Henry Washington, a former player for the Tigers organiization minor league team in Bristol, VA, was a baseball coach at Southeastern High School in Detroit from 1981-1999. The walls of his home are lined with memorabilia from his minor league career.Detroit baseball veteran sees sport's decline from front lines
This is the bat Washington used while playing for the Tigers minor league team in Bristol, VA.
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DETROIT -- Henry Washington has been involved in baseball in Detroit for 40 years -- long enough to have experienced its heyday and witnessed its decline.
A 1975 graduate of Detroit Southeastern, Washington played in high school, college (Concordia College and Oakland) and a season in the Tigers' farm system (Class-A Bristol, Tenn.).
Then, for 18 seasons, until quitting in frustration after the 1999 season, he was the varsity baseball coach at Southeastern of the Detroit Public Schools League.
Washington, 48, has been on the front lines as baseball has waged its losing battle of attrition in the African-American community.
"I never had facilities," he said. "That bothered me. I could have coached a number of places in the suburbs, but I chose to coach in the PSL. It got to be so frustrating. I got out." Which is not to say he's given up hope. Washington is on the T-Ball to Tigers Committee, along with his former minor-league roommate, Tigers hitting instructor Bruce Fields.
"We study baseball and discuss how we can bring baseball back (to the city)," Washington said.
Washington said part of the problem is coaching.
"The kids aren't learning what they need to learn," Washington said.
He contends a defeatist attitude persists, too. Young athletes don't believe they can play baseball and make it at the next level, Washington said, so they focus on basketball and football.
And, in the process, they are missing out on a good thing.
"I saw the country," Washington said. "I played four years in college, one in the minors and traveled."
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