Glenn Murray and John Roper grew up just 133 miles apart – an easy 2 hour, 16 minute drive up Interstate-95 between Murray’s hometown of Manning, S.C., and Roper’s in Southern Pines, N.C.

In conceiving their passion for baseball, the former Major League Baseball players, who didn’t know each other as children but are now best friends as adults, were worlds apart all those years ago.

As children in the 1970s and ’80s, baseball was still a sport African Americans enjoyed watching and playing.

For Murray, it was a family affair. From his grandfather on down, going to baseball games was a group outing. There were more than just high school or college options in the area, there was a variation of the Negro League playing on the weekends not too far from their home. At one point, Murray even had the opportunity to play in that men’s league as a 15- and 16-year-old child against grown men.

That’s not something Roper had. Baseball wasn’t even a priority in his life. It just so happened that he was good at this particular sport and stuck with it. In Roper’s neighborhood, you’d have all of the kids signing up for football and basketball, about 30 to 40 of his peers. For baseball sign-ups there were only eight black kids, including Roper, going out for the team.

Many years later, after time in the majors – Murray with the Philadelphia Phillies (1996) and Roper with the Cincinnati Reds (1993–95) and San Francisco Giants (1995) – the duo would find their way to Nashua as teammates on the 1999 Nashua Pride, playing at Holman Stadium – coincidentally were American baseball’s integration began with Roy Campanella and pitcher Don Newcombe playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Class B New England League affiliated Nashua Dodgers in 1946.

It’s also were Nashua’s C.J. Boykin made some memorable plays in the field and recorded a few clutch hits at the plate for Bishop Guertin High School before taking off to American International College in Springfield, Mass., where he starred as a freshman second baseman on his way to earning Northeast-10 Co-Rookie of the Year.

The three share a similar love of a sport that doesn’t seem to be courting the African-American player or fan any longer. Then again, it’s their belief that MLB never really put in that effort to begin with.

The idea that baseball in general, and more specifically MLB are losing an entire race of followers was highlighted in early April by comedian Chris Rock’s appearance on “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel.”

In the video, which Murray, Roper and Boykin all watched together on Memorial Day, Rock admitted he’s a lifelong New York Mets fan and lover of baseball. He went on for seven minutes about the game he loves and why it’s losing African Americans.

Long gone are the days of Rock watching Daryl Strawberry, Doc Gooden, Kevin Mitchell and, every Boston Red Sox fan’s favorite, Mookie Wilson playing for the same team as the Mets beat the Red Sox in the 1986 World Series.

Rock pointed out that in the mid-1980s, 20 percent of MLB players were African-American, a percentage currently at eight percent and dropping.

On Roper’s 1994 Reds team, there was a full roster of African Americans playing.

“It was 16 brothers on one team with Davey Johnson,” Roper declared. “I don’t think there’s 16 brothers in the MLB right now.”

“That’s unprecedented,” Murray said, pointing out that team was put together by then-owner Marge Schott, who was eventually forced out as owner in Cincinnati after making a number of comments about blacks, Jews, gays and Adolf Hitler in 1999.

The comedian highlighted that San Francisco won the 2014 World Series with no African-American players on its roster, while the Giants’ National League Championship Series opponent, the St. Louis Cardinals, had none on its roster either.

It’s not just the majors seeing a drop. It’s all levels of play, including colleges that are historically black institutions.

Howard University in Washington D.C. dropped baseball as a sport due to lack of participation. Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, Ala., had one African-American player on its roster last season while the remaining members of its 36-man roster were white players.

It’s a scene that Boykin experienced at the college level playing for the Yellow Jackets.

“I thought going into the NE-10, I was like OK, maybe I’ll get to see a few more brothers playing,” Boykin said. “And then going down to Florida, I was like OK, well I’m going down to Florida so obviously I’m going to think more. But I did not see one. It was all Hispanics.”

It even hits the high school and youth levels. Little League participation is down 20 percent since 1995.

According to Rock, the decline in participatory numbers at the youth level isn’t due to money. He stresses that the sport is thriving in poorer countries like the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.

“It’s not the money,” he said. “You can’t tell me black kids can’t afford baseball when everybody’s buying Jordans for $300. There’s six gloves right there.”

