“What’s really important for young kids is to see people that look like them,” said Jean Batrus, executive director of the Youth Development Foundation, a collective effort by MLB and the MLB Players Association. In May, MLB signed on to help support an event sponsored by Tyson Foods, which brought in some 10,000 youths from Montgomery and surrounding areas, according to company spokesman Derek Burleson. Michael Coker, a former baseball player at Edward Waters College, started the Black College World Series in 2021. “If things want to be done about it you’ve got to bring it back to this generation and what it’s going take to advance it,” he added. “Fifty years ago, baseball was played in cul-de-sacs and streets and parks and now it’s a lot more kids are inside and baseball is more about taking your kid to private lessons and who has the best bat and who is on the best team,” Bell said. “If a kid can play football or he can play basketball, they look at that as a quicker avenue to stardom.” “Baseball probably will give you more longevity than some of the other sports, but because it’s not that instantaneous success in making to the big leagues, I think, is what holds them back a little bit,” Smith said. That includes high school phenoms-to-NBA stars like LeBron James and the late Kobe Bryant. Smith, who did not attend an HBCU, thinks part of the decline is kids seeing players having more rapid success in the NBA and NFL, instead of having to climb through the minor leagues. Only 8.4% of Black children aged 6-12 played baseball regularly, according to a 2020 report from the Sports & Fitness Industry Association.
Over the long term, it’s also about generating interest and chances for kids like the thousands brought out to watch the Black College World Series games.
The process of addressing that issue, to him, starts with getting minor league baseball opportunities for one player at a time, not expecting wholesale increases overnight.
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