Orioles Star Goes Above and Beyond, Helps Out Tourney-Bound Little League Team
Adam Jones of the Baltimore Orioles is one of the genuine good guys in baseball.
In 2015 alone, he won the players union’s vote for the Marvin Miller Man of the Year Award, he won the Brooks Robinson Community Service Award from the MLB Players Alumni Association, and he took home the Governor’s Service Award from the governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan.
He also donates $75,000 a year of his salary to the Boys and Girls Club in Baltimore.
On top of that, he engages in advocacy for the black community, a cause that grew dearer to his heart after a bunch of racist yahoos in Boston threw a bag of peanuts at him and called him the N-word in 2017.
Enter the Mamie Johnson Little League team in Washington, D.C., which qualified for the Mid-Atlantic regional tournament in ESPN’s backyard of Bristol, Connecticut.
Sure, they won their baseball tournament in the nation’s capital, but getting a bus full of kids from a disadvantaged inner-city neighborhood — 11 of Mamie Johnson’s 12 players are black — to Bristol costs money.
More to the point, it costs $10,000.
But as soon as the squad tweeted out their call for fundraising and Jones saw it, the guy who makes $14 million a year to play baseball just had one question: “How can I help?”
Amazing. How can I help.
— 10 (@SimplyAJ10) August 1, 2018
The team supplied the information for the donation, and the deed was done, the economic obstacle removed and a team of kids now gets to go up to Bristol and try to punch their ticket to Williamsport for the Little League World Series.
A bunch of kids probably also got a new favorite big-league baseball player out of the deal.
“It’s a blessing for the kids and the families,” Keith Barnes, president of the Mamie Johnson Little League, told ESPN. “For them to experience this opportunity and for him to help us, it just means the world to these kids. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for them, so it’s a great gesture. And we really appreciate it.”
Jones’ donation left the league with a bit of a surplus financially; the league says it will use the money for outreach to try and get more young kids in Washington’s poor neighborhoods playing baseball.
Major League Baseball has been looking for ways to encourage black participation; only 62 players on Opening Day rosters in 2017 were black, less than 10 percent of the league.
ESPN televises the Little League World Series and the U.S. regionals; this will be the first time a majority-black team has appeared on the network that wasn’t from a foreign country like Curacao or Jamaica.
For Adam Jones, this is a chance to help out some kids. For baseball, it’s a marketing opportunity for minority outreach.
And for 12 kids from Washington, it’s a chance to play the sport they love for at least another couple of weeks before school starts in September.
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