HBCU Texas Southern University’s rich history and soul come to life on the baseball diamond

the H.B.CU Swingman Classic will highlight the history and legacy of baseball at historically black colleges and universities as a proud H.B.CU alum I hit the road and traveled over 900 miles to visit four incredible campuses that’s what championship baseball is about and let me tell you the passion excitement and tradition I witnessed from these student athletes was nothing short of inspiring i wanted to have the culture of an H.B.CU being down here helped me learn a lot about the culture come on come on come on so join me on H.B.CU Circuit path to the Swingman Classic my HB.CU circuit starts in Houston Texas with the five-time SWAT champions Texas Southern University and who better to speak with than TSU alum and MLB senior vice president for baseball development Dell Matthews brother Matthews what’s happen how you doing man i’m good i’m good thank you for having me here at Texas Southern man absolutely now let’s talk baseball for a second now tell me what this place means to you you played here so what does it feel like just to be back on the soil back on the yard is is nothing like it here that’s where we are we call it the yard we call it the yard yeah texas Southern University uh home of the TSU Tigers brings back a lot of good memories um just seeing the facilities how they’ve grown uh looking at the campus the smell of the grass it just brings back a lot of fond memories talk to me a little bit about the Swingman Classic and why I was never invited i’m a 46 year old man yeah well uh Ken Griffy Jr I’ll blame it on him uh really uh Ken Griffy Jr who’s an ambassador for the Youth Development Foundation had been working with us and so in his role he came up with the concept of hey let’s do something with H.B.CU he felt it was important to give the kids an opportunity to play on a national stage all right so I’m playing at a black college i get the call from you or Ken Griffy hey it’s Ken Griffy come on down to the swing man you playing good ball we want to show you in front of the scouts at the All-Star break clip cuz that’s I think Ken Griffy Ken Griffy just hang up in your face what would a player expect to experience if selected for the swing match yeah it’s it’s an all-star experience this year we’re going to Atlanta and it’s an experience just like the Allstars like just like the major leaguers uh you get a chance to play in the stadium you get a chance to go into the the club houses that the major leaguers are in you’re treated like a major leaguer for those three days but I think the experience overall just the environment and the celebration of HB.CU baseball it really doesn’t get better than that and I think each of these young men will be extremely proud and it’ll be a lifelong experience uh that they’ll remember for the rest of their lifetime maybe you know I still got a couple years of eligibility if I could just show you my swing let me see what you got let me just show you my swing and then you you tell Ken Griffy you tell K you see it went up okay all right i see a little little Cliff Floyd action going on there i see you ain’t like it you ain’t like it just send the tape to Griffy okay now that we know what the Swingman Classic is all about let’s go to practice and meet TSU coach Michael Robertson i wonder if he’s got room for me on the roster just just off the look where would you put me on the field on your team like just looking at you with your bill I’ll say probably catching position look like it would suit you okay okay position no running no no not a lot of running that’s what you just said no I think you hit the power you know so this wasn’t your first stop when it comes to coaching at a H.B.CU you were at Prairie Review prior to here i ended up getting my of course my first opportunity to coach at a H.B.CU at Prairie Vi&M University so we actually went from worst to first in three years by by the third year we were playing in the championship and we actually played in four straight championships so you leave Prairie Review uh Texas Southern makes the call and you make the decision to come here and that’s where you’ve been for quite a while now um what about 15 years 17 i ain’t trying to age it but that’s what I said 17 years i’m still 40 yes sir yes sir we all 40 yeah so what happened was I thought this would be a bigger challenge than I had going on at Prairie View because we had pretty much checked all the boxes in a short time so uh we decided to bring our system over here it’s not on the level that we want to be on we’re just going through the motion and I can tell you it’s been a a really good journey of course when I started coaching for a career but it it actually ended up being a calling hey loaded up on I kind of just ran with it and this has been a beautiful experience and along the way you know we’ve been fortunate to win some championships we actually played in four straight championships here too and we won three out of four this is probably one of the most disciplined programs that you’ll play in he starts from right there where you going to be outside inside we’re not always able to get the big D1 arms but far as position players I think our kids could play at any top tier school all right and if I’m going to be playing catcher best to get in some reps in the cage with some of the best H.B.CU players in the country after all these are my new teammates what made you choose Texas Southern oh man that’s a great question um I’m a California kid growing up you know I loved it out there but I was I was kind of ready to explore a little bit and I wanted to have the the culture of an H.B.CU and play baseball one and so when you when you look at it from a city standpoint Houston I mean we talking about black culture yeah we’re talking about black culture you know and I came out here and uh Coach Rob he told me to try this place called the Breakfast Club chicken and waffles went in there ate it one of the best meals I’ve had i knew that was going to be the spot wait so part of Coach Rob’s recruiting strategy on you specifically was come here and try the food try the food that’s what he said try the food and the food gave you a window into the culture exactly and the culture and everything about it he said he would develop me so I looked at those three aspects food culture development i was like “All right this is going to be pretty special.” Now that’s a jack right there now when you when you hitting in the cage you hit it you go “Yeah that was a home run huh?” I you know I don’t want to but sometimes you always going to have that voice in your head even in games you know if you piece it up you might be like “Yeah I think I got it.” Okay all right let’s swap it up next up next up all right let’s see what you got here brother what’s the best thing about your teammates we’re all just like brothers we all treat each other like family we’re like this we’re close like unbreakable and we always supporting each other there we go that’s to the gap you know let me get some cuts let me get some cuts let me get Is that one going to be too heavy for you that’s too heavy what else you got what else you got what else you got you got Yeah okay yeah we can do that yeah let’s do that and see if y’all tell me based off one cut one cut cuz coach say he can just look at you no matter your stats he can look at your mechanics and know whether or not you Tiger material so I’m going to take a cut y’all tell me whether or not okay we got you okay you got me okay it’s for the scholarship right here for the scholarship okay no you can’t okay which how you get out this how you I don’t want to play no way

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