The closest I’ll ever come to owning a baseball teamThe closest I’ll ever come to owning a baseball team
by Thom Loverro I’ve become a baseball owner – sort of, but not really. But I am part of the management of a baseball team, so it may be the closest I will ever get to owning a baseball team. It’s an association I am very proud of. I am on the board of directors of the DC Grays, the Washington baseball team in the Cal Ripken Summer Collegiate Baseball League. The DC Grays are as much about opportunities in life as they are about baseball. It’s a non-profit organization devoted to creating opportunities for inner-city youths and their families through baseball, by bringing in talented college ballplayers from around the country to play in a top-tier collegiate summer league and to conduct summer camps and clinics for inner city youths. That calling is more valuable than ever today, because the opportunities that do exist in the game for inner city youths have dwindled, and in some cases, disappeared. Budget cuts and changing priorities have made places to play harder to find, and with it the people committed to teach the game. The DC Grays try to fill that void, by raising money to field a team of players from a variety of college baseball programs and then serve as mentors to inner city youths teaching them about baseball and “making the most of their opportunities. This season, the Grays will help District youngsters in camps, and playing their home games, at the new Washington Nationals Youth Baseball Academy, a $15 million complex that will open this spring. This effort — a calling, if you will — relies on volunteers with a commitment to baseball and opportunities for youths in Washington, and raising money to continue the calling. Baseball is part of the fabric of life in Washington, D.C., and it won’t go away, no matter how many times they try to kill it. Major League Baseball has come to town not once, but three different times, the latest incarnation being Montreal Expos franchise that relocated in 2005 and became the Washington Nationals. When baseball returned in 2005, 34 years after the Senators left for Arlington, Texas — it came back to a different city — one where the game had not been grown among the city’s powerful and influential African-American population, a city where the game was foreign to inner city youth. It took several men — Antonio Scott and Brad Burris, former baseball players at Howard University — devoted to grow the game again in the neighborhoods in this city, to build the D.C. Grays in 2006. It was only right and appropriate to name the team the DC “Grays” — honoring the memory of the Homestead Grays, the great Negro League baseball team that played in Washington from 1939 to 1948 and featured such legendary baseball players as Josh Gibson, Buck Leonard and Cool Papa Bell. When the Expos moved to Washington in 2005, one of the names that was a finalist for the relocated team was the “Grays.” The “Nationals” was the name selected, and the DC “Grays” picked up the banner of those legendary Negro League teams. The mission of the Grays was to create and develop a team that would become “ambassadors for baseball” in Washington. The main goal is to engage more inner-city youth and their families in the sport of baseball through the collegiate summer league team and the camps and clinics that spring from it. The Grays played in the Clark Griffith League from 2006-2009. When the league folded in 2010, the Grays came back strong in the new Cal Ripken Collegiate Summer Baseball League, led by Washington lobbyist and former college baseball player Mike Barbera as team president, along with Antonio Scott and a new board of directors. The Grays are a 501 c (3) not-for-profit organization — DC Grays Baseball. This calling to bringing baseball to inner city youths relies on donations from individuals and corporations, through sponsorships, gifts and partnerships. Different levels of sponsorships will identify the commitment to the DC Grays, from advertisements in the game programs to in-game sponsor “Thank You” announcements, your logo on the homepage of the web site and free season passes and parking for all home games at the Nationals Youth Baseball Academy. I will be hosting a cigar fundraiser in the coming weeks at Shelly’s Back Room in the District to help raise money for the Grays. Details will follow shortly, and I hope you can be part of it. Visit Thom’s blog here: http://espn980.com/blogs/thom.php
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