By Alan Matthews
October 20, 2004

MARIETTA, Ga.—The Atlanta Braves won their 13th consecutive division title this season, an unprecedented feat. For more than a decade, winning baseball has been a constant in Atlanta.

The same is true just up Interstate 75 from Turner Field in suburban Cobb County, where the amateur East Cobb Baseball program also has become synonymous with success.

Summer and fall league baseball programs come in many sizes, with various methods and philosophies of winning and developing players. Thousands of communities across the country each year form teams with players as young as 5, in an effort to provide a structured setting to hone skills and compete in one of the nation’s most popular amateur sports. But East Cobb’s formula has gone beyond sustained success on a national level, also producing premium professional and college prospects unlike any other program of its kind.

Just as the Braves dynasty has been built on a foundation of integral parts such as general manager John Schuerholz, manager Bobby Cox and righthander John Smoltz, East Cobb Baseball’s blueprint consists of several key components.

The most obvious one is the players. The Atlanta metro area is bursting with talented athletes, thanks to population as well as climate. The region has produced football standouts such as Jamal Lewis, who owns the National Football League’s single-game rushing record; Keith Brookings, a three-time Pro Bowl linebacker; and Quincy Carter, who was a second-round pick in both the football and baseball drafts. Recent basketball standouts include Shareef Abdur-Rahim, the sixth overall selection in the 1996 National Basketball Association draft, and Dwight Howard, the No. 1 pick in 2004.

The abundance of athletes is evident across professional sports, and East Cobb Baseball has served as a springboard to baseball’s college and professional levels for many of them. While East Cobb’s teams have won on the field, producing nearly 100 national amateur tournament titles, the program also has fed players to the big leagues.

Michael Barrett, Kris Benson, Adam Everett and Corey Patterson headline a list of 10 first-round picks since the program’s inception in 1985 who developed their skills under East Cobb coaches, and more than 80 players who spent time in the program have been drafted.

“When you talk East Cobb baseball, you’re talking about one of if not the elite program in the country,” Braves scouting director Roy Clark said, “because they play the best competition, they have wonderful facilities, outstanding coaches and the feeder system is outstanding.”

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Each August, hundreds of players from 9 to 18 try out for one of 60 East Cobb teams. Every player is placed on a team, with the best grouped on one team and players of comparable ability filling out others. There are as many as eight teams at an age level.

The most attractive asset the program offers is one of amateur baseball’s best stages. East Cobb Baseball calls a 30-acre, eight-diamond, multimillion-dollar facility its headquarters. The complex, about 20 miles north of downtown Atlanta, is an amateur baseball mecca. It was designed to suit a player’s every need, complete with indoor and outdoor batting cages, meeting rooms with equipment to study film, covered dugouts and even living quarters for out-of-town players who spend nights and sometimes weeks on site.

Equally important, the complex is accommodating to a segment of the baseball industry that, in some sense, spurred the program’s evolution: professional scouts and college recruiters. Without their endorsement, East Cobb Baseball wouldn’t be what it is today, for its exposure the players savor, and scouts and college recruiters from across the game are the people they want to be seen by. The complex also offers scouts and recruiters the setting to satiate their needs in one stop.

“They have a tremendous facility, great organization and there’s always baseball going on,” said Georgia head coach Dave Perno, who has signed dozens of players out of the East Cobb program. “(The exposure) helps the players and the prospects get better because it raises their stock.”

For two weeks in July, scouts and recruiters make Marietta their personal one-stop workshop when East Cobb plays host to one of the largest high-school age tournaments of the summer. Perfect Game USA, which organizes high school-age tournaments and showcases across the country, leases the facility, along with several neighboring high school fields, for two weeks, and more than 2,000 teenagers gather to compete with wood bats. More than 125 teams from across the country participate, and hundreds of scouts and college recruiters look on.

“(The facility) is at the very top of the list,” South Carolina recruiting coordinator Jim Toman said. “With the 18-and-under event and the 17-and-under event one week after the other, you can stay down there for two weeks and have enough names for your entire recruiting class.

“In terms of national recruiting, it’s made it a lot easier. Before we were driving hundreds of miles beating the bushes, and now it’s all right there for you.”

And that’s precisely what Guerry Baldwin and Russ Umphenhour hoped to accomplish when they talked about plans for the facility. Baldwin, East Cobb’s equivalent of Bobby Cox, is the organization’s architect. A former high school coach and player from Cobb County, Baldwin assumed the helm of the program in 1983, when it was known as the East Marietta Sports Association.

