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The Grays are the creation of
DCBASEBALL.ORG. The team was created to recruit collegiate
ballplayers from colleges and universities around the nation
to compete at a high level of summer college baseball and
help increase the visibility of baseball at the grassroots
level in Washington, DC. The strategy is to develop good
college ball players and have them also interact within DC
communities through summer camps and social events.
The team consist of a 25-man
roster and plays in the very historic
Clark Griffith Collegiate Summer League (CGL). The CGL
is a wooden-bat league that has been operating for 64 years.
During the months of June and July the team will play a
38-game schedule plus a post-season.
Connecting the
Past….Present….Future
Past
The Grays are named after the
Homestead Grays who played in the Negro National League from
1935-1948. During this time period the team became one of
the league’s most storied franchises winning ten Negro
National League Championships and three Negro League World
Series titles. From the late 1930s through the 1940s, the
Grays played their home games at Pittsburgh's Forbes Field
which was the home of the Pittsburgh Pirates. The historic
attachment to Washington, DC is that the Homestead Grays
adopted the city as its home away from scheduling and
playing a good number of its home games at DC’s Griffith
Stadium which was the home ballpark of Clark Griffith’s
Washington Senators of Major League Baseball. The Grays
traditionally outdrew the Senators as they played in
Griffith Stadium while the Senators where on road trips.
Present
The Grays will play their home
games at the newly renovated Maury Wills Field in
Washington, DC. The field sits a few blocks away from Howard
University hospital which sits on the land that use to hold
Griffith Stadium where as stated before the Homestead Grays
played many home games. Irony also enters if you think of
the fact that the DC Grays play in a league founded and
named after one Clark Griffith who owned the Washington
Senators.
This team’s historic attachment
to the city can be a tool to help draw more citizens of DC
to the game. Also imagine how a good number of our
collegiate student-athletes who play for the team can have a
positive impact on disadvantaged youth around the city by
mentoring and instructing.
Future
This
combination of past and present can create a great future
for the team while also developing DC breed ballplayers to a
skill level compliable enough. This way the team can recruit
and obtain DC native ball players which starts to create a
great and productive cycle of college ball players giving
back to help the next generation!
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