ATLANTA — There isn’t a day you won’t find a baseball in 12-year-old Jailen Duboise’s hand.
Something about it, feels like home.
“I just line up here on the curb and throw," he said. His baseball helps transform the parking lot outside his family’s apartment on Cleveland Avenue. It becomes his ballfield and a place to dream.
“I throw different pitches and that helps me get better," he said.
Pitching carries him away from worries and challenges around him. When we asked him how he feels when he’s out there playing ball he answered, “I feel like myself.”
“It makes me feel like I’ve found what I really love to do," he added.
Baseball is giving Jailen a dream to pursue and people to help him get there, like CJ Stewart.
“I remember the first time I watched you play in the little league team,” Stewart told him over a round of catch. “You looked like a major league pitcher.”
That’s saying a lot from someone in Stewart who’s scouted and developed pros. He came back to his home city of Atlanta to help other kids like him.
“I would go outside and practice very much like Jailen," Stewart said. “I had a stick and rocks and I’d throw them up in the air and hit them.”
Stewart grew up in Bankhead. He graduated from Westlake High School then went on to play baseball at Georgia State University. Then he fulfilled his childhood dream and played within the Chicago Cubs organization.
He knows what it takes.
“Jailen DuBoise can play major league baseball,” Stewart said. “He has some barriers in his face that can make that a challenge. We see them and then create opportunities for him to overcome those barriers.”
It’s what CJ and Kellie Stewart’s organization has been doing for 16 years in Atlanta.
“LEAD Center for Youth and the work we do is about giving Black boys and girls in the city of Atlanta the permission to dream," Kellie Stewart said.
She added, “Our mission is to use these sports to help them overcome what we call the three curve balls that threaten their success: Crime, poverty and racism.”
LEAD Ambassadors have a baseball program for teenage boys and a tennis program for teenage girls.
CJ Stewart talked about the reality of what a kid like Jailen faces everyday living in an area with high crime.
“He tunes it out so much to the point I’m afraid it becomes normalized," he said. “We have a lot of crime in the city of Atlanta because we have a lot of poverty.”
Stewart points to a statistic that Atlanta is No. 1 in American for income inequality based on race.
Kellie Stewart shared another statistic about the challenges: “If you are born into poverty in the city of Atlanta, you have a 4% chance of making it out.”
“You have to have people in your life who see greatness in you,” CJ Stewart said. “You can’t have fun without funding, and you need people who have affluence and influence to be able to help you. That’s why I do what I do.”
It is one of so many reasons Jailen’s parents are grateful for LEAD.
His dad Lario Duboise says the mentorship, coaching, and sport teaches him many life skills.
”It teaches him a lot of discipline," Lario said. “It keeps his mind focused on what he needs to do more than what’s going on out here on the street.”
Jailen’s mom Sonya says she sees her son is smart, focused, and determined. Still, there are lot of things happening around him that keep her up at night.
“The gangs the shootings, the violence going on out here," she said. “Baseball is a motivation for him.”
When you see Jailen throw, you are amazed that being on a baseball team is new. There was no little league or formal coaching until now. He played for the first time on his middle school team, a team made possible by LEAD’s partnership with Atlanta Public Schools.
Jailen may only be getting started in his formal training, but his mom says his strength has always been there. He was 1-year-old when he threw a toy car, and it shattered the TV.
“He’s been throwing ever since," she laughed.
Now, when he plays catch with his dad, his throws sting his dad’s hands.
Jailen’s family and neighbors see him putting in the work and are cheering him on.
“He is a great kid and I know he can do great things,” his mom said.
CJ Stewart knows Jailen’s journey will speak to many. “
I just know that there are some kids out there who are watching you and even when you make it all the way to the big leagues, which I believe you will," Stewart told Jailen. “You are going to be an inspiration, so keep up the good work.”