Another Side Of Homelessness

Social in-activists tend not to talk about the other side of homelessness because it would weaken their cottage industry. People will climb over the barrier and it is possible.....ask Frank O'Dea. Crack of the bat beats crackpipe Toronto's homeless baseball league is a home run,

By SUE-ANN LEVY

Instead of spending the day smoking crack, Elliott Clow comes out to John Innes Community Centre each Monday to enjoy a different kind of crack -- the sound of bats in the city's homeless baseball league.

"I do it because it's fun," said the tall, shaggily bearded 32-year-old, who's been in his own place for about a year after spending time in the hostel system. "If I played Monday, Wednesday and Friday, there would be no time to smoke crack."

Mystie Macuag has played in the homeless league at the Sherbourne and Shuter Sts. diamond religiously for the 20 years it's quietly been in existence.

The single mom of four children, who has her own place in the city's east end, joined the league at age 16 while she was in a hostel called Street Haven. She's been coming out most Mondays ever since. She says the people she's met are like family.

"This is very special for street kids," Macuag told me yesterday in between games, her 4-year-old son Robert by her side. "It's a way to relieve their stress ... for one day a week they're just like everyone else."

Okay so I'll admit it. When I recently heard about the homeless baseball league I thought it yet another batty idea from City Hall.

After all, Socialist Silly Hall has gone out of its way, in my view, to turn this city into the Home of the Homeless, with more than $220 million on the books this year for shelter beds and a variety of initiatives for street people.

It's still fresh in my mind as well that the city's community centres were closed Mondays last fall -- one of the sillier moves in Mayor David Miller's package of cost containment measures.

Nevertheless, Lucy Stern, manager of community engagement for parks and recreation, says the league operates from May to September at "minimal" cost -- the equivalent of four hours of a full-time staff person per week -- and uses the diamond when it is "totally empty."

David Hains, supervisor of community recreation, said the surrounding hostels and homeless agencies essentially field their own teams and outfit them with the necessary equipment.

"We try to keep it pretty low key ... the league runs itself," Hains said, noting they hold a championship day in mid-September and give out a trophy to the winning team.

Stern says the league, which has grown from a "handful" of participants to some 300-400 players, helps street people develop much more than baseball skills -- they acquire self-confidence and realize the parks aren't to be misused. "Typically (if not playing baseball) they'd be lying around in our parks," she said.

That said, I asked why, if the players are able to manage a team sport like this, they can't manage a job.

Stern said from year to year it's "not all the same people" -- that there's a transition as some develop skills and become "more employable." She said her department has even hired 15-20 people from the league over the last five years to work in their centres.

Richard Coke (known as "Pepsi") organizes the team of 15 guys from Seaton House. He says some have been asking to participate since the winter.

"A lot them keep active so they're not doing any alcohol or drugs," he said. "Others have just come out of jail and don't want to go back to that lifestyle."

Coun. Doug Holyday, who was as skeptical as me at first, said he thinks maybe the city has batted a "homeless run" with this league.

"It uses little in the way of parks and rec resources," he said. "It's certainly better for them (the homeless) than the other things they may be doing with their time."

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THE KICKER

City staff are busy recruiting homeless soccer players to travel to Melbourne, Australia this December to represent Canada against 49 other countries in the 2008 Homeless World Cup of Street Soccer.

David Hains says this is the fourth year the city has been a partner and some 10-15 players from Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver will be selected to go -- based on their soccer skills and "where they are in their lives."

Funding for the team -- it costs about $2,000 a player -- is raised by Street Soccer Canada. "We think it is a great initiative," Hains said.

Holyday, however, says he has difficulty with the idea, even if the city is not paying the lion's share of expenses.

"This is not going to be easily understood by the public ... that people who don't have a place to sleep are taken on a trip around the world to a place very few taxpaying residents get to," he said.