own hall of fame inside their classroom with their images and their hopes for their futures.
