Baseball, Race, and youth athletes

I saw the headline in ESPN’s feed and clicked through, prepared to be outraged — “Astros first W.S. team in 52 years without black player.” Outraged that the great Joe Morgan would be making a stink about the racial makeup of a baseball team. Outraged that ESPN would carry it. Outraged that race was even an issue. Nearly 60 years after Jackie Robinson, can’t we get past looking at the racial makeup of a team?

I’m glad I clicked through and read the whole aricle. Instead of anger, I found myself agreeing with Morgan. He’s not upset at the Astros organization for not having black players — he’s upset at black athletes for not choosing baseball.

Morgan and others see the problem is not that baseball fails to find black players, but that the black athletes from the inner city and elsewhere are failing to choose baseball. While only 6% of top college teams are made up of blacks, half of the players on those same college basketball teams are black.

The White Sox have several black players, black and hispanic coaches, and a Japanese player. But this isn’t by some grand design. The General Manager of the White Sox didn’t set out to build a diverse team, he set out to build the best team, and it happens to be racialy diverse. “We’re diverse because we’re looking for the best in talent and character,” said GM Ken Williams.

When Williams was a scout, he attempted to recuit minorities from the inner cities but had little success. I suspect that this is a symptom of a greater problem, namely that today’s youth aren’t choosing to play baseball. The Little League that my kids play in shrunk by 5% last year and expects to have 5% less players again this year. Although the league boundries include a large eastern European population there are almost no slavic players in the league. Baseball stuggles to have 300 kids sign up, but the local soccer club has well over 3000 youth members. The youth football team holds tryouts and turns away almost half of the interested kids. The baseball teams scrape to fill rosters.

Why is this? Football, soccer, and basketball are easier to play, for one. All you need is a ball and a place to play. You can adapt the games to the number of players you have available and the space you’re in. Baseball needs more open space and it’s harder to play if you’ve only got four guys.

Baseball is a more mental game on the surface than other sports. If you play a game of touch football, there’s action on every play for every player. You don’t have to know anything at all about soccer to join a pickup game at the park. Just kick the ball that way, toward those two trees over there. But with baseball, you have to understand the basic rules in order to make any sense of even watching a game, nevermind playing it.

When I was a kid I was in the street or in a friend’s backyard almost every day playing baseball. If it was a small space, we used wiffle balls and bats. Bigger spaces let us use a real bat and a tennis ball (so we didn’t break a window). First base was the front tire of that old Chevy over there. Second base, a spot of paint on the street. One of the batting teams’s gloves was home plate. Ghost runners reigned, but rarely needed because we usually didn’t stop running. Every hit was a home run or an out. The Mastercard commercial reminds me of my youth, but it’s a scene I rarely see now.

We need kids playing baseball. Not just the inner city minorities, but kids from all around the country.