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HOW EBI GOT STARTED...

Sharing their knowledge helps young players learn

Chad Ebbert and Mark Desabrais saw their pro baseball dreams end early, but kids benefit from their expertise.

Shannon Rose | Sentinel Staff Writer
July 18, 1998

Chad Ebbert and Mark Desabrais thought they'd make it big. When the two San Diego Padres signees landed in the Arizona Rookie League in 1994, their dream of playing major league baseball was on its way to reality.

So they thought.

But like many minor-league players, Ebbert, a 1992 Lake Mary graduate, and Desabrais, a 1994 Lake Howell graduate, never made it to the big leagues. Instead, they returned home hollow from the dejection and without any direction of what would come next.

"I thought I'd be playing Double A baseball by now,'' said Ebbert, a catcher who batted .315 in the Arizona League. "To get released, it was like getting stabbed in the heart. There is nothing worse than the ride home from the field.''
But instead of being bitter toward the sport they loved so much, Ebbert and Desabrais decided to combine baseball with the other thing they both cherished - kids.

They have turned their talent, their experience and knowledge soaked in from their minor-league days to nurturing other young ballplayers and possibly helping them reach the goals that eluded Ebbert and Desabrais.

The two make up Ebbert Baseball & Softball Instruction, a business that offers individual and team lessons. It will hold its first summer camp for boys and girls ages 6-16 next weekend at Eastmonte Park in Altamonte Springs.

It's a natural outlet for Ebbert and Desabrais. When they were playing in Arizona and also in Idaho Falls, they both remember the exhilaration they felt when kids would ask for autographs and sit in the stands cheering for them.

"We could give out free tickets,'' Desabrais said. "When those kids would come up to you, that was the best feeling in the world. I just love working with kids.''

For Desabrais, being involved with Ebbert's instruction school is soley for the benefit of kids. He has a fulltime job with a computer software company, which keeps him traveling during most of the work week. So he isn't in it for the money.

"I have a great job right now,'' said Desabrais, a former pitcher who ranked second in earned run average in the Arizona League in 1995. "I want them to be what I never was so I work hard for them.''

And neither is Ebbert, who started the business last August after the urging of his father. For the first two months, he had two clients.

Ebbert questioned whether it would work out. But gradually people started seeing the advertisement in the newspaper and hearing about it from friends.

"By March, I was going crazy,'' Ebbert said. "We've had over 100 kids for individual instruction since last fall.''

Several things contribute to the success Ebbert and Desabrais have found. Both in their early 20s, the two still possess an enthusiasm and energy for the game and can relate well to their clients.

They're out there high-fiving and joking like big-brother types. They call each kid a friend, not just a client. It's that individual attention and sincere interest in the player's development that Larry Clark liked.

Clark, who saw Ebbert's information in the paper last March, enrolled his 10-year-old son Danny in weekly lessons and quickly saw the results.

"His pitching improved drastically,'' Clark said. "His hitting improved drastically. Chad has really given him some personal attention. Chad has come to some of his games. He calls to check up on how he is doing.

"He relates real well to the kids. He doesn't intimidate the kids and he goes out there to have fun with them.''

When Ebbert started this business he based all of his teachings on one central theme. Confidence. He wasn't going to tear them down or over-criticize every flaw.

"You have to give the athletes the belief they are good, that they are the best,'' Ebbert said.

Ebbert and Desabrais are there for the betterment of the children. If there is a circumstance when a player isn't improving, then they tell the player and parents they might need to consider another instructor.

In fact, Ebbert wants kids who are as excited about baseball or softball as he was and still is. He knows if given another shot at playing professionally, he'd take it "in a heartbeat.''

Ebbert lights up just talking about the days when he hung around and worked out with the likes of Ken Griffey Jr. and Tony Gwynn.

"I listened to those guys every day,'' Ebbert said. "I wrote down everything they said in a journal. I still look at that journal every day.''

To this day, Ebbert still teaches the hitting style he learned from Gwynn. It helped Ebbert go from batting .166 to .315 the following year.

Ebbert and Desabrais both teach the techniques they both learned from legendary professionals. And there is no greater feeling than seeing a young player grasp those concepts and execute them.

"There is this 14-year-old pitcher, I teach him something and he soaks it in,'' Desabrais said. "Then the next time, he comes out and does those things I taught him without me even having to mention. He really applies it.

"Just seeing him doing those things makes me feel good.''

So maybe Ebbert and Desbrais hit it big after all.

In 1995, I had the pleasure of playing in a Spring Training game with Tony Gwynn. I had a chance to speak with Tony for several hours during and after the game. We talked about everything from hitting, life, and the mental aspects of baseball, after speaking with him, I raised my batting average 150 points to .315 to conclude the season. He was a master at studying and perfecting his game day-in and day-out.

Inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2007 - he will be remembered as one of the greatest hitter's of all time.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- You don't need a passport to enter the Orioles' clubhouse, but it wouldn't hurt to have a working knowledge of other cultures. Baltimore stands at the forefront of an increasingly international sport, with most of the team's prominent players speaking Spanish as their native language.

"This team is different from other teams. We kind of have a half-half mix," said Bruce Chen, a native-born Panamanian. "And to have leaders that are Hispanics, too, like [Miguel] Tejada and [Melvin] Mora, it makes it easier. We all miss our roots. We all come from a [similar] place, and we miss hearing people speak and joke in Spanish.

"You can say a joke in Spanish, but when you translate, people don't laugh. Even though we're away from home, we feel like we're close to home as much as we can be."

It's obvious just to look around at the lockers and the names on the backs of the jerseys. The most common name in Baltimore's clubhouse isn't Roberts or Patterson or Williams. It's Lopez, a surname shared by Rodrigo, Javy and Luis. Stop a second and watch all the interaction, and you can't help but notice a decidedly Latin feel.

"We don't have any problem communicating, but we're teammates and we get along really well," said Chen. "We have a different culture and a different background. We like different kinds of music. A lot of us can relate. We came from a different country and had to do all these things at first.

"All the other players, like Brian Roberts and Jay Gibbons, they're leaders in the clubhouse and they've accepted us. They know we're Latin people and we like different things. They even try our foods in the clubhouse and they love it. We get Latin food two or three times a week. And we like some of the food they bring. ... It's not boring where we have the same thing over and over again."

That comfort level can be hard for Spanish-speaking players to find in this sport and this society, a culture dominated by the English language. Most of the players learned English by immersion, an extremely difficult process that many characterized as alienating and frustrating.

Rodrigo Lopez, a member of Baltimore's five-man rotation, said adjusting to American society is a never-ending process.

"I've been here for 12 years and I'm still adjusting to the culture. I love being here and I love speaking English, but it's still hard to adjust to the customs and everything," he said. "I wouldn't say our cultures are totally different, but we have many different things in Mexico, where I live, and in all of Latin America. If you really want to live here, I think you have to make an effort to learn different things every day. ... It's going to make your living here more comfortable, and you'll feel part of the country."

That's why it helps to have a clubhouse full of like-minded people, a group that has shared many of the same experiences. It's not just a social thing -- the players that are struggling with English have a ready-made support network. They have people to help them along the way, a phenomenon Lopez said was sorely lacking when he came through the Minor Leagues.

The right-handed pitcher said his first baseball hometown was Clinton, Iowa -- an enclave situated in the middle of the Midwest. That was rookie ball, and Lopez had three Hispanic teammates who were in a similar stage of their lives. For the most part, they were left to their own devices in a foreign land.

"None of us spoke good English. We spoke broken English. We stood up for ourselves and knew that nobody was going to help us," Lopez said. "We had to do something to play here and to make our dreams come true. We rented a place, we connected the power and the electricity -- all the little things that are easy for people. But for us, it was hard to pick up the phone and speak broken English."

So how did he learn? Through diligence and trial and error, paying attention to the words of people around him and slowly progressing to a more elaborate means of expressing himself. Lopez said that he had a teammate in the low-level minors, Chad Ebbert, who played a key role in his assimilation.

"He didn't speak any Spanish, and I didn't speak any English back then," he said. "He tried to teach me as much as he could, and I learned. I picked up the key words in conversation, and that's how I learned. But it was still hard to speak to somebody else, and to order a pizza was a big deal for us. Once we started to get confident, I think we saw the world different."

Javy Lopez, who hails from Puerto Rico, an American commonwealth, shared a similar experience. He said he didn't speak much English when he arrived stateside, and he said it was a difficult process to learn. All the things that native speakers take for granted took time to grasp.

"I went through a lot of embarrassing moments, but that's how you learn," he said. "It wasn't easy, but in the end, it really pays off. It's the No. 1 barrier for all the Latin guys who play baseball -- or any sport."

In Baltimore's clubhouse, the barriers work the other way. The Orioles had 11 players who spoke Spanish as their native language on their Opening Day roster last year, and at one point, the numbers swelled to more than half the roster. This year, though it's still early in camp, the atmosphere is largely the same.

Rodrigo Lopez even mentioned a game last season when there was only one American -- Roberts -- on the field. It's gotten to the point that a guy like Chris Gomez finds himself lamenting his lack of vocabulary. Gomez, a native of southern California, said the Orioles are different than any team he's ever been on.

"I like it because I've been trying to learn Spanish for a long time," he said. "I'm always asking them about different words and stuff, so I like it, from that perspective. My wife speaks Spanish, my dad speaks Spanish and half the team speaks Spanish -- but I don't. With the name Gomez, and being half-Mexican, that's pretty lame."

It's also temporary. If he truly wants to learn, he's in the right place.