Stepping Up To The Plate

This week on Stepping Up to the Plate, Dan sits down with Dennys Rodriguez-Rivera. Dennys plays on both our 12U and 13U Berkshire Baseball Teams and has been a great help to the BIG Vision Sports Complex. He has gone beyond his required community service hours for the Work Hard, Play Hard Program and has become friends with the maintenance crew.

He talks about his love of the game and where it started. He admits his 1st apprehensions to the idea of female coaches, but soon learns he has a lot to learn from them. Dennys is a perfect example that our program continues to teach life lessons over just the fundamentals of the game.

Berkshire Baseball Red Sox 16 under team player Joelvis talks to Dan about how the ability to perform community service to afford to play baseball gave him an enormous opportunity to grow as a player!

Toni Reece talks to Dan Clouser about the organizaton’s new “Work Hard, Play Hard” program.

The BIG Vision Foundation, which manages and maintains the BIG Vision Sports Complex in Berks County, Pennsylvania, realizes that it's part of the now over $9 billion youth travel sports industry, but for this organization, it's not about the money.

One of the three pillars of the BIG Vision Foundation mission is to "promote volunteerism and giving back."

With that pillar in mind the organization developed its "Work Hard, Play Hard" program, in which players provide community service hours by helping to maintain the complex and helping other local non-profit organizations as opposed to paying a registration fee.

Toni Reece talks to Dan Clouser about his personal journey to stop focusing on the negative in situations and start looking for the good in all situations. This personal shift for Dan has created a ripple effect in BIG Vision Foundation's culture. He went back to the basics of the game of baseball and took inspiration from the foundations of the game to help him create this shift. Listen as he describes what it takes to put this new mindset into practice and how he works that muscle everyday.

The final part of a four part series, just Dan and Del speak about how the new Work Hard, Play Hard program which is designed to provide diversity and inclusion in the BIG Vision Foundation’s Berkshire Baseball and Softball division is a real difference maker in today’s culture of youth sports as well what prompted them to help a younger, impressionable Erron Archie over 25 years ago.

The conversation continues as Erron, Del and Dan reminisce about some of their better memories on the playing field and the “Legend of Erron Archie.”

Dan is joined by both Erron Archie and Del Mintz and they reflect on their relationship, the role that the game has played in their lives and what each one of them mean to each other after almost 30 years of friendship.

Last week Toni Reece spoke to Dan Clouser and Jorge Gonzalez about the new Work Hard, Play Hard program which eliminates registration fees for players but requires them to provide community service in order to participate in the Berkshire Baseball and Softball Club programming within the BIG Vision Foundation. This week, Dan Clouser sits down with Erron Archie, a former player and coach in the Berkshire program who very possibly could be considered the pilot program for what is happening in the Berkshire programs today. Erron, who was raised by a single mother in the inner-city speaks about how the kindness of both Dan and Del Mintz to him as a young man has played a resounding role in who he has become as an adult and parent today.

Toni Reece “pinch hits” again as the guest host to talk to Dan Clouser and Jorge Gonzalez, the founder of the Reading Titans Youth baseball program. BIG Vision Foundation had been helping to underwrite the Titans inner-city baseball program for years and the two organizations have now officially merged under the Berkshire Baseball and Softball Club umbrella of the BIG Vision Foundation. The merger is the culmination of a social experiment that shows how that games of baseball and softball can break down the social barriers that society builds in our differing cultures. Player registration fees have been eliminated and kids are encouraged to give back by participating in various community service projects. It’s not just a game, it’s teaching leadership skills and life lessons through the game.

Dan sits down with Dori Bornstein from the Reading & Berks County YMCA to talk about the annual Healthy Kids and Go Fly a Kite Day that will be taking place this coming weekend (April 28, 2018) at the BIG Vision Sports Complex.