The recent arrest of Robert Sanfilippo reveals a great deal about travel baseball. Going forward, I will occasionally draw upon on the Sanfilippo story to illustrate some points about youth sports and youth baseball. Today I’m going to comment on one aspect of the Sanfilippo story that has not been reported on: Baseball Heaven.
Some Background
Robert Sanfilippo, (pictured here) was arrested on September 21, 2012 and charged with twenty counts of aggravated harassment and one count of stalking. He was the manager of the Long Island Vengance, a travel baseball team of ten and eleven year olds. Supposedly, he and John Reardon, another coach for another team, had a dispute during a tournament in May. As a result of that dispute, Sanfillippo is alleged to have purchased an untraceable phone and texted threats along with photos of the Reardon family while they were at and about their home. You can read all about the incident here.
If you think the Sanfilippo incident is an isolated, big city event, then think again. There are plenty of baseball crazies that might not rise to the level of charges against Sanfillipo, but they are not that far off. My novel, Saving Babe Ruth, inspired by true life events, has its share of these characters. If you want to experience baseball today, check out Saving Babe Ruth.
Baseball Heaven Sports Complex
Sanfilippo was arrested at Baseball Heaven — a large baseball complex of seven fields — supposedly during the course of a game. In a an article dated October, 14, 2012, the New York Post reported that the general manager of the Baseball Heaven, Frank Zitaglio, “refused comment on the story.”
Is it any wonder that Frank Zitaglio did not want to comment on the Sanfilippo incident? Why bring attention to his operation and jeopardize the flow of money to Baseball Heaven? The New York Post reported that parents pay anywhere from $2,000 to $4,000 for a summer of fun at Baseball Heaven. Now that is a tidy some of money. When large sums of money are involved in youth sports, it should raise some questions to the reporters at the New York Post. But they gave Baseball Heaven a pass by focusing on the Sanfilippo incident. Let’s see if we can help the cause by giving Baseball Heaven a thorough examination.
By and large, youth sports commentators recommend background checks for coaches. This makes sense. But I might be the first to argue that one should start first with checking the background of a league and/or a facility. You might discover all you need to know in that exercise.
Let’s start with an examination of Baseball Heaven’s website. If you want any information at all about Baseball Heaven, you have to go to the “About” section located here in the bottom left hand corner of the homepage. This section looks innocent enough, but one really can’t determine the structure of Baseball Heaven. Is it a company, partnership or sole proprietorship? It’s not clear.
You do learn that the outfit is most likely a for-profit enterprise because the site does not mention that it is a not-for-profit. A not-for-profit corporation will usually advertise itself as such. A for-profit enterprise does not advertise that fact though, in my opinion, it should be required to state it. This requirement should hold true for all organizations, not just ones that pertain to youth sports. Consumers have a right to know who they are dealing with. Consumers should not have to perform the technical legal research that I’m doing here. After all, I’m a lawyer by training. We shouldn’t expect everyone to have a legal background.
Okay, back to the Baseball Heaven website. As a footnote, the site does not mention if Baseball Heaven has a non-profit designation from the Internal Revenue Service such as a 501 (c) 3 designation like Babe Ruth, Little League or Dizzy Dean.
Moving on, I know that I can confirm my suspicions that Baseball Heaven is a for-profit enterprise by doing a search of the New York Department of State (DOS) records for Baseball Heaven. So I go to the DOS website and and search for entities named Baseball Heaven that are active. I find one in Suffolk County where Baseball Heaven operates. I discover that Baseball Heaven is a foreign (another state) ” business” corporation organized under the State of Delaware but doing business in New York. You can find that information here.
The fact that Baseball Heaven, Inc. is a foreign as opposed to a domestic corporation is interesting to me given the local nature of its business. Also, the fact that Baseball Heaven, Inc. was formed just recently in 2011 while the Baseball Heaven facilities have been around for years raises my curiosity. So I decide to do some more research on Baseball Heaven, Inc.
I discover that Baseball Heaven, Inc. was acquired by ADPT Corporation in August of 2011. You can read that announcement here. Now who or what is ADPT?
