VIDEO | Inner city baseball blues

Youngstown baseball

Video

Sheryl Strock and her grandchildren talk about baseball.

YOUNGSTOWN — Reasons for the demise of inner-city baseball in the last 10 years are complex, yet clear-cut.

The Uptown Kiwanis Little League that faded into the sunset early in the new millennium was succeeded by the Youngstown Baseball Association, but the venture has been shaky.

“It’s been an uphill battle to attract and keep youth,” says Victor Morales, a longtime league official who seems to have been the glue keeping the sport alive in some of the city’s poorest sections.

The Youngstown Police Athletic League, which arrived on the scene to organize a basketball program last year, has stepped to the plate for the baseball season, lending its personnel.

The decline from a once-vibrant Gibson Field in the summertime to a shift in location for youth baseball stems, in large part, from a societal problem.

Those like Morales and YPAL are reaching out to the underprivileged, but those who need the help the most should be helping themselves.

Read more in Sunday’s Vindicator and vindy.com