MLB Needs to Help Young Black Kids Love Baseball Again

By Zachary W. Carter | New York Amsterdam News | Word In Black (WIB) – I read with dismay an article entitled “Harlem Little League faces steep registration decline as 35th season looms,” in the Amsterdam News, both because of the evident loss of interest of Black kids in baseball and the lost opportunity for Black kids to play baseball.  I am a native Washingtonian. I was born three years after Jackie Robinson integrated the major leagues and with just enough time to fall in love with the Washington Senators, the most hapless professional baseball franchise in the history of the sport. The Senators’ last World Series Championship was 1929. When Yankees or Mets fans whine about not having won a championship in the last 10 years, I can only chuckle (or cry). There was not much point in checking the Major League Baseball standings when I was a kid — for the better part of every season, the Senators were dead last.& But the beauty of baseball is that there is an almost fanatical obsession with the statistical accomplishments of individual ballplayers. Consequently, if your team is losing, you can still follow the exploits of your favorite individual players.&...