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MLB To Study Decline of Blacks In Game

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Boom_70, Apr 10, 2013.

  1. I Should Coco

    I Should Coco Well-Known Member

    Good points about the costs of travel ball, equipment.

    I think it starts even younger than that. In urban, suburban and even rural areas, how many games of pickup baseball, 500, even pitching against the school wall do you see?

    It's not just young black kids who aren't playing as much baseball.
     
  2. Alma

    Alma Well-Known Member

    No.
     
  3. doctorquant

    doctorquant Well-Known Member

    It's a pretty steep curve to play on one of those better suburban high school teams, whence emerge many/most U.S.-born prospects. One of my closest friends has a son who supposedly has a pretty good pitcher's arm. There's some athletic talent that runs in that family -- my friend played entry-level Div. 1 basketball and his older brother made it to AA as a shortstop -- but the expectation around here is that you have to have been on (and continue to play on) a "select" (or some such thing) team if you're going to even try out. So, by and large, your whole family has to put its life on hold for years on end just for you to have a chance to play high school baseball. That really takes a lot of kids, black or white, out of the mix. I know that had my son showed some talent in Little League (short answer: he didn't), I'd have been very reluctant to make the kind of commitment required to give him a chance to suit up.
     
  4. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    That isn't just a baseball thing, though. Basketball is the same way, as are soccer and football and probably every sport.

    The long and short of it being more kids are dropping out of sports where they used to rotate a season at a time. The white kids are choosing baseball and the black kids are choosing football or basketball, but overall everybody is playing fewer sports than they used to.
     
  5. DanOregon

    DanOregon Well-Known Member

    It's simple economics. Sure baseball offers a longer career at more pay, but that money is further down the road. Basketball and football promise a quicker return.
    I think if you are an athlete with options, you go with the college scholarship that covers everything that can make you a millionaire within three years.
    Now if baseball offers a mil out of high school, you take the cash. Otherwise - go to college.
     
  6. Hey Diaz!

    Hey Diaz! Member

    I agree about the lack of baseball diamonds in urban areas, but what about the money?

    If you're a good enough high school basketball player, you're in the NBA the summer after you graduate. Football, it's college for 3 and then the NFL.

    In baseball, you really have to work to get paid, especially if you don't get a big bonus after being drafted. It's conceivable, though more and more unlikely with teams buying out arbitration years, that an All-Star caliber major league player won't make big dollars until around their ninth year as a professional (2-3 years in the minors, 6 years pre-free agency). On the other side of the pendulum, you have the NBA and a one-time financial system where fucking Kwame Brown could make $33 million before his 25th birthday.

    Most great athletes might be able to excel at multiple sports, but so many choose the easy route to get paid. The way things are currently set up, baseball isn't it.

    EDIT: What Dan said.
     
  7. Boom_70

    Boom_70 Well-Known Member

    With football a kid who hasn't stepped on the field until his freshman year in HS can still catch up if he has some raw physical skills. In baseball , hockey, basketball if you have not been playing and learning from a young age forget it with perhaps the exception of a 7 footer for basketball.
     
  8. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    I wouldn't say that for hoops, Boom. If you can run and jump, they'll find a spot for you.

    But baseball is the least athletic and most skill-specific of those sports. It's more like golf in a lot of ways. You're not going to hit elite pitching just by being stronger and a faster runner. So yeah, the time required is a deal-breaker too.
     
  9. Boom_70

    Boom_70 Well-Known Member

    In the way of anecdotal story Colin Powell considers himself of West Indian descent.
     
  10. HanSenSE

    HanSenSE Well-Known Member

    Can I get a prop bet on if this study will be done before the blue-ribbon committee finishes the study on the A's moving to San Jose?

    Seriously, even at entry level, organized sports are getting expensive. Does every player need his/her own bat bag and bat, or simulated MLB uniform?
     
  11. Bob Cook

    Bob Cook Active Member

    I looked at the yearbook for my son's high school (most famous as Dwyane Wade's old school, but most appropriately for this conversation, the alma mater of Dave Dombrowski, who's heading Selig's committee), which is 53 percent white, 29 percent black, 12 percent Hispanic and 5 percent Asian. To look at the baseball team, you would think my son goes to a nearly all-white school. To look at the basketball team, you'd think it was nearly all-black. The bowling team has more black kids than the freshman, sophomore and varsity baseball teams.
     
  12. dog eat dog world

    dog eat dog world New Member

    This is really simple. I talked to a Juco coach about it the other day and he said what I've thought for years. These select teams are ruining little league. Its making competitive imbalance as well as cost imbalance which drives a lot of poor kids (white, black or other) out of it. The system drives volunteer coaches away who get burned out of competing with these teams with the orphan registrants who weren't picked up by a traveling team. A kid can hone basketball skills in his own neighborhood if there's a paved court available.
     
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