Not just baseball: Piedmont Pride’s visits with Rock Hill Boys and Girls Club mean so much more

Chase Sandberg saw some real prospects when he and his Piedmont Pride baseball teammates visited the Rock Hill Boys and Girls Club Wednesday at Northside Recreation Center.

“There’s one of them, it just sounds different when he hits it,” said Sandberg, who plays college baseball at Eastern New Mexico University. “I don’t even want to be within 20 feet of him when he’s at the bat. I just want to back up.”

The Pride, which plays in the Southern Collegiate Baseball League with home games at Winthrop, has a Christian slant, and founder and coach Joe Hudak made sure that community outreach was part of the team’s summer plans. T.J. Mack, of the local Boys and Girls Club chapter, is delighted about that decision.

“They come out just to teach good morals, get the kids doing something different,” said Mack. “Kind of open up their minds. It’s been really great.”

Mack said some of the kids even turned down a Boys and Girls Club field trip so that they could hang out with their baseball buddies. So Wednesday found a gaggle of kids wearing Pride hats playing whiffle ball in the Northside gym, smashing pitches off the wall. The group will graduate to outdoor baseball next week.

But most of the 20 or so young boys seemed more concerned about borrowing Pride players’ sun glasses, climbing on their backs, or smashing a whiffle ball into the upper reaches of the gym.

“It’s more than baseball,” said Sandberg. “It’s more about growing in our faith and using baseball as an avenue.”

This story was originally published July 1, 2015 at 1:01 PM with the headline "Not just baseball: Piedmont Pride’s visits with Rock Hill Boys and Girls Club mean so much more."