For author Mark O’Neal, it’s the demise of a form of our national pastime – Little League baseball. Not content to sit by for this loss of competition and team spirit, O’Neal has tried to find out why it’s losing ground in his book “What Happened to Little League Baseball in the Inner-City?” The end result is a personal and sociological study of the sport’s urban decline, with reasoned suggestions as opposed to simple griping about how things used to be.

O’Neal draws on his first-hand experience growing up in the south side of Chicago, backing up his claims with various newspaper and research articles. The blame for the decline of inner-city baseball, according to his research, falls heavily on the decline of black family structure through welfare and drug use, privatization of the sport by wealthy sponsors and an overriding interest in basketball among black youths.

Though O’Neal’s book is short on academic support (likely because this is one of the only studies made of the topic) each of his arguments are well-written and feasible. O’Neal is able to link the single-parent trend to the lack of dedicated coaches, college scholarship availability to baseball’s long-term survival and the decline of factories to families available to participate.

While several of his arguments place the blame for the sport’s decline on the inner city population, the tone is logical rather than accusatory and suggests that since they created the problems, they can fix them. His solutions are a bit too broad – get more affordable coaches, increase Major League involvement and promote black college baseball – but they are focused correctly and leave the door open for more specific reactions.