The Metropolitan Junior Baseball League, believed to be the oldest African-American owned and operated inner-city youth baseball league in the nation, is launching a unique effort to address the decreasing number of African-Americans playing baseball.

Next month, the MJBL will host its first Black Baseball World Series in conjunction with its 18^th annual Inner City Classic and the Bobby Bonds Memorial Symposium. The tournaments, set for July 29 through August 3, will be played on the Benedict College campus and will feature more than 700 youth baseball players in three age brackets –12 and under, 13-15 and 16-18.

The Black Baseball World Series title will be contested only in the 12 and under division this year, according to MJBL executive Director William Forrester Jr., while the other age groups will continue to compete as part of the Inner City Classic. The MJBL hopes to expand the Black World Series concept to the other age categories in the future.

To support the initiative, the MJBL has turned its annual baseball invitational into a national youth baseball league. Only teams registered for the league will be eligible to compete in the Classic and the World Series. So far, squads in 14 states and Nassau Bahamas are registered for the national league. Each state will host a playoff, and the champion will advance to the Classic and the World Series.

“This year, we decided to come up with a national youth baseball league to give our kids a chance to compete for a World Series title,” said Forrester, who stressed that while the MJBL will not turn away teams, the initiative is geared toward African-American youth. “You look at Little League baseball and they are the darlings of America. But you don’t see African-American kids participating. We’re trying to put something together to give them a chance to compete for a World Series title and really bring baseball back into the African-American community.”

In addition to the tournaments, for the fifth straight year, the Bobby Bonds Memorial Symposium will be held in concert with the Inner City Classic. Aimed at providing a platform for discussion about and strategies for enticing African-Americans back to baseball, the main topic of the August 2 panel discussion will be how the media influences African-American interest and participation in the game.

The role of baseball programs at Historically Black Colleges and Universities will be a related topic of discussion at the symposium. Because many coaches at HBCUs will be on hand for the symposium, the tournament creates an added benefit of exposure for players with collegiate baseball potential.

“We look at the HBCU programs as a way we could continue to get Blacks to play at the college level,” said Forrester.

Mookie Wilson, former Major Leaguer and member of the 1986 New York Mets World Series championship team, will moderate the symposium, which is open to the public and free of charge. The event begins at 7 p.m. at Benedict’s Charlie W. Johnson Stadium.

The MJBL believes all of these efforts will promote baseball in the African-American community and attract, retain and encourage African-American youth to participate in the sport. Achieving those goals, said Forrester, would have a lasting effect far beyond the diamond.

“In neighborhoods where the fields are run down and there is gang activity, you would now have baseball games being played there. That will help the overall quality of life,” he said. “We want to make sure we get these kids off the streets and into school and hopefully get them into the college and help them be prepared to be successful in life.”

Founded in 1966 in Richmond, Virginia, the MJBL was originally established to provide youth of all backgrounds with the opportunity to play baseball.