ESPN did a great job on Sunday night baseball with the Jackie Robinson story. Great interviews in the booth with an elegant Rachel Robinson, turbulent and dignified Hank Aaron, and always-edgy Frank Robinson. All these people, and Dave Winfield, too, lamented the fact that just 8 percent of MLB players now are black. The Astros and the Braves have no blacks on their teams, Joe Morgan said.
I miss the black players too. (Frank Robinson changed my life in ’66). But maybe it’s a sign of something good. All kids dream of athletic stardom. Most of us get that dreamed knocked out pretty early. Desperate kids hang on longer. Is the absence of black players a sign of black progress? Is the black middle class growing? Do black kids now have more conventional choices than they did a generation ago? ESPN ought to consider these questions.
Hello Phil,
your theory about the causes for this black decline is interesting and could be folloewd up with numbers on the topic, but I have to add something:
Who cares about how many blacks are in baseball? I mean needs there to be some quota, 10% blacks is fine and everything lower is some sort of problem? Or everything higher marks some milestone of black achievements?
Less blacks in baseball means also less blacks on steorids, forgive me the sarcasm.
Anyway: Any black person or any person at all who thinks that this is declining number is a sign of racism or is some sort of problem should consider his priorities and think about complaining about something meaningful like there are too much blacks in the military or that you are governed by a lying man who listens to orders from the Project For The New American Century.
It has to do with the dearth of urban baseball diamonds than anything else. Nowadays there aren't many parks and rec where kids can play due to budget cuts or whatnot.
Michael Wilbon (who is black and very sensitive to discrimination) in the Post remarks on unused ball parks in black sections of several cities. He doesn't think that lack of ball parks is a problem.
As far as the military; Steve Sailer has shown that white non-Hispanics have a higher death rate in Iraq-Afghanistan than all minorities. In fact 1.86 times higher than the average over all other minorities. It's because of the bias due to a high IQ threshold to get into the military. Have to keep in mind that only 61% of 25 year-olds are white non-Hispanic; you see a lot less than 39% minorities in those pictures in the papers.
Sailer on baseball and blacks:
"Similarly, a group can tire of a career or pastime even if its members tend to be better than their rivals, if they enjoy more glittering opportunities elsewhere. This helps explain the strange tale of blacks and baseball over the last few decades. Within pro baseball, integration has caused segregation by position. The Negro Leagues starred legendary pitchers like Satchel Paige and catchers like Josh Gibson, but African-American Major Leaguers now concentrate primarily in the outfield, where their edge in speed counts most.
Even more unexpectedly, after African-Americans fled Southern segregation, they began specializing in basketball and football at the expense of what had long been their favorite game. Pundits often blame a shortage of baseball diamonds in the inner city. Yet, immigrants from rural Mexico haven't forsaken fastballs for free throws. More astute observers point to the decline of patriarchy in the black ghettos, since a love of baseball is best passed on by fathers playing catch with sons. Perhaps most important, however, is that black Americans have found baseball, with its straight-line baserunning, less suited for expressing their creativity than basketball or football."