Curtis Granderson, Andrew
McCutcheon and comedian Chris Rock have all recently expounded on the new
problem baseball has with African Americans.
This issue is not one of discrimination reminiscent of the pre-Jackie Robinson
era, but rather the problem the game itself is having reaching the overall
black community.
The numbers are pretty
staggering. While the US Census Bureau
puts the number of African Americans in this country at a fairly steady 13% of
the population, it wasn’t that long ago that representation in the game of
baseball exceeded 20%. Today it is at
just 8% and falling. That represents an
average of just about 2 black ballplayers per club. Some don’t even make that standard. Chris Rock, in his recent “Real Sports”
segment cited the World Champion San Francisco Giants and the St. Louis
Cardinals both having rosters wtihout a single black player. (Given the recent issues in nearby Ferguson,
not having any African Americans on a St. Louis-based team is a little incongruous).
While Rock maintains that
even poor Dominican children can play the game, thus demonstrating it is not an
issue of economics, McCutcheon begs to differ. He said that in the USA the days are gone
when someone simply walks up to a pickup game, spots the player with the best
raw talent and mentors him into becoming a superstar. Today’s games are heavily marketed and
sanctioned, that include traveling squads (at the player’s expense), YouTube
video productions (at the player’s expense), social media campaigns and
personal websites, specialized conditioning and training (just like the Barwis
program for the Mets’ major leaguers) at their expense, and so forth. Therefore he said there is a huge economic
disconnect between more affluent children’s chances of getting noticed and the
much slimmer opportunities available to someone who cannot fund these new
approaches.
McCutcheon
continued, “When
you’re a kid from a low-income family who has talent, how do you get
recognized? Now, you have to pay thousands of dollars for the chance to be
noticed in showcase tournaments in big cities. My parents loved me, but they
had to work hard to put food on the table, and there wasn’t much left over.
They didn’t have the option of skipping a shift to take me to a tournament over
the weekend.“
On Jackie Robinson Day Curtis
Granderson lamented, “We consider baseball the American pastime,"
said Granderson. "And if it's going to be the American pastime, obviously
the African American population is at 13%. So the numbers aren't matching up
accordingly. The big thing is, there's other interests that kids are involved
in, and we've just got to continue to keep baseball as one of those interests
that kids want to play."
Commissioner Rob Manfred has
vowed to work towards marketing baseball to inner city youth but that may be
more of a gesture to creating fans rather than players as it does not address
the economic challenges of modern youth baseball player marketing.
Another disconnect is how
baseball is perceived at the college level. Stillman College, one of the oldest
predominatly black colleges in the country has 36 players on its baseball team
but only one of them is African American.
Howard University eliminated its baseball program altogether.
McCutcheon points out the economic disparity
and how it forces some players into other sports, “And you know what’s crazy? Even
despite all the breaks I got with baseball, I probably wouldn’t be a Major
League player right now if I didn’t tear my ACL when I was 15. I thought I was
going to play college football. Why? Economics. If I could’ve been a wide
receiver for a D-I school, I would have chosen that path because of the promise
of a full scholarship. The University of Florida offered me a baseball
scholarship, but it only covered 70 percent of the tuition. My family simply
couldn’t afford the other 30 percent. The fact is, no matter how good you are,
you’re not getting a full ride in baseball.”
However, the economics at
work in the Latin American countries do not play out the same way in the
USA. Said McCutcheon, “Fixing that problem is complicated,
but when I was a kid, I looked at baseball players growing up in Latin America
with a lot of envy. If you’re a talented kid in the Dominican Republic or
Puerto Rico, a team can come along and say, “We’re going to sign you for
$50,000 and take you into our organization and develop you, feed you, take care
of your travel.” To me, as a 14-year-old kid whose family was struggling, that
would have meant everything to me. I would have taken that deal in a second.”
Consider also the cost of
attending a game. It wasn’t that long
ago that the Mets faithful were incensed to hear Sandy Alderson say the team
would spend more when there were more fannies in the seats. The
average cost to attend a baseball game now is now $212.46 for a family of
four. For many people that number is
simply too high to fit within their budget.
In addressing the image of
the game, Rock was critical of the trend towards retro-designs for baseball
stadiums that evoke images of the “good old days” which, for African Americans,
were not the same bucolic reverie that they were for many Caucasian people. In fact, right now the demographics of a
typical baseball TV viewer shows that 5 out of 6 are white and the average age
is 53. Chris Rock said, “That’s a Tea
Party rally!”
To buttress his argument, he
pointed out that Little League participation has fallen 20% since 1995
nationwide and World Series viewership is down 50% over the same period of
time. You’d think someone would be
paying attention to these trends to figure out how to change course.
Rock further criticized the so-called
unwritten rules of baseball which seem to run contrary to other sports. He suggested that the Dodgers instructed
flamboyant outfielder Yasiel Puig to learn how to duck if he was going to keep
up his swagger. That differs greatly
from football, soccer, basketball and most any other sports where scoring is
indeed a cause for celebration. In Korea, he rightly points out, flipping a
bat after a home run has become performance art.
He also picked on the pace of
the game issue, citing a half inning with the Mets last season that lasted 22
minutes without a run being scored. The
perception is that the game is boring yet precious little is being done to
change its appeal. Hopefully the powers that be
are paying attention. After all, it is
often the African American community that helps set the tone for what younger
people consider cool. If the game
continues to lose this segment of the population then its fan base will
continue to shrink in the future.
1 comment:
This is the best article I've seen about this subject in long time. When I interviewed Courtney Hawkins, I asked him about this and his response might have well been word for word what McCutchen said. I hope this can get fixed from the bottom up...ie making showcases more accessible, exposure easier and making our scouts more mobile to get to those off-rural places that are tough for kids to escape to get noticed.
Nicely done, Reese. Will be sharing this.
Post a Comment