The Best Games for Kids to Play

In the tradition of the best of the old war-on-poverty programs, the Amateur Athletic Foundation has joined with Los Angeles city and the county to breathe new life into “dead parks.” There are about 66 of them, say city police and park officials. These parks were once oases of greenery and leisure before they were orphaned by deep budget cuts and escalating gang wars and engulfed by the press of urban concrete.

Now the Amateur Athletic Foundation, the group that already has dispersed millions of dollars from the surplus of the 1984 Olympics to Southern California sports organizations, has taken a modest but noteworthy step toward reinvigorating some of the city’s and county’s battle-scarred parks.

Starting next month, the foundation will begin funding park sports programs near public housing projects and low-income neighborhoods. Some of the “dead “ parks already have been cleaned and refurbished by the city and county; the AAF will help provide ongoing activities to keep these parks vital. In many middle-class neighborhoods, Little League or soccer clubs are founded and financially supported by parents or civic groups that include local businesses. But children who would use a park near Jordan Downs housing project, for example, have no such sources of support to tap. Enter the foundation, offering seed money of up to $10,000 per sport, to buy uniforms and equipment, train coaches and help parents organize clubs.

The foundation seeks to create a tradition of support for sports clubs, so that eventually the groups will be naturally self-perpetuating and self-supporting; it should be encouraged to cast its net even further to develop more sports clubs in needy areas of South Los Angeles and Central Orange County. Sport activities by themselves can’t deter criminal activity. But sports is surely one of several rods that can be used to break the grip of gangs.