Syracuse, N.Y.— A couple hundred Syracuse school children created a chorus of laughter and joy playing baseball at Burnet Park on Friday afternoon.

It was the perfect soundtrack for an appearance by the man who sits at the top level of that sport, Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred.

Manfred, a native of Rome, swung by to mingle as a show of support for the RBI (Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities) program, a nation-wide initiative that the sport helps fund and promote to encourage youths to become involved in formal or casual baseball.

Those youths' continued ability to emanate such unbridled enthusiasm and draw boundless fun from the game could be considered a foundation for the program's success. Washington outfielder Bryce Harper, the current hard-charger into a new, more flamboyant, era of the game, dusted off that issue recently when he opined that baseball needs to promote the type of fun and flash that appeals to the current generation.

Harper has also given post-game interviews wearing a baseball cap bearing the message ""MAKE BASEBALL FUN AGAIN.''

"Baseball's tired," he told ESPN the Magazine. "It's a tired sport, because you can't express yourself. You can't do what people in other sports do. I'm not saying baseball is, you know, boring or anything like that, but it's the excitement of the young guys who are coming into the game now who have flair. If that's Matt Harvey or Jacob deGrom or Manny Machado or Joc Pederson or Andrew McCutchen or Yasiel Puig — there's so many guys in the game now who are so much fun.

"Jose Fernandez is a great example. Jose Fernandez will strike you out and stare you down into the dugout and pump his fist. And if you hit a homer and pimp it? He doesn't care. Because you got him. That's part of the game. It's not the old feeling — hoorah ... if you pimp a homer, I'm going to hit you right in the teeth. No. If a guy pimps a homer for a game-winning shot ... I mean — sorry."

Far from planting a flag at the other end of the spectrum, Manfred, the very face of baseball's establishment, sounds like if Harper wants to start a parade he'd be quick to fall right in line.

"I think we have a great generation of young stars, maybe the best talent to arrive in the game as a group in decades,'' he said. "Our players have always defined what's appropriate on the field. And I think players like Bryce and Kris Bryant and Clayton Kershaw will decide what's appropriate in terms of those unwritten rules. It probably will be a little more exciting and it's probably a good thing for the game.

"I do think it's generational. Kids look at our games differently. You see in other sports players being very demonstrative. And I think Bryce actually made a really important point for us to think about.''

And is it OK in the commissioner's eyes for players to show a little more emotion?

"It is,'' he said.

Here are some of Manfred's thoughts on other pressing issues in the sport:

Raising the strike zone



"We're having some conversations with our competition committee about the possibility of raising the strike zone. Technology can have unintended consequences. We have a very good system that evaluates umpire strike zone performance. The application of that technology over a period of time has actually driven the strike zone down below where it has historically has been called. And we're thinking about whether we need to make a little correction for that.''

Bolstering minor league attendance



"Look, minor league baseball draws 41 million people a year around the country. In general, minor league owners are great promoters of the game. It's an important part of marketing the game. And the places that are most successful are those places that are able to establish ties with major league clubs that resonate in the local community. And I think Syracuse historically has been, and will be, a great minor-league city.''

The continued pursuit of drug cheaters



"First thing is that performance-enhancing drugs are, and will continue to be, an issue for all sports. It's not a baseball issue. It's a sports issue. We feel that we have, and the World Anti-Doping Agency agrees with us, the best anti-doping testing program in professional sports. Because the program's so good, if players make a bad decision, we're going to catch them. But we never approach the problem from the perspective that we're going to solve it. We approach it from the perspective that it requires constant vigilance.''



The RBI program's impact on diversity in the game

"The success of the programs we look at two ways. No. 1, overall youth participation. And for the first time in years, baseball participation among young people was up last year almost four percent.

"The second thing we look at, because the RBI programs are obviously in inner cities, underserved areas, is we're starting to see more and more diverse players getting to the elite level. Twenty-five percent of our first round last year was African-American and almost all those kids had some connection to either the RBI program or one of our urban youth academies.''

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