Grambling Excited For Its First Baseball Urban Invitational

Image via Wikipedia

By Alden Gonzalez / MLB.com

James Cooper isn't even 30 years old, and he has only been the head baseball coach at Grambling State University for one full season. But he has already experienced some of the difficulties that come with trying to recruit the best baseball talent to a small college.

Twice he has seen an athlete essentially commit to his program, only to be spurned. One of those players went instead to Louisiana State, which guaranteed the player a walk-on spot.

And Cooper has seen potential recruits turn down baseball for basketball and football elsewhere. That has happened at least four times. CONTINUE....

HANK AARON SAYS BASEBALL WILL BOUNCE BACK

Baseball's former home run king "Hammerin'" Hank Aaron says he has no opinion on whether or not Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens deserve to be in the Hall of Fame, but he firmly believes that the sport will eventually move past the current Steroids Era.

"I think baseball is trying to clean up its act," Aaron said, sitting in the Atlanta Braves' dugout during batting practice Tuesday. "It's unfortunate for baseball, but baseball has been through some tough times. It went through the White Sox scandal and survived. It went through a lot of things and survived. It's going to survive this, too."

Aaron, in the ATL for Braves executive meetings, said he tuned in to watch Clemens testify before Congress last week and deny using human growth hormone as alleged by his former trainer. Aaron says it was good that the testimony took place before the regular season gets underway.

"I'm glad it happened, and I'm glad it happened before spring training, before the season started," Aaron said. "We can get it over and done with. You'll see. When the season starts, we'll again be drawing fans. People will come out to watch these kids play."

The former Braves slugger declined to say whether he found Clemens' testimony believable, taking the same tact he consistently followed when similar charges were leveled against Barry Bonds, the guy who broke the Hammer's home run record last season.

"Only Roger can answer to that," Aaron said. "I can't answer to that. I can't say what happened."

UPI VIDEO NEWS 02.14.08

Obama wins three more primaries.

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama is now the winner of eight consecutive nominating contests. That's after he swept the Mid-Atlantic primaries yesterday, winning Maryland, Virginia and Washington, DC. The Illinois senator's success has reportedly put him ahead of his rival, Senator Hillary Clinton in the number of delegates earned. Obama apparently has 1,215 delegates and Clinton has 1,190. A candidate must receive 2,025 delegates to clinch the Democratic nomination.

And Republican White House hopeful John McCain has beat out former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee in all three of yesterday's GOP primaries. The former governor is vowing to stay in the race, pledging to be a solid, conservative, pro-life candidate as an alternative to McCain.

A man who's suspected in some of the deadliest terror attacks around the world and is now dead. Imad Mughniyeh reportedly died in an explosion in Syria earlier today. Mughniyeh was a Hezbollah commander who was considered to be a role model for Osama bin Laden. Hezbollah is blaming Israel for the man's death, but Israeli officials are denying involvement. Mughniyeh was suspected in the 1983 bombing on the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon and the 1985 hijacking of TWA flight 847.

Pro-baseball pitcher Roger Clemens is facing his accusers today at a congressional panel who've accused him of using steroids. That panel is examining performance-enhancing drug-use in baseball. Clemens' former trainer, Brian McNamee will be there along with Charlie Scheeler, an investigator for that eye-opening report that alleged dozens of players had used the drugs. McNamee says he injected Clemens with performance enhancers.

THE MITCHELL REPORT

Report