A win-win situation: the real benefits of volunteerism.

• Author: McCarthy, Colman

For long-time teacher and journalist Colman McCarthy, the word "volunteerism" doesn't conjure images of the recent Philadelphia summit, with its high-profile leaders Bill Clinton, Colin Powell, and George Bush calling for Americans to get involved. In fact, he found the whole event wildly hypocritical. Rather, McCarthy relates to volunteerism on a more personal level: Four years ago, his son John started "Elementary Baseball," which began as a sports program for inner-city school kids in the Washington, D. C. area but quickly blossomed into a literacy effort that matches at-risk youth with mentors and tutors. The elder McCarthy was soon dispatching his own high school and college students to serve in his son's program.

In this personal essay, McCarthy shares the insights he has gained from observing the progress of Elementary Baseball. While the children participating in the program have shown marked improvement, the jury is still out on how much it will ultimately benefit them. But one thing is certain: the program has had a profound impact on the volunteers. They have developed compassion, a better understanding of the world beyond their front door, and a healthy skepticism towards the political leaders who allow social and economic injustice to persist.

In the eve of the national summit on volunteerism in Philadelphia, A. Franklin Burgess Jr., a District of Columbia Superior Court Judge, traveled to Frederick, Md., with Anthony Taylor, a sixth grader at Garrison Elementary School in the Shaw neighborhood of Washington. Burgess has been mentoring the youngster for the past three years. On this spring evening, the judge and the student took in the Class-A Carolina League contest between the Frederick Keys and the Wilmington Blue Rocks. That was the first treat for Taylor. The second came after the game when he and Burgess went to a restaurant for dinner with a friend who brought along some players from the Keys and Blue Rocks.

What Bill Clinton, Colin Powell, George Bush and assorted other exhorters to goodness were preaching in Philadelphia, Judge Burgess was practicing. And it should be noted that writing of his involvement in the life of Anthony Taylor is more than another exercise in journalism for me. The program in which they participate is Elementary Baseball, a non-profit venture that my son John McCarthy started four years ago after a stint in the minor leagues.

In 1993, John, who attended public schools from first grade through college, gave a motivational talk at Garrison Elementary. He told stories about Satchel Paige and Hank Aaron -- both went to the same grade school in Mobile -- and encouraged the Garrison kids to be the best baseball players they could be.

Baseball? they asked. What's that?

Few had ever played. For poor inner city kids, baseball is unaffordable: Families have little money for gloves, balls, bats. Then too, what families? Baseball is a game passed from...