Roper and Murray disagree with Rock on the cost aspect. At least in America.

“I definitely think he’s wrong about expensive, as far as youth,” said 43-year-old Roper, the former Nashua High School South baseball coach who runs the Get It Done AAU program, offers private lessons to aspiring players, and is the pitching coach for Daniel Webster College. “There’s certain levels you can play and it’ll cost you 50 bucks. But some of the kids I would like to get into the game – black kids – that play AAU, that they need to play at the level, it’s $1,800. Even my team was $1,800 to $2,000 to play. And that’s low. In certain areas of the game, it is expensive.”

To which Murray agrees, claiming that those numbers are low for most AAU or elite programs.

The 44-year-old former hitting coach for Rivier University also countered Rock’s assessment that equipment is cheap.

“Little League has become a business,” Murray said, sticking up in a way for AAU programs. “That’s where the problem starts. When I played Little League, I paid 20 bucks. I got socks, leggings, the pants, the shirt, the hat, the belt. These kids pay 60 to 80 bucks, or whatever it is, and they get pants, maybe a shirt, and a hat. Then you have to go out as a parent and buy everything else.

“You see how much the bats cost? You could buy, when I was in the big leagues, in minor league baseball, a dozen bats – a dozen bats – was $144. You get an aluminum bat (today) it’s $400. It’s just gotten to the point where you’ve kind of outpriced – and it’s not just black, but it affects the black community because we are a majority of the minority, you know. So it affects us in that way, that a lot of parents can’t afford it.”

However, in the eyes of the 50-year-old comedian from Andrews, S.C., the game itself is the main problem – slow play, unwritten codes that don’t allow for personalities to be on display (including bat flips after home runs) – and its infatuation with the past – old-looking ball parks and old-time baseball tournaments.

“Baseball wants everything to stay the way things used to be,” Rock expounded. “The world has sped up, but game is slower than ever.”

The old white-haired male announcers and “cheesy organ music” don’t help either in his view.

“Where’s the Beats By Dre?” he asks.

With World Series’ viewership – comprised of five of six watchers being white men with an average age of 53 – down 50 percent since the mid-1990s, it’s clear to Rock the game is in a downward spiral altogether.

Finding a way to increase participation by young African Americans in the urban cities can only help the game overall.

However, Boykin isn’t sure that goal is feasible. The belief is that today’s youth, regardless of ethnicity, is on the immediate gratification bandwagon. When it comes to scoring a big payday for the top athletes, the timetable to reach the majors in baseball is a deterrent.

“I think what steers the black community away is the process that it takes to get to the bigs and make that big money,” said Boykin, who picked up his first baseball at 4 years old. “They see football and basketball, where you go to college for three or four years and then you instantly go to the NFL. Then you go to the MLB and you’ve got to go through the minors – Triple, Double and Single A – and then you go to the bigs. By that time your like 27 or 28 years old and they’re like ‘Well, half my life is already over.’ And I just don’t think people are in that for the longevity. And I look at it as ‘Why not me? Why can’t I do that?’ ”

Murray and Roper agreed with Boykin’s 18-year-old point of view.

It’s the new way for those in poverty to hit the lottery, especially a parent living through their child.

“Parents see that too,” Roper said. “A black parent coming from lower economics, or whatever, they see that. ‘My son is good, he’s good at baseball, but he tears some football up.’ And that’s a quicker way to get them out of the situation. Even in the NBA, it’s a quicker way.

“That’s a great point that he just brought up. I didn’t even think about that – but to go through the minors – I definitely didn’t think I’d be in the major leagues in three years. When you really look at it, even when I got drafted, I looked at all the levels the Reds had and I’m like ‘Man, you know, I’m going to have to go back to college.’ So parents know enough to say football.”

That’s what Rock seemed to be stressing in his monologue. The NBA and NFL are more entertaining, more attractive and quicker to gratify the younger generation, black or white, than baseball ever could be.

“Maybe if baseball gets a little hipper, a little cooler, just a little more black,” Rock says, “the future can change.”

According to this Nashua trio, who were nodding their heads in unison to Rock’s “hipper” and “cooler” statement, therein lies the No. 1 problem – MLB itself.