The northern suburbs of Atlanta were in the midst of a baseball revolution, after a team from Marietta won the Little League World Series in 1982. Baldwin recognized the rising talent, and along with parents such as Umphenhour (whose son Rusty played on the Little League team), took a vested interest in continuing the momentum in the five years following the World Series run.

The organization found financial support from the upper-middle class parents in the suburban Atlanta community, and the East Cobb Baseball Association was formed in 1985.

“I tried to acclimate some of the existing people into what I thought would work,” says Baldwin in his usual dry, sardonic tone. “Some of the ideas were good. Some weren’t. We sort of put this program together by trial and error.”

Baldwin is the consummate player’s coach and meshed well with the team. He led an East Cobb team to the 14-year-old Pony World Series title in 1985 and the 15-year-old Babe Ruth title a year later. The core of players stuck together through their high school years and won the 1987 Colt League championship as 16-year-olds as well as the 1988 Babe Ruth 16-18 title under Baldwin.

Umphenhour is a successful entrepreneur with fervor for the game. He is president of RTM Restaurant Group, one of the largest restaurant franchisees in the United States, which operates more than 750 Arby’s restaurants in 20 states, with annual sales near $800 million.

Umphenhour recognized Baldwin’s ability to work with the players. He also shared his vision to develop more than winning teams, but a large-scale program that developed players as well. And most important, he had the money to bankroll the effort. He purchased a plot of land adjacent to an industrial park for $1.4 million, establishing the foundation of the program’s prolonged prominence. When all was said and done, it became the nation’s most complete amateur baseball complex, at a cost Baldwin estimates at $9.7 million.

Baldwin filled out his coaching staff with experienced instructors and coaches, ranging from former professional and college players to former college and high school coaches.

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Baldwin’s coaching philosophy is not revolutionary; the ideas he and his staff advocate aren’t secret. The difference is in the details. When players reach the 15- and 16-year-old levels, practices revolve around teaching nuances of the game. Coaches stress specific aspects of individual position play, such as how outfielders pick up a ball by a fence and begin the relay. Situational hitting and hitting to all fields are common elements of batting practices.

Summers for East Cobb players don’t allow for much time by the pool or other leisure activities, especially at the higher levels of the program. The teams travel incessantly, playing in tournaments across the country as well as those at their home complex. One coach estimated his team played in games 33 consecutive days this summer.

Some high school and college coaches say the rigorous schedule doesn’t provide enough time for players to learn how to make adjustments, an essential part of succeeding at higher levels in baseball. If a player’s swing gets long or he struggles fielding balls to his backhand, for example, he might have to squeeze in drills before or after games in an effort to improve.

Scouts and college recruiters acknowledge the importance of all areas of development but still come away impressed with the final products East Cobb typically produces. The system yields players who often possess a rare combination of athletic ability and baseball savvy, making them easier to evaluate—with less guesswork and projection—and more attractive.

“When you look at an East Cobb kid, you’re looking at a kid that has played so much baseball that his skills and mechanics are better than a kid, say, from south Georgia or from Florida that has not played as much,” says Braves area scout Al Goetz, who has signed several players out of the program, including 2002 second-round pick Brian McCann. “Purely because the game experience is the best teacher. An East Cobb kid is closer to his potential because of the amount of baseball he plays.”

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The program’s coaching staff is also different from other youth programs because it includes a minimal number of parents whose sons are players. Juggling parental involvement is an essential job for every youth coach, regardless of the level or the sport. So Baldwin adopted a strict policy of placing non-parents as coaches of the advanced teams early on.

While assembling 60 strong, non-parent baseball minds in one locale is unrealistic, Baldwin has pieced together a group of coaches and instructors that, top to bottom, is among the nation’s best at the youth level. The Midland Redskins, based out of Ohio, as well as the Dallas Panthers and Long Beach Cardinals are other summer league programs that have adopted a similar approach of attracting top teenaged players with experienced instructors.

Baldwin’s limit on parental involvement is clear as soon as the player joins East Cobb Baseball. Baldwin says he is available to discuss a player’s development with parents, but he has no tolerance for discussion of coaching principles—especially playing time—and recommends his other coaches assume a similar stance.

While Baldwin’s mantra has led to plenty of heated exchanges with parents who might not care for his personality, other parents scan the program’s list of college and professional alumni to find a reason to adhere to his rules.

Cary Strohecker sent his sons Allen and Charlie through the program and says he respects the way Baldwin and his staff operate. Strohecker’s oldest son Allen, now a freshman righthander at Young Harris (Ga.) Junior College, benefited from his association with East Cobb Baseball, he said.

