Cal reinstates three sports, but not baseball

I don't know if you got the memo, but the days of kids learning baseball by playing stickball on the street are long over.

Personally, I know a couple of college coaches -- one a former high school teammate -- who left coaching to go into business giving private lessons. They both claim to make MUCH more showing little Jr. how to throw a curveball at the local baseball academy than they did coaching a college team. I know one of them makes six figures.

 

It's also usually a partial scholarship, which means the parents lost money on the deal.

 

And of the American-born players who helped the Giants the most: Cain, Lincecum, Posey, Burrell, Huff, Ross, Wilson as the prime examples, Lincecum, Huff, Posey, Wilson and Burrell all played college baseball.

Baumgartner never would have been a college senior. He would have been drafted after his junior year (2009) had he attended a D-I school, or could have signed in 2007 or 2008 out of a JC. And he is the exception for a 2007 high school graduate signee, not the rule.

And yes, I'm quite aware that stickball and the sandlot don't develop most scholarship baseball players anymore.

 

To me, the quality of play in college baseball is pretty good, especially because the demographic that plays the game.

An upper middle class kid is more likely to go to school on mom and dad's 529 plan plus the partial baseball scholarship than he is to take the bus-ticket-and-a-chance money you get when you are drafted in the 20th round. So, to me, a higher percentage of capable American players play college baseball now than in the past.

Having said that, there are fewer capable American players, mainly because lower middle class kids African Americans can't afford to join the country club you need to join to compete.

 

I'm really surprised Cal is dropping baseball. Used to love going to the Bear's Lair - getting beered up and stumbling down to Evans for a Friday afternoon game and yelling at Stanford pukes.

 

My mom went to Cal and we used to go to all the football games and a bunch of the basketball games. I've hated Stanford since I could walk. Great school, don't get me wrong.

 

Blacks kids aren't playing college baseball for a couple of reasons: 1) the best ones decide to sign professionally out of high school, and 2) there are no full scholarships. Most scholarships are between 25 and 50 percent because baseball coaches must spread 11.7 scholarships over 27 players. Contrast that with college football and basketball, where the free rides are plentiful and the TV exposure is much greater. Last season only nine percent of the players in MLB were black. I don't hear anyone calling MLB a country club.

As for the thought that nobody cares about college baseball, visit an SEC ballpark. I still understand it doesn't have the broad appeal of football and basketball, but what non-revenue sport does? And tell me the diversity numbers on those sports, too. Baseball would look like the United Nations next to many of them.

 

Havercamp I wouldn't say there are "NO" full scholarships. A coach can pass out some full (or close to full) rides to a few studs and then ask the rank and file to basically be walk-ons. I have seen that approach taken.

When he was at Tulane, Michael Aubrey was on either a full ride or very close. Of course, he was the three-hole hitter batting .400 with 20 home runs and a 10-game winner on the mound as a LHP so Tulane really got its money's worth. Rick Jones built a lot his good teams around scholarship-eating studs like Nick Bourgeois and Bogusevic and a few others. Most were expected to be pitcher/hitter types, but some of them settled into one role or another. Nick was a dominant high school hitter, but he was just a pitcher at Tulane.

To fill out the roster, Tulane has always done a good job scouring upper-middle class schools nationwide. With baseball being such an upper-middle class sport these days, you can find some developed ballplayers who are from families that can afford Tulane and value the high-end private education they'll get from Tulane.

So the approach has been, split the scholarship money around a hand full of studs who can make a difference (particularly if they can get it done on the mound and at the plate) then have a bunch of role players who are basically preferred walk-ons earning little to no scholarship money.

Look at the top 25 every year and you see a lot of high-priced private schools like Stanford, Rice and Tulane. How the heck do these schools compete giving out only 11.7 scholarships? It says everything about the demographic of the average ballplayer these days.

I would imagine this is a formula A LOT of these private schools use. Public schools are more likely to save scholarship money for out-of-state kids and they get in-state kids on state tuition assistance program. In Louisiana, for example, there's a program called TOPS that will pay for the tuition at state universities for kids who academically qualify for it. So you better believe that LSU, ULL and all the other state schools will be looking for players they can put on TOPS, then maybe give them a scholarship for books and meals. That saves a lot of scholarship money to go after an out-of-state stud.

 

Don't forget 3) A lot of black players are steered away from baseball at an early age. Some of it is the expense of playing on travel teams, or the lack thereof in inner cities and poor black rural communities, and some is pressure from peers and adults that steers them toward football and basketball. Many simply don't develop the skills necessary to play at the college level and beyond.

There's also a fascinating flipside to this. Because there's so few black players, most of the best ones are snatched up by the powerhouse programs or the majors. By the time you get down to the low-level historically black schools, the talent well is really dry.
To compensate for that, a lot of coaches at HBCUs recruit white players by offering minority scholarships. If they can get a kid who's been passed over by bigger programs and wants a chance to play, it can be a drawing card.

 

That is true, but if an HBCU is smart they can angle for talented black players the way a lot of mid-majors do, by offering more scholarship money to the black prospect than the big school is willing to offer. I wonder how the NCAA counts minority scholarships to white players. Do they count any of that money as part of the 11.7? Obviously there is some kind of advantage to offering those. A couple of years ago, a team I covered hosted MEAC member Delaware State and I was shocked at this bunch of white guys who showed up. I was thinking "Is this Delaware, or Delaware State?"

 

Attended a few Cal football games in the past few years and always hit the Bear's Lair. Great, great place.

 

Not any more. The rules have changed. Every player on scholarship must receive at least 1/3 or 1/4 of a full ride, I forget which, to prevent exactly what you described.

Several of the historically-black colleges now have baseball and softball teams that have quite a few white/hispanic players on them; Bethune-Cookman is a great example. Kids want to play Division I sports, kids want scholarships, and the schools must field Division I baseball/softball teams to stay in that division. Kids go where the scholoarships are available.