"Personally, I was a little exhausted with the marches, the vigils, the rallies, the teddy bear memorials and the yellow crime-scene tape," said Ford, 46, who has lived in Strawberry Mansion all his life.
"I wanted to give these kids a chance to have what Itch and me and all the neighborhood guys in their 40s that we recruited as coaches have - lifelong friendships from playing baseball and basketball with each other and against each other for more than 30 years."
On May 4, a week after the fliers went out, 140 kids showed up to play youth baseball in Strawberry Mansion for the first time in decades on a diamond-in-the-rough field that is a Fairmount Park oasis in a neighborhood of boarded-up houses and bullet-riddled streets.
"Eighty percent of the phone calls I got came from single parents who wanted their kids to be safe and happy this summer," Ford said.
Most of the kids showed up without gloves, without bats, without anything except heart.
"I came out that first day," Ford said. "I looked at this field. I thought, 'The kids are here now. We can't let them down. What the hell am I going to do?' "
He called the Philadelphia Phillies, who gave all the kids gloves, Phillies Rookie League T-shirts and caps, a pitching machine, bats, balls and bases.
"We consider this to be like Citizens Bank Park compared to what it was 40 days ago," Ford said earlier this week while he watched, announced and paternally embraced a late-afternoon game between two teams of 8-to-12-year-olds.
"There was a guy down here for years, Pop, the park guard. Pop was a father to a lot of us who didn't have fathers - like me. He took us on camping trips in the mountains. Camping trips! There were no camping trips in the 'hood, but Pop found a way to get us to the mountains.