“The first thing I was looking for was a higher level of competition, and the second thing was no parent coaching,” Strohecker says.

Allen played for the East Cobb 16-and-under team that captured titles at numerous national events, including the AAU Junior Olympics and the CABA World Championship in 2002. Allen usually pitched in relief, behind the club’s top arms like Tim Ladd, Chris Nelson, Danny Payne and John Michael Vidic.

Strohecker says his son chose to remain on the higher-profile team even though he knew he would pitch fewer meaningful innings than if he dropped down to one of East Cobb’s less-talented teams. And Allen says his experience helped his development as a player and helped him get a scholarship from Young Harris, which has a reputable program. The scholarship is an example of why Baldwin and East Cobb hold such a venerated position with players.

“There is a prestige. All the kids love Baldwin,” Cary Strohecker says. “They love playing for him and they are caught in that loyalty.”

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Baldwin is admired and respected by his players beyond the typical player-coach relationship. After just a couple of practices, the players buy into his approach and embrace the East Cobb ideology.

The reverence goes beyond the field, and Baldwin and his staff offer more than just baseball instruction. Players who show promise receive an orientation of sorts. It’s not exactly a career placement program like you’ll find at most universities, but it’s similarly structured. The staff advises players about college and professional choices: Which path might be best for the player’s future, what college program would be the best fit, and if the player is good enough, how much money he should seek during negotiations with major league organizations in the draft.

“We’ve spent a lot more time with kids explaining pro baseball and how the draft works and whether or not you should take your college scholarship or sign,” Baldwin says. “We have not left the goal of college first. What I try to get players who come through here to understand is that professional baseball is a business. It’s not fun like it is in the summer, in high school and college.

“One of the things we always say is that if you’re offered life-altering money, you have to sign, if that’s what you want to do. If you’re not, don’t (become a minor league roster-filler). Because your opportunity when you’re drafted (beyond) the first five rounds of making it is obscure.”

Because of the unwavering loyalty to Baldwin and his staff, the philosophy has become as much a part of the program as winning tournaments. As a result, some major league organizations take a different approach to evaluating East Cobb players.

A player’s willingness to accept a professional contract—signability—has become a constant in the evaluation of amateur players, but it’s particularly important with East Cobb players. Some organizations begin researching a player’s background up to a year before the draft to figure out how much money it will take to sign a player out of high school. If an organization believes the player adheres to the East Cobb code of not signing for less than “life-altering” money, it might not draft the player early or at all.

“We try and get to know these kids on a personal basis,” Clark says. “It all comes down to whether the kid is ready to play pro ball or not . . . We have to know these kids inside and out.”

No East Cobb coach represents a bigger challenge to pro scouts than James Beavers. Beavers, who pitched at Georgia Tech from 1972-75 and still shares the record for losses in a season, coaches East Cobb’s 18-and-under team. He has won three Connie Mack titles in the past five years and also led a team to the 1994 Babe Ruth 16–18 World Series crown.

Beavers’ teams often feature players in the process of deciding whether to accept a college scholarship, and his players have a reputation for being particularly tough to sign.

“I don’t care,” says Beavers of the perception. “(Baldwin) has often told me you’re walking an area there that there are some (major league) clubs that aren’t happy with you.

“I don’t have any kids and so . . . it’s no motive for me to help a kid other than to make the best decision for him.”

Beavers, who has seen his relationship with Baldwin sour somewhat because of the issue admits, “I think the college experience is very important for kids.”

“(Beavers) has certain views on how much money (his players) need to sign and he expresses it to them, and they follow his lead and they listen to him,” Goetz says. “It makes them tough to talk to about playing pro baseball. It affects the signabilty of kids.”

Which makes the scouts’ ability to gauge a player’s commitment and desire to play professionally out of high school paramount. Such in-depth research is a major reason the Braves have been able to sign several top East Cobb alumni such as McCann, outfielder Josh Burrus and righthander Kyle Davies.

Part of what makes the Braves’ big league string of success so awe-inspiring is that they have done it with a parade of different players and have persevered in the face of adversity. East Cobb’s program has also consistently won with fresh faces of varied ability, though its rise to the top also hasn’t been free of tumult.

“In the last 13 years since the Braves have been winning, it’s helped, especially in the Georgia area, getting more players and the athletes into our sport,” Clark says. “That alone, along with the emergence of the East Cobb program . . . and the success they’ve had in getting players involved in the game, has to be considered when you think about the great players that are coming out of this area. And now it’s getting better and better.”

The baseball industry won’t be surprised to see the Braves near the top again next year. And you can bet the peaches will be just as ripe up the road in East Cobb.