Is the MLB neglecting African-American talent?
by Racialicious sports correspondent Luke Lee
The latest issue of Sports Illustrated features Cleveland Indians’ outfielder Grady Sizemore who is known for possibly being the best all-around young player in the game today and for his soon to be ownership of the Derek Jeter “most beautiful/popular man in baseball” crown (Seriously. The Indians sell “Mrs. Sizemore” t-shirts at the ballpark).
But anyways, to be honest I had no idea that he was multiracial Black and White like Mr. Jeter but it’s an interesting coincidence because as quiet and low-key as Sizemore is (the anti-Jeter, in that sense), one of his hopes is to “inspire other black athletes to play baseball.”
Unfortunately the article doesn’t dig deeper on that issue but it’s important nonetheless because it’s something that Black baseball players have been saying for years. Many even felt that the recent Jackie Robinson remembrance was a joke considering how little the MLB was doing today in terms of bringing baseball to Black communities in America while building academy after academy in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, to name a few.
But speaking of baseball academies in the DR, teams like the Indians and New York Mets have started to lead the charge in “social responsibility” (at least a little bit) in terms of providing potential recruits with a basic grade school education.
Don’t get your hopes up though, because the writer and even the New York and Cleveland brass are very honest in their intentions because this isn’t any sort of “look at the poor situation there, we’re just doing this without any ulterior motive!” kind of deal.
Rather, “It heightened our ability to understand and know the players we were evaluating, signing and developing…We wanted them to think analytically. Increasing aptitude is a competitive advantage.” admitted a Cleveland official.
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of 
David Koenig wrote:
It’s great if baseball people want to educate their players to be more analytical thinkers because they believe it will make them better players. I wouldn’t call that an ulterior motive. They’re helping achieve the goal of the team and giving the players useful life skills at the same time. What could be better?
Posted 16 May 2007 at 9:57 pm ¶
tasha wrote:
Is MLB neglecting African-American talent? Yes, but it’s not deliberate. Ironically, it’s far cheaper to take kids to baseball games than football or basketball games, yet more black kids are gravitating towards those sports for several reasons. One has to do with marketing. Baseball has always been the national pastime, and basketball and football had to try really hard to clamor for attention. It worked. Another reason has to do with the NCAA. Baseball and basketball are big revenue generating sports, so there are more full scholarships available for athletes who play those sports as opposed to the ever dwindling number of full and partial baseball scholarships. So, if you’re a parent with an athletic child, and you know that the odds of your son getting an athletic scholarship increase if he plays basketball or football, as opposed to baseball, you’re probably not going to steer your son towards baseball. Also, the NBA and NFL use the NCAA as their own personal farm teams. Before the new NBA statutes were enforced, a kid could go right out of high school, straight into the pros. While baseball does draft college players and a minute number of recent high school graduates, MLB developes most of its talent through its minor league system, and the average pro-baseball player spends more time in the minors before being called to the “bigs” than an NCAA athlete would spend in college before being drafted into the NBA or NFL.
In America, the development of baseball talent is becoming elitest, something that eventually only solidly middle and upper class children are going to be proficient at like hockey or gymnastics. More and more these days, it seems as if once a kid ages out of little league, the best place to go for coaching isn’t high school or the PAL or the ball courts near the housing development, but the Amateur Athletic League or AAU, and if you don’t have the money to play on one of these “traveling all-star” teams or whatever, then you’re going to miss out, and odds are it’s going to be harder to make the cut for the high school team, if you’re trying out against kids who play in AAU, where they practice longer, play against the best competition, and get the best coaching. So, if you’re a black kid in, say, the inner city, it makes less and less sense to seriously take up baseball. Now, MLB didn’t create the AAU, or fancy camps, or coaching clinics with former pro’s. No, savvy entrepreneurs did that, but I don’t see what MLB can do about it.
Posted 19 May 2007 at 8:00 pm ¶
s wrote:
Good point, Tasha. Although I never understood the point of trying to get more a of certain race to play a certain sport. What’s the gain? What does it matter? Is it for moral support, or role model material???
Posted 22 May 2007 at 5:24 am ¶
tasha wrote:
I hear what you’re saying about wondering why it’s important to get a certain race to play a particular sport. There’s an ongoing debate about why Tiger Woods is the only black player on the PGA, and the dearth of black pro golfers has been blamed on everything from single parent homes to an attitude in the black community that golf is for white people. I, of course, find such criticisms to be backhanded because a) golf can’t teach you anything that less expensive team sports can’t, b) golf has to be one of the least aerobic games ever invented, and c) my brothers and I grew up in an upper-middle class, black household, and though my father made us take up golf, for assimilation purposes, none of us had any desire to excel at it or play professionally. Golf bored us, quite frankly, and we concentrated on tennis and football. To me, the PGA doesn’t want to entertain the notion that golf is boring, and that even blacks with money and country club memberships think it’s a snore. Must we do everything white people do?
However there is some merit to the “fatherless homes” argument, but once again, MLB can’t do anything about that. I visit my parents in Florida often, and I love to watch little league, MLB spring training, and of course AAU. The only thing that could possibly be more important than football in Florida is baseball. These kids don’t play baseball; they live it, and these baseball fathers are crazy! They’re building pitching mounds and batting cages in their backyards. IMG, the sports management agency that owns the Bollettieri tennis academy, has a baseball school, and these fathers uproot the family so junior can train there. Mom’s not going to go to that much trouble for her kid’s athletic career. She’s sane.
Think of it this way. I was just reading an article in NYT about how a certain Catholic school, which once catered to children of working class parents, is closing its doors temporarily, so it can reopen as an upscale academy charging 10-12K a year. Now, the whole point of that type of inner city Catholic school was to provide a solid, parochial education for the poor, but now, the poor are being priced out of a Catholic education. Like, isn’t the church supposed to help the poor? The way I see it, there are always going to be black and brown faces in baseball if for no other reason than the influx of Afro-Latino players from South America, but baseball is supposed to be the Ameican “national pastime,” really democratic, accessible to the masses. It would be a real shame if an obstacle standing in the way of becoming proficient at such a uniquely American institution was money, especially given the fact that baseball has been integrated for the past 60 years. Also keep in mind that even low-income blacks spend a lot of their income on consumer goods, and they’re tastemakers. It’s no coincidence that the popularity of basketball and hip-hop are intertwined. Basketball jerseys and shoes became part of the uniform of urban culture. Imagine if these rappers had championed baseball in the same way? Would golf be as popular today without Tiger Woods?
Posted 22 May 2007 at 11:04 pm ¶