Going to Bat for the Kids: Manny Mota's Real Life
Christina Hamlett
October 11, 2006
But on this particular Saturday morning in the Dodger Stadium bleachers—overcast and empty save for the groundskeepers and janitorial staff—it’s a different kind of game that Manny Mota is most enthusiastic to talk about. Specifically, it’s the game of Life as participated in by the young people and families who have been generously touched by the Foundation that he and his wife, Margarita, founded over 30 years ago in the Dominican Republic.
You can always tell when my dad is home,” his daughter Cecilia Mota-Molina proudly boasts. “Every kid in the neighborhood (and probably quite a few parents as well) are on the doorstep and waiting for him to come out and play!” One has to wonder who has more fun—his waiting audience or Mota himself.
Cecilia, now the Executive Director of her parents’ foundation, can relate to the kind of excitement her father is capable of generating wherever he goes. “As a child,” she reflects, “the most thrilling moments in my life were right before my Dad was called in to pinch hit when the Dodgers were in a crunch and the reaction of the crowd whenever he delivered and helped the team win. As an adult, it’s to see how people still react to him whenever they recognize him in a public place. I still get chills and a great sense of pride to see how the fans love him for his work on and off the field.”
This Pied Piper of good sportsmanship grew up as one of eight siblings in an underprivileged family. “I didn’t have any particular heroes when I was growing up,” he shares, “but my baseball idol was always Jackie Robinson.” Like other kids of his age, it was a game Mota liked to play whenever he could and “just have a good time with it”.
Not only was it a sport that would soon bring him professional success and national admiration but a keen perspective on the commitment and importance of giving back to one’s community. “It’s never enough to just do well,” he softly explains, “but to share what you have—the knowledge and the talent and the faith— so that others can find the path to do well themselves.”
It’s a message that is affirmed on a daily basis throughout the Manny Mota International Foundation’s (MMIF) assistance, educational and outreach programs. Neither Mota nor his wife were shy when it came to launching their vision and soliciting volunteers to help make Campo de Sueños (Field of Dreams) a reality. “We started it from nothing,” Mota reveals. Today, the program furnishes daily hot breakfasts and dinners to over 250 children and their parents, pre-natal care for expectant mothers, free school supplies for students, drinkable water, and delivers groceries to Dominican households that would otherwise go without.
For Margarita, the greatest reward is the ability to feed the hungry men, women, children and elder of the communities whose lives they've touched. “MMIF's food programs have been my focus,” she is quoted as saying. “Knowing that thousands of people have not gone to bed with an empty stomach gives us great joy and satisfaction.”
The Foundation’s future plans include the building of a school, medical facilities, a swimming pool, a sports complex for aspiring young baseball and basketball players, and a community center that will be able to serve the needs of over 2,000 families. No less than Leonel Fernandez, newly elected President of the Dominican Republic, has pledged support to the Mota family’s dreams of expansion.
Mota fondly declares, “It’s my wife—she’s the one with the energy who really knows how to make these things happen!” It was Margarita’s aggressive letter writing campaign, lobbying, and countless phone calls, he points out, that persuaded their government to donate 15 acres of land to the Foundation in the 1990’s. That she managed to do all of this while raising the couple’s large family is an accomplishment that does not go unnoticed amongst relatives, friends, or members of the community in both parts of the world they call “home”. I’m reminded of the adage that, “If you want to get something done, ask a person who’s busy. The other kind won’t have the time.”
The couple’s infectious spirit of activism has not only been passed along to their immediate offspring but to the next generation as well. Mota broadly grins as he shares a favorite anecdote about his granddaughter, Maria Elena. “At only eight years old,” he reminisces, “she comes up with the idea to talk to the principal of her school and get the classes to donate their outgrown uniforms and 25 cases of clothes for the Dominicans.”
He further shares that several years ago the students of San Marino High School initiated a successful food drive for the Foundation. “It is when people learn at a young age to be giving and caring of others,” he maintains, “that they will grow up to be caring and kind as adults.”
This philosophy is affirmed on a daily basis through the sports opportunities that Mota and his fellow Dodgers are providing to starry-eyed kids back home as well as right here in the ballparks of Southern California.
The idea of doing baseball clinics and starting a league for them,” he says, “is to get children to be together in a place where they can have fun and be safe and away from trouble on the streets.” To date, there are over 500 youngsters learning the ropes of America’s favorite pastime in Mota’s program.
The kids,” he adds, “don’t have to pay for anything, including the equipment.” The significance of this is particularly brought home by his next remark. “The Dominican is a poor country. The children there play baseball with no gloves, they make their own bats, or sometimes they just hit the ball with their bare hands. In Los Angeles,” he ruefully observes, “the young people don’t know what it is like to start from scratch when everything they need is always so available."
The coaches and instructors in the program are all volunteers.
Mota is unabashed in his praise of their contributions of time and attention to young people so desperately in need these days of encouragement and positive role models. “What they give to them,” he says, “is the hope for a better life and respect for everyone as all being different but important to the good of the team and each other. What our program is about is giving the kids confidence and advice and letting them know that there was somebody there who cared for them. We want them to be good citizens – to be a good son or daughter and to give back to their own community.”
He is also quick to emphasize the importance that he and his volunteers place on imparting the value of education to their aspiring young ballplayers. “In baseball you win and you lose but when you get an education, you’re always going to be a winner. If you make it in baseball, it’s fine,” he agrees with a thoughtful nod, “but if you don’t, you’ll still be prepared to face life because you’re going to get your degree.”
Mota personally meets with the parents beforehand and lets them know what will be expected. “I tell them education is #1, baseball is second.” Accordingly, his instructors have to go over the children’s report cards every month. “If they are not performing well in school,” Mota warns, “they are not allowed to play in the games.”
The Foundation is currently working with colleges to bring high school kids to the United States to play baseball under scholarship.
Lon Rosenberg (pictured here with Mota), formerly the Chairman of MMIF and now Director of Operations for the Dodgers, chimes in with his own assessment of Mota’s tireless, hands-on energy. “During the Northridge earthquake,” he remembers, “everyone was in a panic and somebody started saying, “Where’s Manny? Where’s Manny?’ Nobody knew where he was. We couldn’t get hold of him. No answer at the house. No answer on the cell phone. Here at the stadium. we were in the midst of trying to figure out how to mobilize and get supplies to the people who needed it. Well, that night at 6 o’clock, Manny finally pulled up behind the wheel of a big truck. ‘Where have you been?’ I asked him. ‘I’ve been out collecting food and diapers’, Manny replied. ‘Where did you think I’d been?’ “ Lon grins. “That’s just the way he always is and the way his whole family is. While everyone else is trying to figure out how to get started, he’s already got his sleeves up and is right in the thick of things, making them happen.”
As we started to part company, I asked Mota what he’d like to best be remembered for in the history books. He doesn’t hesitate a moment in his reply. “I want to be remembered as a human being who really cared for other people and did whatever he could to make life better for others…rich or poor, black or yellow or white all the same – treat them with respect. That’s what I want to take with me when I leave this world and go to a better life.”
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