He chose camping—baseball camping, that is.

For 15 years now, Samuels and his company, South Bay Baseball, have conducted youth baseball camps at neighborhood parks and schools throughout Santa Clara Valley.

This week's Camp With The Pros, a day camp at the Union Little League field in southwest San Jose, is Samuels' final camp offering this summer. It concludes on Aug. 12.

Combining offensive and defensive skill-building drills with contests and games, Samuels and his camp instructors strive to help youngsters learn more about baseball in a low-key atmosphere. "We try to make it fun," Samuels explained at the close of last week's camp at River Glen Park in San Jose. "We want all of the kids to learn and take home some fundamentals."

Various small-group instruction and activities take up more than half of the typical camp day, with the last hour dedicated to games.

Typically, parents drop off their children at the camp and return "during the final hour or so to watch some of the game," Samuels said.

About 20 boys ages 8-13 participated in last week's camp in Willow Glen, "a smaller number of campers than usual, but it's a good experience for all of us," said Samuels, who was drafted by the Houston Astros in the 10th round of the 1983 draft out of Santa Clara University and played in the big leagues with the San Francisco Giants in 1988 and the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1989.

"A nice thing about a smaller camp is it's easy for me to learn everybody's names, and it becomes more personal," said Samuels, who, at 6-foot-5, is looked up to by all of the campers.

Samuels, who "never attended a baseball instructional camp" while playing in the Almaden Little League during the mid-1970s or when starring at Branham High School, has been part of a movement "in the past 20 years or so." Samuels' South Bay Baseball, as well as local junior colleges and universities, have provided some of "the many summer camp opportunities for kids now—in just about every sport imaginable and in academic areas, too," he said.

Samuels, who also conducts pre-season camps in February and specific hitting and pitching classes in the winter, received his first exposure to instructional camps from former Santa Clara University teammate Mark Cummins, the varsity coach at Morgan Hill's Live Oak High.

"Mark had been doing camps for a while," Samuels recalled. "After the New York Mets released me in 1990, I thought helping kids learn about baseball was something I wanted to do."

When Samuels directed his first camp in 1991, his oldest son, Zach, was just 4 years old, and son Greg was a newborn. Last week at River Glen, one of the instructors was recent Leigh graduate Zach Samuels, who will continue his baseball career at De Anza College.

Also helping at the camp was Ryan Michael, Leigh's team MVP in 2004, who red-shirted this past spring while attending De Anza. In 2006, Michael will be one of 12 new members of the baseball program at Cornell University.

"It's great to see kids stick with the game of baseball," the elder Samuels noted. "Too many kids are quitting playing the game—for many different reasons—at age 13."