When James Garrett, Jr. informed families whom he previously coached in Little League on St. Paul’s East Side that he relocated to the West Side, some jumped at the chance to join him at the El Rio Vista Recreation Center fields on Robie Street, regardless of the commute.
“We had to be here. We had to,” said Pat Sofie, who drove in from the East Side with her great-grandson for Thursday’s play-off game against the Shoreview Mustangs. Gaige Christiansen-Sofie, who just recently turned 10, sat out the game with an injured elbow, but arrived suited up anyway, ready to cheer on his teammates in the newly formed West Side Raiders.
It made no difference to Sofie and other parents and grandparents this summer that Garrett’s new “11-and-under” traveling baseball team — the West Side’s first in nearly a dozen years — had drawn only one 11-year-old. Nor did it matter that they played in the lowest-ranking division — 11A — within the Minnesota Youth Athletic Services (MYAS) Gopher State Baseball League.
Garrett’s underdog 9-year-olds and 10-year-olds would try their best all summer against suburban kids as much as two years older.
More often than not, they’d fail. They went on to win just three games all season. And after each game, win or lose, parents seated in lawn chairs along Robie Street’s boulevard grass would stand up, walk over to “Coach James,” and shake the hand of the man who brought youth baseball back to the West Side.
“We played bigger teams the whole year so we got used to it,” said a smiling 10-year-old Cam Dodd, whose parents drove him to El Rio Vista from Maplewood all season, after the unsuccessful play-off game against the Mustangs on Thursday. “You have to stay in there and fight.”
A Bush Fellow, architect and coach
As a St. Paul-based architect with a flair for urban design, Garrett spends a fair amount of his
waking hours imagining how to build better cities, including amenities that appeal to artists, young people and communities of color.
Garrett, a recent winner of the Bush Foundation’s prestigious Bush Fellowship, is the co-founder of the nationally recognized architecture firm 4RM+ULA, which is based in downtown St. Paul.
Once his work day is done, he switches focus entirely. In and around Robie Street, he’s better known as the man who brought youth baseball back.
“We’re small, we’re scrappy. I love these guys,” said Garrett, during Thursday’s game. “This community has welcomed us since day one.”
Garrett, who played baseball for Central High School, where the stadium is named after his grandfather, is all about getting the West Side Boosters — a.k.a. the newly-formed Raiders — sliding into third. “Parate, Nico!” he yelled over to his 9-year-old son in Spanish on Thursday, encouraging him to stand up after a tough play.
Garrett, who was born in the U.S. Virgin Islands, is married to a Dominican woman, and the two maintain a bilingual household, which has come in useful on St. Paul’s West Side, which has been home to generations of Mexican-Americans.
“This is a very good group of families, and the kids are amazing,” said Paola Garrett, folding her lawn chair after Thursday’s game. “The kids are committed. And it’s bringing fun to the West Side. It’s not about winning or losing. It’s about teamwork, being respectful, listening to the coach.”
‘He doesn’t get mad’
Families said they appreciate his “gentle giant” approach. “James, he doesn’t get mad at anybody,” said Sofie, watching Garrett enter the ball field to offer some gentle words of advice to a player. “He’s going in there and talking to the pitcher. He’s a first-class act.”
Urban baseball has had a tough time recruiting young people for years. Founded in 1990, the storied organization that gave Minnesota Twins stand-out and National Baseball Hall of Fame inductee Joe Mauer his start — Midway Baseball — called it quits in 2023, though a new organization — Como Ball — has attempted to fill the vacuum.
A woman’s softball team, St. Paul Rookies Fastpitch, also signaled this year that low membership likely meant its end after 40 years.
Danny Franco, who has coached football on the West Side for 33 years, said football remains a huge draw on the West Side, as does cheerleading. Still, he remembered a time when the West Side Boosters hosted six 10U baseball teams at once, and an 18U team through a partnership with Humboldt High School.
That dwindled gradually, then disappeared altogether. “We struggled this year with our softball,” Franco said. “We did camps, but we didn’t get into a league.”
It takes more than one believer to turn things around.
Garrett said he found a bit of a kindred spirit this year in Jill Thurstin, an assistant coach who also organizes tackle football and flag football for the West Side Boosters. She said she foresees good things ahead, like the 9U team that formed this year under Franco’s son, Alexis Franco, 26. His 9U team played this season in a league based out of West St. Paul.
With T-ball and other in-house teams eventually feeding into traveling 9U teams, and traveling 9U teams feeding into 11U teams, there’s a chance the West Side Boosters — who once dominated state tournaments — could soon seed traveling teams for older kids, as well.
“That’s the plan,” said Thurstin, beaming after Thursday’s game. “The Boosters were huge for so many years. We’re back.”
A time of gradual rebuilding
Garrett, who moved to the West Side around 2020, began hosting free weekly “skills and drills” lessons at the El Rio Vista rec center last fall, and then built a team of ball players over the winter. All but one of the West Side Raiders are age 10 and under, not 11, putting them at a physical disadvantage within the MYAS/Gopher State Baseball League.
No matter. For underdogs, said Garrett, they’re holding their own. As they age into the 11U bracket, they’ll soon be seasoned veterans. Unstoppable, irrepressible giants, even.
“We will continue playing 11U travel baseball in the fall league and again next summer,” said Garrett, after losing to the Mustangs on Thursday. Tryouts are scheduled for Aug. 10 at 10 a.m.
Garrett, who can trace his maternal roots in St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood to the 1880s, is the grandson of James Griffin, who became the city’s first Black deputy police chief in the 1970s.
The James Griffin Stadium at Central High School and the St. Paul Police Department’s Grove Street headquarters — the James S. Griffin building — are both testaments to his grandfather’s legacy.
These days, Garrett is gradually building a legacy of his own. In recent years, he helped repurpose a vandalized car dealership into the new Springboard for the Arts headquarters on University Avenue. He also led the design of the $12 million Juxtaposition Arts campus in North Minneapolis.
He received the American Institute of Architects “Young Architects” award in 2019 and has served as an adjunct instructor in architecture at the University of Minnesota. He’s also been active in efforts related to situating housing and business development along public transit corridors, including serving on the Metropolitan Council’s “Livable Communities” committee.
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But it’s his love of baseball that has turned the most heads on Robie Street, and assistants like Thurstin have helped keep up the momentum.
“We really admire the way they coach and think they’re amazing,” said Krystle Dodd, who drove her son Cam into games and practices all season. “The community is wonderful.”
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