Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
March 01, 2006
Baseball In the Inner City

Major League Baseball is taking concrete steps to bring inner city children back to the game.

Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig cut the ceremonial ribbon Tuesday on the league's first Urban Youth Academy, aimed at increasing interest in the sport among inner-city children.

For all the criticism I've given Bud Selig over the years, he's been the best commissioner ever in terms of trying to diversify call areas of the game. And Arte Moreno steps to the plate again:

"The first step is to get these kids interested in baseball, and the next step is getting them to college," said Moreno, who pledged $500,000 in scholarship money over the next five years to academy participants.

I suspect this is just the first of many such centers. Even if they don't change the demographics of baseball players, they'll help produce new fans, which is good for the long term health of the game.

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Posted by David Pinto at 08:52 AM | Demographics | TrackBack (0)
Comments

Baseball would be very very wise to try to develop interest and financing for baseball at the collegiate level.

As most who've played or followed college ball know, college baseball players rarely get full scholarships, much less room and board. This hurts MLB for two reasons:

1) a young man with skills in both baseball and football is far more likely to delevope their football skills because of a probable free ride at college if he's even a marginal football player. While the high school baseball stars make more by signing directly with a team, if you weren't drafted in the high rounds, you will likely get little to no financial compensation for your baseball playing, and no free education.

2) Mostly as a result of the college football system, football players drafted are far more prepared for playing the game than are baseball players. When they draft a young high schooler, espicially a pitcher, a Major League Team is putting up a lot of money for a very chancy proposition. If MLB were to help develop major college baseball, it would provide low cost development for promising young players and would reduce risk for the professional teams.

Posted by: pawnking at March 1, 2006 09:08 AM
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