NEW YORK (AP) — Darryl Strawberry says Major League Baseball needs to focus on developing and marketing the game within the inner cities in order for the percentage of Black players to rise substantially.
“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 grew up in the Los Angeles area and made big league debuts in 1983 and 1984.
“They don’t have those anymore. Those parks are closed down. Those parks are soccer fields. They’re not baseball fields anymore,” Strawberry said.
Black players comprised 6.2% of the opening-day rosters this season — up from 6% last season and down 18% from 1991, the first year The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at Central Florida conducted its annual study.
MLB has attempted to generate interest among Black high schoolers with the DREAM Series, which it runs in conjunction with USA Baseball. The Series began in 2017, when one of the high schoolers in attendance was current Cincinnati Reds ace Hunter Greene.
Strawberry said MLB should increase marketing to attract Black athletes who might otherwise play basketball or football. Strawberry’s sons D.J. and Jordan were 1,000-point scorers, D.J. at Maryland and Jordan at Mercer. Jordan Strawberry accompanied his father to Citi Field.
“The younger African-American kids kind of reject baseball because they don’t market it like they do basketball,” Darryl Strawberry said, “Basketball markets their players, they market their jersey, they market their tennis shoes and that’s what gets kids attracted to.
“My son Jordan’s with me. He grew up playing basketball. He was a good baseball player. I wish he’d picked up a bat and kept going. The marketing of basketball was so attractive and it just draws players to that. So you have to make the game attractive to draw players to it.”
AP Photo
