WWJD

No. 1 -- DNA tests traced my family back to Ethiopia 1,000s of years ago. However, my family has "always" been scottish and french (french-canadian of late). Do I skew the stats of African-Americans in newsrooms? Nope, so you better be as specific as you can and not group everyone together.
No. 2 -- Kyle Veazey did a story on this a couple years back that I always seemed to believe was one of the better packages on this subject I've ever read. I think he wrapped it around the SEC baseball tournament, and it got into the "cool" factor for inner-city kids. Damn good couple of stories.

 

There are a few good articles on this subject in the references section of Moses Fleetwood Walker's Wiki entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_Fleetwood_Walker.

Also some on William Edward White, who might have been the first black player to have played professional baseball: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Edward_White

Otherwise, I'm not sure how you would propose putting "more historical significance" on Cap Anson and his ilk.

 

Apologies.

 

There's not enough talent in this country anymore to stock 30 rosters, and it's doubtful there ever will be again. MLB has to keep spending abroad.

 

Did I read that right? With the rapidly growing population there is a reduction of talent?

 

Not in the habit of defending LJB, but I think the additional element that's left out of the equation is the expansion of opportunities in other sports and other (non-sports) fields.

 

No, because the whole problem 60 years ago was skin color. Dark skinned Latinos didn't play either.

 

Perhaps he meant with the rapidly growing wastelines there is a reduction of talent.

I blame video games.

 

The talent's just not here. But, hey, don't take it from me, talk to a scout.

And I blame all sorts of things for it, including video games.

 

And soccer, too.

No, I am not joking.

 

This HAS to be a db, but I haven't seen it mentioned that the economics of not having a draft on Latin American ballplayers tilts things in their direction. And it's not as though baseball has done nothing for city kids; there's the Urban Youth Academy in Compton, for example. And then there's the attendance factor for Latins vs. African Americans, which could inspire a fine 'chicken or the egg' argument.

I reckon JaMarcus Russell could have been a baseball pitcher if that had been his preference. I wonder whether a couple of extra baseball fields close to his home would have attracted him to the sport.

It's going to be a long and tedious process, bringing a guy like that to baseball instead of football or hoops. The Sabathia's are few and far between. Keep building fields and donating equipment, but don't look for success any time soon.

 

When I look at Jackie Robinson's legacy, I often look beyond the baseball field.

Yes, several sports (the NFL, for instance) were integrated prior to Robinson signing with the Dodgers, but those sports integrated *very* begrudgingly.

Jackie Robinson didn't just open the door for African-Americans in baseball, but in several sports. In 1947, there were *no* African-American basketball players in the Big Ten. That summer, Indiana (begrudgingly) recruited Bill Garrett, who started at IU for three years and integrated the conference. African-Americans weren't seen as being "disciplined" enough to play big-time basketball. Within a decade, we saw several segregated African-American schools win integrated state basketball tournaments (Crispus Attucks in Indianapolis, with Oscar Robertson, being the first in 1955). Not long after, Wilt Chamberlain and Jerry Harkness were leading their teams to NCAA titles and going on to NBA careers ... and Texas Western happened.

The NFL became more and more open to African-Americans after 1947 -- after years and years of being closed to them.

Jackie Robinson gave African-Americans a rallying point gave a large boost to the civil rights movement, which was already beginning, but would soon be in full swing in the 1950s.

And today, we could easily look beyond color when we watch professional sports. When I watch the Chicago Cubs -- which I do rather regularly this time of year -- I don't see Derrek Lee, Jacque Jones, Aramis Ramirez and Alfonso Soriano as being "black ballplayers," but just as baseball players. None would've been eligible for the Majors in 1947.

Unfortunately, baseball has become less and less attractive to African-Americans -- but it's become less attractive to white Americans, too. It's a combination of several things. First off, kids are getting involved in other things (anyone can go shoot hoops alone or with a couple of friends, but you at least have to have a pitcher to play baseball, and it takes several guys to put together a game, even with "ghost runners" and the old "right field is out" rules we used to play with in our well-shaped-for-baseball corner-lot front yard). One also has to blame parents -- in suburbia, the minivan-driving yuppie mommy set often puts Junior in a soccer uniform instead of a baseball one (for one, because baseball is a game of failure, while soccer is a game of running around and then eating ice cream; and also, because being a "soccer mom" connotes a status among the mommies that says "I fit in with the other yuppie suburban moms". Groupthink sets in).

The other is economics. The suburban kids who are playing baseball are playing a TON of organized baseball. They're spending upwards of $1-2K a summer on travel teams hopscotching the country playing 75-100 games a year, all while getting individual instruction at batting cages and hitting centers -- almost like tennis players. In our area, the first "travel" team was created 10 years ago. Its first class produced three MLB draft picks and several Div. I schollies. That's almost impossible for an inner-city kid (or a poor kid) to match up with, especially because baseball is very much a game where skills are learned through repetition and playing. Inner-city/poor kids often struggle to "keep up" with soccer and hockey, which have also become heavily-suburbanized in the U.S. (although Latino kids often play a lot of soccer). Not coincidentally, neither game has been a staple in inner cities for quite some time (the worst HS baseball & soccer teams in the Indy area are usually the inner-city public schools ... meanwhile, 8 miles away, several state powerhouses in both sports reside in the suburban public schools).

Meanwhile, anyone with $2.99 to buy a rubber basketball at Target or Wal-Mart can go down to the park (for free), shoot hoops and maybe find a game. Sure, there are suburban kids who get the AAU games and up-close training, but the playing field is a bit more level there because kids are playing basketball *every day,* at the city park or the neighborhood court. Football also has a generally-even playing field, because most football instruction takes place in school. There is no "travel football" all summer and not much specialized training, which doesn't give rich suburban kids a leg up.

And we see it in the results. You see tons of African-Americans in the NFL and NBA. There's a smattering in MLB and MLS. But even so, the legacy of Jackie Robinson is felt in all of them. He paved the way for African-Americans to be accepted throughout American sports. He just gets a lot of the glory because baseball was *the* major sport at the time (one can say that both basketball and football -- both of which have a high number of African-American participants -- have eclipsed baseball for popularity today). But his legacy continues, and it's seen every time you turn on a sporting event on TV.