A Jackie Robinson Little League Champ is Homeless

Jaheim Benton appears on a Chicago Tribune trading card.

When Chicago’s Little League champions walked off their plane Monday at Midway Airport, they came home to a heroes’ welcome as throngs of well-wishers, news cameras and reporters followed their every step down the concourse.

A band met them with joyful music and a city celebrated them with a victory parade on Wednesday that marched 13 miles from their South Side park to Millennium Park off the shore of our great lake.

“They are not just Chicago’s team,” White Sox TV announcer Hawk Harrelson told the Millennium Park crowd of 10,000 revelers, including many Chicago politicians and other luminaries. “They are America’s team.”

Such a grand string of stirring, once-in-a-lifetime moments.

The cheers for the Jackie Robinson West All Stars are fresh memories now. Their games are over. So is the parade.

After all the talk of how these baseball players inspired a city and a nation, how they served as an example for other kids from neighborhoods in distress, they are home now, back to that same old place, sweet home, Chicago.

The ones who have a home, that is.

[ Commentary ]

On Friday, reporter Tina Sfondeles introduced the city to Jaheim Benton, a 12-year-old ballplayer for the Jackie Robinson West All Stars who scored a run in their U.S. Championship victory over Las Vegas. He crossed home plate five times during the team’s Little League World Series play.

Jaheim and his mother lost their apartment more than two months before the Little League World Series when her work hours for Catholic Charities were cut from 80 a week to 36, Sfondeles reported in a story for the Chicago Sun-Times.

Little Jaheim, who wears No. 8 on his team jersey, has been resting his head in the homes of friends as he and his mother, Devona Benton, and father, Frank Jackson — no longer able to afford $850 a month in rent — try to stay out of a homeless shelter.

“There were times where we combined our paychecks and still couldn’t make it,” his mom told the reporter. She says this is the first time she’s ever lost her home. “I’m trying to do the best I can and get us back together.”

Frank Jackson, a radiator repair man, traveled to Williamsport with Jaheim, as did many of the parents, their accommodations paid for by Major League ballplayers who covered the travel bills for the Little Leaguers — who hail from some of the more downtrodden parts of Chicago — so family could witness for themselves this very special moment in their children’s lives.

“I loved it. I didn’t want to leave,” Jackson said. “I couldn’t believe it was happening.”

When a family finds itself homeless for the first time, those very same words — “I can’t believe this is happening” — come to mind.

As unlikely as a National Little League Championship is to attain, finding your way out of homelessness may seem just as unreachable. But this dilemma, so desperate and sad on Thursday when the newspaper went to press with Jaheim’s story, brightened a bit on Friday morning.

After learning of the family’s predicament, the Leak family, proprietor of Leak & Sons Funeral Homes on the South Side, decided to help.

“I just felt that we needed to do something to help this family,” Spencer Leak Jr. told Fox News Chicago. “Jaheim has been such an inspiration, he along with JRW, have been such an inspiration to the Chicago area, the country and the world. And to wake up and hear that they are having problems finding a home and paying for a home, that just did not sit well with my family and we wanted to reach out and do something.”

The Leaks will pay one year’s rent for the family when they find a place to live.

Like other little boys, 12-year-old Jaheim Benton imagines a life playing pro baseball — for the Chicago White Sox, of course. Unlike most little boys, this shy seventh-grader from the South Side may well have the talent to get to the big leagues.

A few weeks ago, as the Jackie Robinson West Little Leaguers won the game that put the team into the World Series tournament — and Devona Benton’s son into an airplane for the first time in his life — she offered up her son’s achievement in a plea for those who perpetrate violence to stop.

“If ya’ll would put these guns down and let these kids grow, my son has made it somewhere, there’s other kids that need to progress,” she told Fox News Chicago.

So many firsts, so many one-and-only moments, in such a short time — riding in an airplane, scoring a game-winning run to win a championship, appearing on TV ... and losing your home.

“America’s team” from the South Side gave the country something to celebrate. Spencer Leak Jr. was the first to give back.

Who will be the first to lay down their guns? Who will be the first to bring more jobs? Who will be the first to give a damn now that there are no more celebratory parades for politicians to walk in? For these South Side boys and their neighborhoods, may there be more firsts in their lifetimes.

Update, Aug. 31: Offers pour in to help find a home for family of Little League champ - Chicago Sun-Times