Vahe Gregorian of the St. Louis Dispatch reports on the progressively larger divide between African-Americans and baseball.

The Honorable Anthony A. Williams
Mayor, District of Columbia

Dear Mayor Williams:

On Sunday, June 26, the Washington Post featured the Eastern Senior High School baseball team in a moving story that, once again, demonstrated your penchant for peculiar priorities. While assembling the Eastern players for a political photo op at RFK Stadium in March, you promised to attend their first game. A nice gesture, indeed, and one that would have meant so much to these youngsters. But as the Post’s David Nakamura reported, not only did you fail to show for Eastern’s first game, but you never even bothered to attend any of their games. How quickly they were forgotten. You do attend often, however, the Nationals games, in part, to show your commitment to the half-billion-dollar stadium giveaway to Major League Baseball.

(Ralph Nader and the sports reform project League of Fans sent a letter to federal health and safety officials arguing that their agencies "have been collectively deficient in research, preservation of data, recommendations and overall recognition of the public health magnitude of sports injuries."

The letter was sent to Michael Leavitt, Secretary of Health and Human Services; Julie Louise Gerberding, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Ileana Arias, Acting Director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control; and Hal Stratton, Chairman of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Enclosed with the letter are recommendations urging the establishment of a task force to formulate sports injury policy and implement "a pro-active national program regarding health and safety in sports, at all levels and age groups, with the goal of minimizing the risk of injury to participants in informal and organized sports, recreation and exercise." The letter and recommendations follow.)