Baseball HOFer Cal Ripken Jr. today in DC announced plans by the Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation to design and construct 10 youth development parks over the next five years around the country. The $5M total cost of the effort was funded by a donation to the foundation by insurance company Group One Thousand One. Each youth development park will feature a synthetic turf field allowing for multiple sports; other field amenities such as bleachers, scoreboards, and lighting; and a Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) program in collaboration with MLB. The first three parks will be built in Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and DC, with markets to following including Austin, Charlotte, Chicago, Detroit, Seattle, South Florida and N.Y. The Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation has previously developed 78 fields over the past decade on a more individual basis, but this latest gift funds its largest set of projects. “This is a significant jump for us to be able to do a large batch like this,” Ripken said. “It’s a bit of a different model for us, but accelerates the number of kids we’re able to reach.”
