Batting practice. Throwing drills. Conditioning.

For Oak Park's Caleb Fields, many of the activities today are the same as during his two-year pro career as a minor leaguer with the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Only today, Fields is organizing the workouts instead of just participating in them.

When Fields was released by the Pirates in the spring of 2009, he returned to his hometown and co-founded Legacy Sports Camp.

Over its year-and-a-half life, the camp has evolved to include programs with the Park District of Oak Park and neighborhood schools. Legacy teaches not just baseball but also softball and basketball, and offers general sports camps.

The idea is to teach the basics to kids too young for intense competition and private lessons.

"I like teaching basic fundamentals and gradually building the basics for a lot of these kids," Fields says. "I think we did fill a void. There's not anything like us in Oak Park."

According to the Fenwick High School graduate, Oak Park parents are proving receptive to a program that focuses on both instruction and sportsmanship.

"After they saw the product that Legacy was putting out, they saw that we were doing something different - in that unlike a 45- or 50-year-old telling a kid what to do, we had young guys with good experience yet who also are role models.

"We talk about sportsmanship, confidence, those types of ideas. I think Oak Park is a town that values that stuff. Oak Park's a very athletic town but also a town that has good families, and I think they've taken to it because of that."

For Fields, the business represents a way to stay connected to the game of baseball, a sport he excelled in at both Fenwick and Northwestern University, leading the Pirates to draft him in 2007.

Although, Fields said, when he was released in '09 he didn't mind some time away from the game. He had a frustrating two seasons with the Pirates where he received only 204 at-bats in 58 games (he hit .230 with two homers and 20 RBIs).

"When I got released I was not fed up with baseball, but I was ready to be done with it-the grind and all of that and being away from home," he said. "It's just a tough life. It really is, so I was ready to turn my competitive edge in another direction at that point. Unlike people who never give it up, I think I walked away a little easier."

Returning to Oak Park last year and starting Legacy, Fields drew on a network of sports contacts he had cultivated during his own childhood playing days in the village-former coaches and people he had played sports with.

Fields attended Ascension grade school in Oak Park before going to Fenwick, and his childhood friend and Legacy co-founder, OPRF graduate Dan Kane, was coaching basketball at St. Giles, so the pair had plenty of contacts in Catholic circles.

(Kane is Legacy's sole full-time employee, as Fields has a day job in logistics for a freight company in the north suburbs and often returns to Oak Park for evening camps.)

"I'm not going to say it was easy to get the word out, but I'd say it was beneficial knowing those guys," Fields said of his sports network.

And when it came to finding instructors, Fields turned to a friend from Northwestern's softball team, Erin Dyer, to run the camp's softball programs. Tim Dennehy, an OPRF graduate and former New York Yankees minor league pitcher, also has helped out with camps.

Being in a position to form the character of those around him is in some ways a continuation for Fields, who, as one of the elder statesmen on his Pirates teams was looked up to by teammates.

"I was considered mature-I had been to college," he said. "I was kind of the coach on the field, not necessarily fundamentally but life-wise. A lot of those kids were coming from the DR [Dominican Republic] or high school and had never been away from home, so I got a reputation of being more mature."

Fields said his temperament and ability to work with younger players led the Pirates to think he would be a good part of their player development operation, and after he was released he was offered a position with the organization as an East Coast scout.

But Fields decided the job would entail the travel and being away from home that he dreaded as a minor leaguer-"except minus the playing baseball."

So, instead it was back to his roots of Oak Park and starting Legacy.

Fields says he is in talks with Riverside and other suburbs about bringing camps there.

"But our main priority is Oak Park and giving back to Oak Park, because that's where we were made," he says, adding that Legacy is sponsoring a team in Oak Park Youth Baseball's Bronco League.

"It's kind of a win-win for me, having your own company at 24 years old and a business partner that you grew up with and working with little kids."