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Monarchs set example for young players, big leagues

Players aboard the classic bus are ready to hit the road in 2012.shawn wilson

April 15 — another Jackie Robinson Day in baseball — has come and gone. This year marks the 100th anniversary of Robinson’s birth, and Major League Baseball faces an unprecedented lack of interest in the game from young African-Americans. Look at this year’s stats, courtesy of ESPN’s Outside the Lines:

Just 7.7% of MLB players are African American.

Just one black manager (Dave Roberts).

Zero black general managers.

Where is the real focus on addressing issues of racial equity in baseball? Matt Kemp of the Reds told the Cincinnati Enquirer: “In the community we live in, baseball is not something that kids can see themselves getting to a better place in. You see lots of basketball commercials, you see lots of football commercials. You rarely see a lot of African American players on TV playing baseball in some kind of cool commercial.”

Ninety miles from MLB headquarters in New York City, Steve Bandura continues to do what he has done for many years: laying the groundwork for minority and underserved children to love baseball. He has built a Field of Dreams for 8- to 18-year-olds in South Philadelphia at a neglected city building known as the Marian Anderson Recreation Center. There, Bandura spends his days mentoring, coaching, encouraging and teaching young boys and girls to love the sport and to find their own place in America. His group, called the Anderson Monarchs, has done many things that you would expect Major League Baseball would emulate, encourage and, yes, even fund.

Bandura left a marketing career 20 years ago, uninspired by the work. He signed on to be a youth recreation center staff member in the Philadelphia Department of Parks and Recreation. He wanted to pursue his passion, and he loved baseball. What he has built is a model program that should inspire baseball to strengthen its urban pipeline.

I visited the rec center in June 2015 near the end of baseball practice. The unassuming stars of the 2014 Little League World Series came in from the field, ready for dinner. They moved into a dingy room converted into a batting tunnel where some of the parents had brought food. Before the players could eat, Bandura had them watch a movie about racial tensions in America. They sat quietly watching the film, and then patiently engaged in discussion with Bandura over the relevant topics. Mind you, this was not a plush movie theater. This was a TV and a DVD machine brought into the shower room of the rec center. It was steamy, they were hungry, and the homemade tacos smelled awesome. The patience, politeness and inquisitiveness that group of young people had about civil rights in America was stunning. I couldn’t get over how, after a two-hour practice in early summer, they patiently waited until the civil rights discussion was over before eating.

Two weeks after my visit, this group of 13- and 14-year-olds boarded a 1947 non-air-conditioned bus to begin a two-week baseball barnstorming tour through the American South and the Northeast. Along the way, they received a heavy dose of American civil rights history. They met Congressman John Lewis of Georgia, and stood in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham where four girls their age were burned to death in the 1960s. By the time their tour ended in mid-July, they had been featured on the MLB Network, thrown out the first pitch at Fenway Park and met other kids their age playing the game they love.

The 2015 squad included Mo’ne Davis, a pitcher from the previous year’s Little League World Series.getty images

That same summer, the New York Daily News wrote about the model the Monarchs were creating for MLB. Why should our national pastime spend all this time, treasure and talent building facilities and recruiting players in Latin America when there were plenty of home-grown players who just need a chance?

On Jackie Robinson Day, the ESPN “Monday Night Baseball” commentators for the Phillies-Mets game were joined by Mo’ne Davis, female pitching phenom and the star of the 2014 Little League World Series. Now 18, she is about to embark on her collegiate softball career at Hampton University. Wait, wasn’t she talking about wanting to play basketball for the University of Connecticut not too long ago? That was before the barnstorming tour. She’s going to Hampton because she was inspired — she wants to learn more about what it means to be African-American in this country by attending a historically black college. Urban youth baseball made that happen. The purposeful passion of Steve Bandura changed her life.

Karen Weaver (kew62@drexel.edu) is an associate professor at Drexel University.

Questions about OPED guidelines or letters to the editor? Email editor Jake Kyler at jkyler@sportsbusinessjournal.com

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