It doesn’t matter because in October 0f 2011, ADPT announced that it had changed its name from ADPT Corporation to Steel Excel Inc. You can read that announcement here. Now my curiosity has gotten the best of me. I love a good shell game!
Steel Excel Inc.
So let’s go to the website of Steel Excel Inc. located here (on 9/11/13, I was informed informed that the site, steelexcel.com, has malware and so this link has been deleted) and see what this company is all about. It looks innocent enough. The website homepage says twice that the company is involved with “sports, entertainment, education and lifestyle.” I get the message, but mentioning it twice is overkill. This makes me want to look under the hood.
If one goes to the “Investors” section of the homepage and reads the fine print there, one learns that the company totally changed directions and purchased a number of oil and gas exploration concerns starting at the end of 2011 and throughout 2012.
So why isn’t Steel’s operations in the oil and gas exploration stated on the homepage of its website? Is oil and gas exploration a new “lifestyle” venture? Just for fun, insert the word “oil” or “gas” in the search section of the website and you come up with nothing. I have to ask myself: What are they hiding and why?
Well, let’s explore one theory by looking at the oil and gas acquisitions. In December 2011, Steel Excel Inc. announced that it has acquired the business and assets of Rogue Pressure Services, LLC, a leader in the oilfield service industry located primarily in Williston, North Dakota and Eagle Ford, Texas. You can read about that here. On February 9, 2012, Steel Excel Inc. acquired the business and assets of Eagle Well Services, Inc., which after the transaction operated as Well Services Ltd., a leader in the oilfield service industry serving customers in the Bakken basin of North Dakota and Montana. You can read about that here. On May 31, 2012, Steel Excel Inc. completed the acquisition of SWH, Inc., the parent company of Sun Well Service, Inc. and a subsidiary of BNS Holding, Inc. Sun Well is a provider of premium well services to oil and gas exploration and production companies operating in the Williston Basin in North Dakota and Montana. You can read about that here.
What is key here is that at least one of its acquisitions, Rogue Pressure Services, LLC, performs highly controversial hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” techniques in searching for energy. You can see that the Steel Excel, Inc. as a whole is involved in hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” here.
Conclusion
Let’s summarize the findings. Baseball Heaven is being supported by or is supporting (either directly or indirectly) Steel Excel, an oil and gas exploration company that uses fracking techniques. Now why keep Steel Excel’s interest in Baseball Heaven off the Baseball Heaven website? Maybe it’s because fracking is a hot topic in Long Island. You can read about that controversy here. Maybe some people wouldn’t want to play baseball with an outfit that is sponsored by or is sponsoring oil and gas exploration that uses fracking because of the health hazards the technique poses. Maybe Baseball Heaven doesn’t want anti-fracking protesters around its complex. It’s probably a combination of the above and more.
In the end, I think we can safely say that Baseball Heaven doesn’t want us to know about their oil and gas business. And now that we do know, Baseball Heaven is counting on patrons to look the other way so as to keep the money flowing without interruption as parents pay exorbitant sums money to support its operations.
There is a lesson to be learned here. Parents need investigate the league or the facility of choice. I have found youth baseball outfits and leagues that do not accurately represent what they are and who is financing them on their websites. It is time for state attorney generals to investigate these outfits; it is time for state legislatures to require them to accurately post their structure and the nature of their operations on their websites.
Until that happens, parents should aim to participate in sports programs that are (1) not-for-profit corporations and (2) have been given a non profit designation by the Internal Revenue Service under 501 (c) 3 or the like. It’s important that organizations have both designations. I know of highly questionable not-for-profit corporations that do not carry the 501 (c) 3 designation.
Like I said in one of my tweets, youth sports are being taken over by business interests. Don’t sell your son and daughter’s childhood to these interests. Teach your children the life lesson of withdrawing from something you don’t support. It’s time to take our youth sports programs back from the profiteers and promoters. It all starts with you, the parent. If we do nothing as parents, we will rediscover the truism that while we may or may not get what we want in pursuing youth sports, we will almost certainly get what we deserve. We discussed that truism just last week here.
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