CHICAGO — Curtis Granderson, a very professional outfielder, gives me a walking tour of his old haunts at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He points out the baseball stadium with a backdrop of the soaring downtown skyline, and two new Little League fields with artificial turf and light towers.

We’re on the South Side, and not so many blocks from here, mayhem rules too many young lives. This is a handsome oasis. In the summertime, dozens of black Little Leaguers from those often chaotic neighborhoods jam the fields here from sunup to sundown.

Granderson talked with two of those Little Leaguers last year. The boys, 8 and 9, told him they had never seen Lake Michigan, the vast and shimmering water that stretches all along Chicago’s eastern shore.

“We wanted to build a place where these kids could play and get a wider view of life,” Granderson says. “Then we take them on university tours and get a conversation going that they might not have.”