Former Atlanta Braves player Ryan Klesko reacts after hitting the ball in the 1995 World Series … More
Ryan Klesko last played in Major League Baseball in 2007. Eighteen years later, he remains heavily involved in the game.
Klesko runs the Atlanta Braves’ scout teams, which primarily consists of high school-aged players. Klesko made his major-league debut with Atlanta in 1992 and spent the first eight seasons of his 16-year career as an outfielder/first baseman with the Braves.
And Klesko also joined Perfect Game last year as a special assistant to ownership. Perfect Game, based in Sanford, Fla., is the world’s largest youth baseball and softball platform and scouting service.
Klesko enjoys coaching and instructing young players as much he did playing in the major leagues, where he hit 278 home runs in 1,726 games with the Braves, San Diego Padres and San Francisco Giants.
“I would have never made it (to the major leagues) if I wouldn’t been from the help from my Little League coach, or the first camp that I went to my mom and my high school coach,” said Klesko, a native of Westminster, Calif. “We didn’t grow up with a lot of money and we’re always scraping funds together to play travel ball. I would have never made it without those people doing it and this is my way of paying it forward.”
Giving it back will be the theme on May 19 when Perfect Game, in conjunction with The Sports Facilities Companies, will hold a Kids Camp at the Hoover Met Plex in Hoover, Ala., a suburb of Birmingham. The event will be held a day before the Southeastern Conference Tournament will begin in Hoover.
Klesko is one of five former big-league players scheduled to attend with Wes Helms, Brett Myers, Tom “Flash” Gordon and Jason Phillips. Nearly 500 students from Birmingham City Schools and Hoover City Schools will attend and rotate through various on-field activities featuring athletic games, skill instruction and competitive challenges.
Every participant receives a Rawlings baseball glove, Perfect Game baseball and an event T-shirt.
Perfect Game vice president of scouting operations Jered Goodwin will oversee the camp. The camp is especially meaningful for Goodwin, who spent the first 13 years of his baseball career as a high school coach after playing collegiately at Birmingham Southern.
“I come from an education background, and the travel team I started with, the emphasis was on underprivileged and minority kids and so when I got into Perfect Game, it was kind of a natural fit,” Goodwin said. (Perfect Game) has been doing philanthropy around our All-American Game for 20 years but I’ve moved into kind of the underprivileged kids’ camp. So, it was a natural fit that I wanted to be involved with stuff like this.
“We’re thrilled to bring together MLB veterans, talented youth and our scouting team for a day that celebrates the game of baseball and gives back to the local community.”
