Single moms step up to the plate to keep blacks in baseball

Over the last 10 years, much has been written about the declining numbers of African-Americans playing Major League Baseball and collegiate baseball.

African-Americans make up just 9 percent of all of those playing Major League Baseball this year, a far cry from the 27 percent in 1974. The 2010 College World Series featured eight African-American players out of the 269 who participated.

When it comes to African-American players, the future looks no brighter. For example, the U.S. semifinals of the 2010 Little League World Series between Georgia and Hawaii featured only two African-American players, both of whom played for the team from Columbus, Ga.

Although there are programs like Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities and other initiatives designed to reintroduce the sport to African-American kids in place, a combination of poorly kept urban baseball fields the expense of the game, and the popularity of basketball and football are among the reasons why baseball might not be catching on in places like Philadelphia, despite having two MLB MVPs in Phillies Ryan Howard and Jimmy Rollins in place as potential role models.

WATCH THIS GRIO REPORT ON BLACKS IN BASEBALL

But some are pointing to the single parent household as one of the major factors keeping African-American boys away from baseball. According to data compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly one out of three black households (29 percent) are headed by single mothers, many of whom can't afford to take their kids to baseball games played in the ultra modern and grossly expensive ball parks. Traditionally, baseball has been a sport that boys learn from their fathers.

Or at least that's the conventional wisdom. In reality, single moms are grabbing their sons and saying "Take me out to the Ballgame!", fighting economic, racial and gender barriers at times to keep their kids in the game.

Cheryl A. Mobley-Stimpson, who runs the Facebook site Philly Sports Moms and works as a sports and entertainment consultant and Sarah J. Glover, an award-winning photojournalist with the Philadelphia Daily News, have boys who not only play baseball, but are good at it and have a passion for it. Both have invested the time, money and effort to help their sons in their course of their baseball development on their own without assistance from their children's fathers.

"I am the exception to the rule and if I can be an exception to the rule, it can happen," said Mobley-Stimpson, who started her own business as a way to devote more time . "It's a matter of vision, it's a matter of dedication and it's a matter of adapting to a different type of a lifestyle and so I can't get to all of the parties that I used to get to and when I do get to that small window of opportunity, I am so tired from driving and driving to practices and playoff games."

Mobley-Stimpson has two sons--Leon and Cameron---who have been involved in baseball since starting T-Ball at six-years-old. Her oldest son, Leon, 20,won a college scholarship to the University of North Carolina-Ashville and has since transferred to Div. III Alvernia University in Reading, Pa. Her youngest son Cameron,17, is playing high school baseball at Friends Central in Wynnewood.

According to Mobley-Stimpson, her oldest son Leon has been on the radar of teams like the Phillies and the New York Mets.

Meanwhile, Glover's son Skyler is 13 and has played the sport since he was seven. He completed his summer youth baseball season with the Tri-State Elite Baseball League based in Sewell, N.J.

Both Glover and Mobley-Stimpson have managed to successfully navigate their way through what is a mostly white-male world of youth baseball. But that journey has not come without its economic and political challenges along the way. Both believe that gender is more of an issue than race because the sport has been traditionally shared between fathers and sons.

"From a gender perspective, I feel I'm not receiving the same type of respect as a father that's coming to the field," Glover said. "But you have to develop a thick skin in general and it's related to life in general because it's how you react to situations where people throw up obstacles. I'm not going to let some 20-something coach tell me that my son is lazy and I'm not going to let that define my child."