PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. – Every once in a while Chris Archer will see a young man he met a ways back, and now that young man’s shoulders have broadened, his voice has deepened, and he’s carrying himself like he knows where he’s headed. They’d shaken hands in a high school gym or in the library, somewhere like that. Could’ve been a ball field, where he may have been holding a donated glove and wearing donated cleats, or in a shelter, where the meals were warm and mom was getting herself sorted out.

It’s hard to remember all the names, even the faces. There’ve been so many now. But there’ll be something in the eye contact, something in the smile, something in the approach that triggers the memory of a hello, a story, a question about how a kid is supposed to get from here to there when it seems so far away.

Just 28 and still pondering some here-to-there objectives of his own, Archer has few new answers beyond an extended hand and an encouraging word. Too many children are homeless. Too many are hungry. Too many must wonder if anyone cares, and maybe along comes Chris Archer who looks like them and sounds like them and he brings a message of strength and courage and hope, and maybe that message becomes believable in spite of the daily trudge, and what the hell it’s worth a shot, right?

On a rainy morning here, Archer was busy working his way back from a 19-loss season. The season looked worse than it was, which isn’t to say it was at all good. He said chasing perfection had become counterproductive, that if there was anything he’d learned from a trying first half and such maddening inconsistencies, it was, “That being Chris Archer is plenty good enough.” He’d take comfort in a third consecutive season of at least 32 starts, of another year of 200 innings, of the lessons of simplicity and strike-throwing and living with wherever the ball landed after he’d let it go. It stunk losing all those games — the Tampa Bay Rays lost 23 after he’d been handed the ball — and plenty of it was his fault and some wasn’t, but anyway that’s why baseball lets a guy start over every year.

But I hadn’t driven through the rain for three hours to solve Archer’s fastball command. I’d assumed that’d work itself out.

“I’ve seen some things,” he said. “Youth homelessness, I mean, it’s never their fault.”

Chris Archer’s foundation, Archway, aims to help children and empower youth. (Getty Images) More

He has his own foundation that aims to help children, to lead them beyond their own circumstances. He calls it Archway. He has been inspired recently by the work of another foundation in the Tampa and St. Petersburg area, that called Starting Right, Now. Again, it’s about homelessness. About driving past an elementary schoolyard, a park, a Little League field, a street corner and wondering, Who’s looking out for them? If today brings the threat to frighten us all, what must it look like to a 10-year-old? What will tomorrow bear? Where will that 10-year-old find kindness?

“Fortunately,” Archer said, “that’s one good thing about spending time with the youth — they have such innocence. And ignorance to those things. It inspires me. At the end of the day, there’s still a lot that we control. That’s in our hands. That can make a difference in what happens to their life. They’re oblivious to what’s going on. They just live. It’s encouraging. It’s inspiring.

“I don’t want to be [afraid for them.] I don’t want to be. The situation now is just temporary. By the time they’re teenagers it could be a completely different landscape. I just really think present moment when I’m with them. I haven’t thought much beyond it. It’s hard to answer if I’m fearful for their future. It’s going to be our future too. I mean we’re gonna be living it.”

He is by nature optimistic. He does believe that he will win every fifth day. He does believe in today, along with tomorrow. He does believe he can help with his time and money and compassion, his empathy, and he is willingly a role model, there for anyone who also chooses to believe. He believes in all the little boys and girls who have started a little behind, and in the massive project that is setting them all on a better path. And, it’s funny, in the midst of those giant ideas that he’d hoped could solve giant problems, he’d been reminded that sometimes less is plenty.

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