How a napkin sketch helped keep America’s pastime alive for youth in West Charlotte
Jeff Schaefer’s legacy was charted on a napkin over a cocktail at The Ballantyne.
He was with a friend who asked Schaefer a simple question: What’s your end goal?
The former MLB player from 1989-1994 wanted to control a baseball complex. Schaefer said if you controlled a facility, then you controlled its environment and everything moving forward. So, the pair began to scratch the idea on a napkin. Who would be involved? What would $300,000 do? Would that be sufficient to give a dusty, overgrown field from 1954 a facelift? And, above anything, would it be enough to make an increasingly inaccessible sport accessible?
Schaefer remembers a time when he would ride his bike to a baseball field, where he and a bunch of guys would play. There weren’t thoughts about the economics of the game because there didn’t have to be.
Now, youth sports have become a booming business with select teams and specialized coaching — and where everything from leasing a field, turning the lights on and playing in tournaments costs money. And for low-income baseball players, the cost often means not playing at all. Schaefer wanted to change that to the way things were before.
“Let’s build a baseball complex so guys can play baseball,” Schaefer said. “Now, this was built with a purpose of the upward mobility of the community and being stewards of the game.”
The Knothole Foundation was born in 2018 and was co-founded by Schaefer and Madden Morris, a native of Laurens, South Carolina, who played three years in MLB. Since then, the non-profit in West Charlotte has worked to help underserved youth both athletically and academically. It has served around 2,000 players and had a direct economic impact of $9 million. Knothole features reading literacy programs, career preparedness courses and technology/STEM initiatives. The foundation also offers workshops to help with academic progress, standardized testing, college visits and finances.
The mission inspired the name.
Through the mid-20th century, many baseball fields were surrounded by wooden fences. Young fans would often look through the gaps in the fence, referred to as knotholes, to sneak glimpses of the game they couldn’t afford to play.
“(They were) on the outside looking in,” Madden said.
After 14 years of playing baseball in the minors and majors — including the Triple A Charlotte Knights in 1993 — Schaefer noticed a troubling shift in the way the game was being played. What used to be a recreational, community-based league sponsored by local stores turned into a money grab, barring many lower-income kids located in the West Charlotte area from playing.
Schaefer’s initial idea was a for-profit baseball league, but kids were still getting boxed out of playing. Parents approached the coach often, saying, “We would love to play here, but we can’t afford it.”
“Knowing where I came from and my situation growing up, if I would of heard that, it would have devastated me,” Schaefer said of his youth in Patchogue, New York.
So, he let them play. Even though his circumstances improved, Schaefer will never forget his single mother working to provide for him, which led him to change the organization into a non-profit.
As a Black man, Madden had a more specific mission — he wanted more people who look like him to play baseball. The percentage of Black players in the majors has continued to decline. The 2024 Opening Day lists only featured 59 Black players out of 945, which is roughly 6.2%. In 1981, the percentage of Black players in MLB was 18.7%. The percentage is even lower in college. The low numbers motivated Madden to give back.
“One of the initiatives we have is to make sure that we reintroduce the game to kids and hope they understand the value of the game to the community,” Madden said. “Since we have all this space here, it kind of brings all the kids together, keep them out of trouble (and) gives them a safe place to play and learn.”
And with their idea established, Madden and Schaefer continued to build on the land off Tuckaseegee Road in West Charlotte.
Pitcher Sam Johnson was there for it all. His dad discovered the place in 2019, when the Knothole Foundation was still practicing in a warehouse and Johnson was heading into the ninth grade. By 2020, the field had opened and Johnson watched it expand from there.
What started as one field turned into three. Stadium lights were added. A press box was built, including room for classes.
As the place grew, so did Johnson, especially under the tutelage of Schaefer. Johnson has spent more time at Knothole than anywhere else.
“Having a coach like Schaef is completely different than most other travel ball teams because it’s not like they’re in it to just have a bunch of teams and get a bunch of money from youth baseball,” Johnson said. “Shaef taught me more about life than baseball.”
Now heading into his junior season at North Carolina Wesleyan, Johnson carries those lessons with him to the college’s baseball team. Schaefer taught him how to be calm. Johnson remembers how important Schaefer’s visits to the mound were for him, the ones where the coach told him he believed in him. Johnson learned to fail at Knothole and how to succeed.
He thinks that baseball is more similar to life than any other sport. Schaefer has become an inspiration for him.
“I’ve tried to embody him as a coach and player,” Johnson said.
Dillon Lewis — a Black outfielder from Queens University who now plays in the minor leagues — had a similar experience. He joined the Knothole Foundation after moving from Tampa, Florida in 2020. Now, he motivates younger kids coming through as someone who is living out their baseball dreams.
“Just for people to see me and my teammates as younger kids, I know that’s something that would have had a lasting impact on me just because you always want to spot somebody that’s doing it at a higher level just to kind of put the image in your head that it can be done,” Lewis said.
But these stories are just the beginning, according to Schaefer. He wants to build something that lasts, a place that will keep America’s pastime alive while giving kids the opportunities they may not have otherwise.
“My legacy is not going to be in the Hall of Fame,” Schaefer said. “My legacy is going to be what I left behind. And at some point, Jeff Schaefer means nothing to this place because we have a succession to it, but to know that we change lives along the way, it’s incredible. We’ve impacted a lot of lives.”
This story was originally published July 18, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
