Gary Sheffield knows why African-Americans are disappearing from MLB

The esteemed social scientist has spoken:

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2891875

The nut graf:
In an interview with GQ magazine that's currently on newsstands, the typically outspoken Tigers designated hitter said Latin players have replaced African-Americans as baseball's most prevalent minority because they are easier to control.

 

Sure, Sheff. Has nothing to do with most Latin players hitting .300-25-90 when they're 19 years old.

It's all about ethnicity. Just like Jemele Hill the other night saying the Steve Nash-Robert Horry situation blew up because Nash was white. Had he been black, there would have been no outcry.

I love selective memory. It's fun.

 

Hmmm

Lastings Milledge
Delmon Young
Milton Bradley
Carl Everett
Barry Bonds
Elijah Dukes

I don't see what Sheff is talking about at all.

 

You know Gary, you can try to explain, with detail how you got tossed by the ump the other day by claiming that the home plate ump had it in for the brothas.

 

Who cares about Sheffield's opinions? ???

 

That's such a bunch of nonsense. There's no nefarious secret cause to this, its simply because the percentage of African American players good enough for the majors has dropped. And the likely reasons for that are:

1) a shifting cultural thing, football and basketball have become far more popular than baseball in the African-American community to a much larger degree than used to be the case. Consequently, quite many of the best African-American athletes who 35 years ago would've chosen baseball as their primary sport now choose to focus on football or hoops instead.

2) a Globalization thing. Because of the explosion in number of major leaguers from Venezuela, Japan, Dominican Republic, Korea, Panama, Cuba, Curacao, Puerto Rico, etc., there's simply fewer spots available in the majors for ALL Americans, be they white, black or whatever. I've taken a couple recent trips to Puerto Rico and was startled at how obvious it was that the kids there played a helluva lot more baseball than they do here. Drive around San Juan and all over the place you'll see impromptu pickup-like baseball games going on, sometimes even in the streets, much like you'd see pickup basketball games in our cities. It was eye-opening and went a long way toward explaining why the percentage of Latin American in the majors has grown so high.

It annoys me there are people trying to politicize this. I heard ole Jessie Jackson went to Atlanta and made some comments suggesting something analogous to a return to the Negro League days when great African-American players were being intentionally kept out. What bullshit. I defy Jackson or Sheffield to show me one African American player who's clearly good enough to be in the majors, wants to be there, but isn't being allowed in. They cannot do it.

 

bostonbred, we're making fun of the guy. IU, we've discussed this before several months ago. What you have written is not a surprise, nor should it be. Jackson has nothing else to do but to bitch because the Braves "just happened" not to have any black players on their roster. I guess he forgot about the Braves minor league system and see how many is down there.

Dude, you don't have to defy Sheffield to show you one African American player. Sheffield is looking right at him: himself.

 

Manny Ramirez, Jose Guillen, Raul Mondesi.

 

Umm, I do believe Sheffield was "allowed in" the majors. Might wanna brush up on the reading comprehension there, "dude".

 

They are easier to control -- but not in the sense Sheffield means. It is easier to get a young Latin American player to sign for relatively a small amount of money compared to an American draft pick. Young black players have it much better than young Latin players because they can hire agents or get a scholarship on the basis of their potential alone. Once you get to the majors, though, Sheffield's full of crap. Any team that makes player decisions based on race will cripple their own roster.

 

This comparison of supposedly unruly minority (African and Latin American) players who can't be controlled is meaningless and useless. I could just as easily list a bunch of white dudes like Jeff Kent, A.J. Pierzynski, Brett Myers, etc. etc. So what?

This board has been over this before, but the lack of African-Americans in baseball has much less to do with race and more to do with the fact that it seems that many young talented black athletes simply are not attracted to baseball.

 

Honestly, I have to believe it has just as much to do with a lack of youth baseball leagues and facilities in the inner cities as well. When I was a youngster in Brooklyn there were a few baseball parks and city leagues around my neighborhood, all of which disappeared right around the time my family uprooted and moved to Florida. I know the guy who ran one of the most popular city youth leagues moved to Long Island and there was the end of the most organized city youth league around Brownsville.

A lack of attraction is part of it, but a lack of exposure is also a major part.