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Nashua’s Glenn Murray, John Roper and C.J. Boykin say MLB must increase urban marketing and development initiatives

By Staff | Jun 22, 2015

Comedian Chris Rock didn’t mince his words during the April broadcast of “Real Sports with Bryant Gumble” on HBO.

“We don’t really need baseball,” Rock said of the black community, “but baseball needs us. The fact is, Black America decides what’s hot and what young people get excited about. … You lose black America, you lose young America. And make no mistake, baseball is losing.”

For two former major leaguers now residing in Nashua, John Roper and Glenn Murray, baseball has been losing ever since Michael Jordan took center stage in the mid-1980s.

“Along with Michael Jordan came rap music,” Murray said. “So, at that time, now you have Michael Jordan – he’s becoming the man, he’s still the man, you know what I mean – and you see rap music. So the influence of most inner-city kids is to follow what’s the most popular. The most popular was Michael Jordan and basketball. It was rap music, and then along came football. It was the Dallas Cowboys, that had Emmitt Smith and Michael Irvin.

“So now you’re getting that. Most parents, me as a former baseball player, I really can’t sit and watch too many entire baseball games on TV. You know what I mean? I can watch football all day. I can watch basketball all day. Baseball you can’t. So the kid kind of feeds off the parents and then what’s popular. So you see Michael Jordan, and your dad wants to be Michael Jordan.”

Murray and Roper reminisced about Gatorade’s “Be Like Mike” commercials, which led into their biggest reason for believing MLB screwed up long ago. The league has never really marketed to African Americans.

The duo – who teamed up with the Nashua Pride, of the independent Atlantic League, in 1999 under manager Mike Easler and were members of the 2000 championship team under manager Butch Hobson – have seen plenty of opportunities to sell the game to inner-city youth and the black community in general. With players like Bo Jackson, whom MLB let be highlighted for his gridiron work more than his flashy outfield defense and home run power, or Ken Griffey Jr., a young five-tool player the league failed to capitalize from the start of his MLB career on April 3, 1989 until his last game on May 31, 2010.

Instead, MLB let the NBA and NFL own the urban market. In the eyes of Murray and Roper, it’s still that way today.

“I did not see as many Barry Larkin commercials as I did Michael Jordan commercials,” Roper said. “I saw Deion Sanders commercials, but it was mainly a football thing. Just think about all the Jordan commercials you see now, all the LeBron (James) commercials. So that’s what our black community seeing right now. You still see Jordan commercials. You see a lot of LeBron. You see a lot of football commercials about our black athletes, which is good. I’m happy as long as our athletes are doing something other than getting in trouble.

“But baseball, you don’t really see any commercials talking about, you know, Prince Fielder. Not like they do LeBron. Maybe a couple black kids will see Prince Fielder doing something, hitting some home runs or something, then jumping in the swimming pool with his tuxedo on. … Realistically over the years, I can’t think of any commercials that equals a Michael Jordan commercial for baseball.”

For Rock, any future growth of baseball as a sport will be determined by MLB loosening up a little.

“Baseball doesn’t just have rules from another time,” Rock said. “There’s an old-fashioned code, too.

“You score in football or basketball, the players celebrate. Good times! Come on! But when you score in baseball, the code says you better not look too happy about it, or else a baseball will go whizzing by your head. It’s the only game where there’s a right way to play the game – the white way. The way it was played a hundred years ago when only whites were allowed to play.”

He goes on to point out that outside of North America, the game of baseball isn’t stuck
in this rut. The game is more than balls and strikes. It’s sports entertainment.

“This code doesn’t exist in other places where they play baseball,” Rock said. “Like Korea, where bat flipping is an art form. Or the Caribbean, where the games are a carnival. The old Negro Leagues were a carnival, too. There were actual clowns on the roster. They played with invisible balls pitched through their legs.

“But in America’s proper version of the game, baseball is like a visit to the queen. If you don’t bow correctly it can be an international incident.”

For former Bishop Guertin High School and current American International College baseball standout C.J. Boykin, of Nashua, that lack of excitement – along with the long process to reach the majors – has been a key factor in pushing African American youths away from the sport.

The MLB duo concurs.

“Baseball itself is boring to the average black guy,” Roper said. “It’s long. I used to talk to people all the time and, ‘Eh, ain’t nothing happening.’?”

Roper remembers watching a Pedro Martinez no-hit bid on TV with a friend back in the day. Martinez was mowing batters down one after another. For a baseball junkie, that’s an edge-of-the-seat viewing party. For Roper’s friend?

“This was in North Carolina, Pedro or somebody was dealing and my buddy was like, ‘Man, ain’t nothing happening.’ I was like ‘This is an exciting game, Pedro’s got a no-hitter going,’?” Roper said. “They said ‘Ain’t nobody hitting anything.’ I said ‘Exactly.’

“The untrained eye would see baseball – if you’re not hitting home runs and running around – that young athlete would see it as boring.”

There are programs out there trying to get young African American athletes interested in a sport they likely never even considered before.

The hope is that the Major League Baseball Urban Youth Academy and Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities programs will keep the door open for the black community to return to baseball.

Murray and Roper don’t seem so optimistic.

Despite these programs already being in place, they don’t believe MLB fully supports the efforts being made by former players – including the likes of Eric Davis, Cliff Floyd and Mark Whiten – by simply sanctioning and funding these organizations.

Murray and Roper’s strong stance aside, perhaps there has been a slight shift courtesy of MLB’s urban development initiatives. In this June’s MLB Draft, 10 players with RBI ties and nine more with UYA experience were selected – highlighted by the Texas Rangers picking Dillon Tate fourth overall. According to MLB statistics, the RBI program has grown roughly 80 percent since 2009, with more than two million children having participated.

However, Murray is still persistent in his belief that although MLB creates these avenues for the inner-city children, the follow through and work needed for retention never materializes.

“If Major League Baseball would back it, and actually push it,” Murray said. “Major League Baseball, they don’t push anything. You don’t see the commercials. They don’t push anything.”

Their negative feelings aside, the Nashua Trio does agree that the RBI and UYA programs mixed with a more prevalent presence on social media and any other marketing venues are the best opportunity for change.

“I just think that Major League Baseball, and if they are making the effort, I don’t see it,” Roper said, “but they make a better effort and maybe it starts getting back to the game.”

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