Tony La Russa recognizes there are issues that affect the black community in the United States, but disagrees with Adam Jones, who said Major League Baseball is a "white man's sport."

"When he says it's a white, like elitist, kind of sport, I mean how much wronger can he be? We have tried so hard, the MLB, to expand the black athletes' opportunity," said La Russa, who spent two years working directly for Major League Baseball. "We want the black athletes to pick not basketball or football, but want them to play baseball; they should play baseball. And we're working to make that happen in the inner cities. We have a lot of Latin players. We have players from the Pacific Rim."

Only 8 percent of the league classifies as African-American. A total of just 69 black players were on the Opening Day rosters of the league's 30 teams.

La Russa agreed that there is an issue but said effort is being made.

"It's very difficult in the inner cities to get black athletes to play the game," La Russa said. "So what [MLB is doing is] expanding the opportunity so the black athlete gets a chance."

The Baltimore Orioles have 228 home runs with roughly three weeks left in the regular season.

The total is already the 36th-history in Major League Baseball history for a team.

With an average of 1.59 home runs per game, the Orioles would finish 2016 with 258 home runs.

That projected total would rank the Orioles third on the all-time list behind only the 1997 Seattle Mariners (264) and 2005 Texas Rangers (260).

Adam Jones thinks he knows why Major League Baseball players have been absent from the growing chorus of athletes who have publicly spoken out about problems they may see in the United States.

"Baseball is a white man's sport," Jones told USA Today.

"We already have two strikes against us already," Jones added, "so you might as well not kick yourself out of the game. In football, you can't kick them out. You need those players. In baseball, they don't need us."

Baseball has had an issue with the dwindling number of African-Americans playing the game. Only 8 percent of the league classifies as African-American.

"Baseball is numbers. It's 8 percent black. I didn't make that up," Jones later told the Baltimore Sun. "In football, basketball, the numbers are in the 60s and 70s. These aren't made up numbers. It just is what it is. I'm part of the 8 percent."