masn-baseballs-orioles.jpgNASHVILLE – Cal Ripken Jr. has been named the new senior advisor to the commissioner on youth programs and outreach.
Commissioner Rob Manfred will make the announcement later this afternoon at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center.
Ripken stays busy with his youth baseball complex, ownership of the Aberdeen IronBirds, analyst duties with TBS, overseeing the charitable foundation named after his late father and sorted other endeavors. What’s one more job for baseball’s Iron…

NASHVILLE – Cal Ripken Jr. has been named the new senior advisor to the commissioner on youth programs and outreach.

Cal-Ripken_Sidebar.gifCommissioner Rob Manfred will make the announcement later this afternoon at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center.

Ripken stays busy with his youth baseball complex, ownership of the Aberdeen IronBirds, analyst duties with TBS, overseeing the charitable foundation named after his late father and sorted other endeavors. What’s one more job for baseball’s Iron Man?

I’ll update this entry following the news conference.

Also, Single-A Delmarva pitcher Tanner Scott was named to the Arizona Fall League’s Top Prospects Team.

Scott, 21, posted a 2.00 ERA and struck out 10 batters in nine innings with the Peoria Javelinas. His fastball topped out at 100 mph.

Scott, a sixth-round draft pick in 2014 out of Howard (Texas) College, is rated as the 21st-best Orioles prospect by MLB.com.

Update: Manfred introduced Ripken at the press conference.

“Cal has devoted much of his time since his great playing career finished to youth programs, developing youth programs, helping kids enjoy our game,” Manfred said. “Cal will be involved in all aspects of our policy development in the youth area. He will oversee a variety of programs and appearances on behalf of the commissioners program and generally provide sage guidance as we try to move forward in the youth area. We are very excited to have someone of Cal’s character and reputation joining us on these topics, and I know he will make our programs better going forward.”

“Well, that sounds like a much bigger job than I signed up for,” Ripken quipped.

“I’m ecstatic, and I want to commend Commissioner Manfred on the initiative, formalizing the initiative, because we all care about the game. And all of us that were lucky enough to play it for a living, we still want to give back to the game. But it seems like it is very segmented. We’re all working kind of separately. The commissioner’s office has brought formality to it. We can all pull our resources together.

“I’m ecstatic to be in a role where I can help. I’ve always wanted to help develop the kids and let them see the joy that baseball can provide. It’s a wonderful, wonderful sport. And I still think it’s a little different than other sports. You don’t have to be the biggest, strongest and fastest. The skills involved in baseball doesn’t discriminate on size. It’s wonderful to see a small kid step up and grab a bat and all of a sudden have great success. And all of a sudden you see the confidence level step up and everybody else wants to know how he did that. I’ve gotten a lot of joy out of it and I look forward to helping in a more formal way.”

Ripken wants to send the message to kids that it’s OK to play multiple sports, and he knows that it must be delivered to them at an early age as their options increase.

“At some point you’re going to have to specialize and you’re going to have to look at, ‘This is what I want to do,’ but I think you can get the concept of exposing and trying sports earlier and not getting locked into one. I guess in some ways baseball is competing with all the other sports, but I would like to say that your athleticism can be developed by choosing different sports.”