Michael Hernandez, 11, gets a hero's welcome from teammates after hitting a home run in a Ladera Park travel ball league. (Photo by Gary McCarthy)
Story Created:
Jul 26, 2010 at 10:54 AM PST
Story Updated:
Jul 28, 2010 at 11:39 AM PST
Dreams do come true, especially for a Ladera Park-based travel ball team.
Thanks to the generosity of talk show host Larry King, coach Dewayne Geter’s Diamond Dream Baseball Club is now a thriving enterprise.
“He’s given me more stuff in one year than I ever got in all the previous years combined,” Geter said. “I used to have to put in a lot of my own money, raise funds through car washes, now here he comes with a boatload of money.”
Once a struggling program with a single 10-and-under team, the Diamond Dream Baseball Club has expanded to seven teams in various age groups thanks to the long-time host of CNN’s “Larry King Live.”
The teams had their opening day July 17 at Ladera Park and close the summer Aug. 28 with championship games. King will be there to hand out trophies to the winning teams on the final day.
But as Geter points out, King has way more than just token involvement.
He’s there for every game and his two sons, Chance, 11, and Cannon, 10, are part of the team that is a mix of South L.A. kids and the offspring of the rich and famous. The children of Dodger employees as well as former UCLA and NBA great Marques Johnson are also part of the travel team.
As Geter noted, “We have kids from Beverly Hills to Ladera.”
Whether it’s providing money for equipment or the expenses needed to enter and travel to tournaments as far away as Las Vegas and San Diego, King has them covered.
King, a Dodger season ticket holder, has provided them with tickets to Dodger games, threw a Halloween party for the kids and when one was diagnosed with leukemia, had members of the New York Yankees when they were in town visit him at Cedar’s-Sinai Medical Center.
Geter said he met him last June and it was King who suggested if he turn his club into a non-profit organization it would be easier to get donations.
Was he ever right. Now with a board of directors made up of the likes of King, well-know real estate broker Kurt Rappaport and Johnson, among others, raising money is less of an uphill battle.
And Geter, a 1988 graduate of Granada Hills High School who played a year of college ball at Jackson State, couldn’t be more grateful.
“He’s the nicest person on earth,” Geter said of King. “He heard I needed money, and he’s given me everything I’ve needed. He’s never told me, no.”
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