Paris Inman has accomplished quite a bit in his three months as the district administrator for D.C. Little League.
He has made connections with Washington’s business community to attract sponsors. He has hired an agent to deal with finances. He consolidated leagues to make them more competitive.
He also uncovered several leagues that seemed to exist only on paper.
“All the leagues were noncompliant — paperwork, insurance, everything,” he said. “The Department of Recreation had paper teams. In many cases, there wasn’t any real coaching or organization going on. [Paid employees] were holding down titles and not doing anything.”
So he hired an enforcer to ensure that all registered teams were playing, and held an equipment drive with the Washington Nationals and the Urban Initiative. He got a credit line with the Greater Washington Sports Alliance with a promise to raise funds.
“All the reasons why people said they weren’t playing” were being taken care of, he said.
Now, Capitol City Little League and Northwest Little League boast impressive numbers, with 460 and 554 players, respectively, registered this season.
But Inman estimated that it would take four or five years to get D.C. Little League where he thought it could be.
“It’s not that kids aren’t interested in the sport,” he said. “There’s not enough effort in taking it right to the kids.
“If you tap resources in the community, nobody says no to kids playing baseball in the community,” he said. “It’s just a matter of people asking.”
Local baseball booster Brendan Sullivan Jr. said Inman’s efforts have given baseball a shot in the arm, but made no bones about the difficulty ahead.
“Paris is a step in the right direction, but it’s a Herculean task,” he said. “Baseball in particular needs a ton of volunteers and an active parent base — for better or worse — for many wards in the city.
“If Paris is able to duplicate what Cap City and N.W. has done, it will be one of the greatest recreational victories the city has ever seen,” he said. “Period.”
