NEW YORK (AP) — According to Darryl Strawberry, Major League Baseball should concentrate on nurturing and promoting the sport within urban areas so as to significantly increase the number of African American athletes.
“They have academies everywhere else, but they don’t have the attraction for what inner cities are all about,” Strawberry said Thursday at Citi Field prior to what the New York Mets marketed as their “Black Legacy Game” against the St. Louis Cardinals. “That’s where we played — me and Eric Davis, Chris Brown, all of us came from the inner city and inner city baseball was organized.”
Strawberry, Davis, and Brown all hail from the Los Angeles region and began their major league careers in 1983 and 1984.
“They don’t have them anymore. Those parks have been shut down. Now they’re used as soccer fields instead of being baseball fields,” Strawberry stated.
African American athletes made up 6.2% of the opening-day rosters this season—an increase from 6% last year but a decrease by 18% since 1991 when The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at Central Florida initiated their yearly report.
The MLB has tried to spark interest among African American high school students through the DREAM Series, organized alongside USA Baseball. This series started in 2017, and at that time, one of the participants was none other than Hunter Greene, who is now the star pitcher for the Cincinnati Reds.
Strawberry suggested that Major League Baseball needs to boost its marketing efforts to draw more Black athletes away from sports like basketball or football. His children, D.J., who scored over 1,000 points at the University of Maryland, and Jordan, with similar achievements at Mercer University, could have chosen those alternatives. During one visit, Jordan Strawberry joined his dad at Citi Field.
Young African-American children tend to shun baseball because it isn’t promoted as effectively as basketball,” Darryl Strawberry stated. “Basketball showcases its players, promotes its jerseys, and advertises sneakers which is what draws young people in.
My son Jordan is here with me. He spent his childhood playing basketball. He was also quite skilled as a baseball player. It makes me wish he had continued with baseball instead. Basketball has such an appealing market presence; it attracts many athletes naturally. Therefore, making the sport enticing could help bring more participants into the fold.
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