Jackie joiner

The Little League team from Chicago's Jackie Robinson West has advanced to the US Championship game of the Little League World Series and I'm glad to see it. The team they beat to earn their spot in the championship game, Taney Little League, had gotten a lot of attention because of Mo'Ne Davis, the first girl to record a win as a pitcher in LLWS history.
As much as the hoopla surrounding Davis was well-deserved, I'm glad people are going to be forced to talk more about the kids from Jackie Robinson. The JRW team is comprised entirely of African American kids and it's the first time in more than three decades an all-black team has made it to Williamsport.
As a sports writer who has covered high school and youth sports for many years, I have to say this is quite an accomplishment. When I was in Little League, black athletes made up 1 of every 4 Major League Baseball players, whereas blacks made up 1 of every 8 people in the country. That figure in baseball declined steadily over the years. When I began my career as a sports writer, there were strikingly few black players in MLB. Six teams had no black players at all and only three had two or more. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have actively recruited white players over the past decade or so because there simply aren't enough black high school players to recruit.
Ironically enough, it was the success of a Chicago basketball star in the late 80s that helped the decline of players of color in baseball. A number of different initiatives have helped reverse that trend recently. Fittingly, a group of players from a league named after Jackie Robinson, are helping make a statement about the value these players of color add to the game. Thankfully, as the numbers of black kids has risen in youth baseball, so too have the numbers of players they can admire, like Matt Kemp, Andrew McCutchen, Brandon Phillips and more, increased at the pro level.
This greater inclusion, this broader diversity will not only impact the game in a positive way, the presence of the kids from JRW fits nicely into a bigger discussion that is happening in this country and, frankly, needs to happen.
Just as the Jackie Robinson team is living the highest of highs in Williamsport, protests have been happening nightly in Ferguson, Mo. centered around the lowest of lows for African Americans in this country. As the JRW kids have shown, in often neglected, forgotten about or unsupported communities throughout the country, a little effort, belief and opportunity can go a long way. There are new leagues in urban areas across the country now where there weren't as little as a decade ago. Further, Jackie Robinson West has proven that not only can the kids in these areas participate, they can excel if given enough support.
Still, the truth that cannot be ignored is that the effort is far short of what can be. Violence, crime, drugs and run-ins with law enforcement that end negatively are still far too common in the lives of too many young people in this nation. Homicide and incarcerations are still much more likely outcomes in the lives of a disturbingly high number of kids. Indeed, Chicago is nothing short of an utter battleground for many young people. Having made it to Williamsport is no guarantee that the players from JRW won't one day themselves be caught up in the negative forces that destroy lives and neighborhoods.
And that's the best thing that can come from Jackie Robinson West making it to the US Championship game. Perhaps it will force people to consider these realities while simultaneously understanding the impact support in these communities can have. True, the risk of dying in a gun-related incident is a very real proposition for the kids from JRW and for kids like them in places you don't know about. Yet, with a little faith, hope and effort, the Jackie Robinson kids can become national or even world champions. So too can kids from other struggling neighborhoods become champions in baseball...or science or medicine or engineering. But that will only happen when we start to collectively see the promise in all kids the way we see it in the kids from Jackie Robinson West and stop seeing kids as a source of menace, as happened in Ferguson and in communities across the country every day.