MLB and USA Baseball today launched Play Ball, a youth-driven initiative designed to boost baseball participation, even outside organized leagues and with less than two full teams. The effort will highlight various short-form versions of baseball than can be played outside of fully manned games, such as stickball, wiffleball and playing catch. The campaign will take on numerous forms, including advertising in ballparks and during MLB game broadcasts, the creation of a website (PlayBall.org) and companion mobile app that will feature an array of educational resources for young players and coaches, the debut of a separate social media Play Ball portal at mlb.com/playball and special events. One such major upcoming event will be a planned game of catch at the P&G Cincinnati Urban Youth Academy on July 9 that will seek to set a new Guinness World Record for the largest such game of catch. MLB Senior VP/League Economics & Strategy Chris Marinak said, “We think it’s important to get back to our roots and the power of playing casually. That’s sort of been lost lately.”
ALL ABOUT THE KIDS: The Play Ball campaign seeks to advance the One Baseball youth engagement mission articulated by new MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred. The collaboration between the league and USA Baseball also extends a prior joint effort called Pitch Smart that outlines medically reviewed guidelines that young pitchers can follow to help avoid overuse injuries. PlayBall.org also will include a database of opportunities to play baseball, searchable by zip code. USA Baseball Exec Dir & CEO Paul Seiler said, "The launch of Play Ball is a landmark occasion for our sport." Additional instructional content will be added to PlayBall.org in the coming months. Marinak: “There’s a lot of good resources on there already, but right now, it’s only a quarter to a half of what it’s ultimately going to be." Marinak noted the role of individual MLB players and the MLBPA in Play Ball is not yet determined, and the league and union are actively discussing a wide range of options regarding youth engagement.
TIME TO CHANGE: Manfred: "This program will be a huge success for us if we can see a resurgence in these nonformalized baseball games. That is our primary goal. We think participation in those games is equally important to formalized baseball in terms of building fans." He added, "We see the NCAA and college baseball as kind of the top of this youth-participation pyramid, and when you talk to the NCAA, you get the impression that they see baseball as a country-club sport -- white, rich kids play" (Tyler Kepner, NYTIMES.com, 6/18).
