BALTIMORE -- What better place to launch a new, transformational youth baseball and softball initiative than 900 E. 33rd Street in Baltimore?
Or as Cal Ripken Jr. calls it, “sacred ground.”
On the same plot of land where the Iron Man once played 821 games and took 3,449 strolls to home plate at Memorial Stadium, Major League Baseball’s Nike RBI program and the Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation announced Thursday the launch of a new partnership that will support instructional baseball leagues at 30 organizations across 14 states.
As part of the Ripken Foundation-Nike RBI Initiative, each participating site will receive a cash grant, equipment and instructional materials, as well as camp and clinic opportunities. That will help extend the reach of the Nike RBI (Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities) program that in 2024 already touched more than 200 cities and 100,000 male and female participants.
The news comes at the kickoff of MLB’s Play Ball Weekend, a worldwide effort to inspire baseball and softball participation through over 200 activities across the globe.
“When you’re trying to grow the game, you’re looking for good partners to scale, to grow,” said Tony Reagins, MLB’s chief baseball development officer. “And there’s so many attractive attributes about the Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation that Cal and Bill have been able to do.”
Cal Jr. and Bill Ripken launched the foundation in memory of their father -- a longtime Orioles Major and Minor League coach -- in 2001 with an aim to serve youth in underserved communities through sports.
“It was really to capture Dad’s spirit,” Cal Jr. said of the idea. “He had a really [strong] coaching spirit, and helping Minor League guys get to the big leagues, and he also did different clinics in different areas to expose kids to baseball and the values of sport.”
One of the foundation’s biggest successes has been the creation of 125 youth development parks across 27 states. That includes Memorial Field, a multi-use sports facility built on the footprint of the old Memorial Stadium that the Orioles called home before moving to Camden Yards in 1992. As Cal Jr. noted, the location of the field’s home plate is precisely on the spot where he first faced big league pitchers.
On this day he was doing something he never did as a big leaguer, pitching to a few dozen young players from West Baltimore’s James Mosher Baseball League during games of Quickball as part of a late-morning clinic.
“This is pretty sacred ground. … In some ways it seems like just yesterday we were in this ballpark,” Cal Jr. said. “I remember standing at third base when I got to start [for the first time] … and I kept thinking, ‘This is where Brooks Robinson played.’”
After keeping most of his focus on the foundation over the last two decades, Cal Jr. has become closer to the Orioles again after becoming a minority partner in the David Rubenstein-led group that purchased the club from the Angelos family last season.
He’s now a more regular fixture in the seats at Camden Yards. And as he begins living and dying a bit more with his old team -- which so far has struggled to meet lofty expectations in 2025 -- it only reinforces the value that comes from creating safe spaces where all kinds of athletes can have coaches and mentors and advisors like his late father, who passed in 1999 at age 63.
“Now when I think about him, I think about him as a teacher,” Cal Jr. said. “Because a coach does a whole lot more than just teach you how to play. He kind of helps you with your confidence, he kind of puts you in the right direction, and sometimes there are issues that -- if you have a good trusting relationship with your coach -- then they start asking questions. And that’s really the magic that happens.”