VERO BEACH, Fla. -- As the Hank Aaron Invitational game was being played last year at Truist Park in Atlanta, Enoch Carlisle watched from home in Nashville, Tenn.

“I have to be there,” he thought to himself.

Carlisle’s relentless pursuit to get invited to the Hank Aaron Invitational ultimately led him to the MLB ID Tour, a tour that goes to 18 different cities to “discover baseball talent among underexposed groups, particularly African American and Latino athletes, in grades 8-9.” He participated at the event in Nashville on April 23.

Not long after participating in the tour, his father got a call from MLB.

Carlisle earned an invite to the Hank Aaron Invitational.

“My dad was in the car crying,” Carlisle said. “He knew how special it was, how important it was to me.”

The Hank Aaron Invitational is an annual youth-oriented, on-field diversity initiative that aims to get high school-age players with diverse backgrounds to the next levels of the game.

Isaiah Hearn, Ceddric Henderson and Kingston Kela also went through the ID tour to get invited to the Hank Aaron Invitational for the first time. Among the people who have seen players go from the ID tour to the Hank Aaron Invitational is former New York Mets and Chicago White Sox manager Jerry Manuel.

Manuel described the ID tour as a “vehicle for finding talent,” and it’s “similar to bringing back the old school scouting days.”

“It’s rewarding to see that part of it is working for us and that it could work for baseball,” Manuel said. “So I think that’s tremendously exciting. We’ve had kids that come here and say, ‘The only thing I want is to come back,’ and they go after it in that manner. They bring the level of play of everybody up when they do that. ... That’s a beautiful thing.”

Hearn, who is from Los Angeles, played in the San Bernardino, Calif., ID tour event on March 26. Through Hearn’s first three days at the Hank Aaron Invitational, he said he realized not everyone has taken the same path to get to where they are today.

“I’ve learned that everybody has their own path,” Hearn said. “It’s not a certain set-in-stone path that everybody has to take to make it to where they want to be. Everybody has their own journey.”

Kela also participated in the San Bernardino ID tour. Kela has played for Howie Kendrick’s team at the Hank Aaron Invitational.

“Hustle on and off the field always,” Kela said of his biggest takeaway playing for Kendrick. “That’s how you play. You always hustle everything out and do everything hard.”

Kendrick was a 15-year big leaguer and played for four teams. He won an NLCS MVP with the Washington Nationals in 2019, the year they won the World Series in seven games against the Houston Astros.

Kendrick is in his first year as a coach at the Hank Aaron Invitational.

“For these guys to be around former big leaguers and some of the coaches that are still involved in baseball, to get that type of instruction one on one, that’s time people would pay for,” Kendrick said. “There are so many guys that I know that would give their right arm to be here and to be able to be in this environment and to pick up this information.”

Kendrick played for the Los Angeles Angels for nine seasons and had Mike Scioscia as his manager during his time with the team. Scioscia isn’t surprised to see Kendrick back as a coach and sharing his knowledge with kids.

“Even when he was young, he was always a student of the game and he picked up things very quickly,” Scioscia said. “Turned himself into an outstanding ballplayer. He had great physical ability but he worked hard at it.”

Henderson played at the ID tour in Oakland on March 25. Of the coaches he’s gotten to work with, Henderson said one coach he’s really learned from is Eric Davis.

Davis was an outfielder in the big leagues for 17 years and played for six teams. He spent nine years with the Cincinnati Reds and was a two-time All-Star, two-time Silver Slugger, three-time Gold Glover and won a World Series in 1990 with the Reds. Davis had eight seasons where he hit at least 20 home runs, and he finished in the top 10 in MVP voting two times.

“Just being more direct with my routes and slowing myself down in the outfield and just learning how to play the outfield in general,” Henderson said of what Davis has taught him.

For Kendrick, the opportunity to give back to the game is gratifying. He played with players like Torii Hunter, Albert Pujols and Mike Trout. Now he’s hoping to pass the information he learned from them to kids like Carlisle, Hearn, Henderson and Kela.

“The information we receive, it’s not just for us to hold on to,” Kendrick said. “It’s to pass it on to the next generation of guys, and hopefully they use it and it helps them in their journey, and then they turn around and give it to the next guy, so it’s just a constant cycle of players giving back because people have done it for them.”