Can't Paucity Be a Result of Choice? - Lack of Black Baseball Players Isn't Just Systematic

Many arms will be raised and eyes will be rolled once again after Hank Aaron cried about the lack of African-American players in Major League Baseball.

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Many fingers will be pointed and damnations will be had once again after Hank Aaron voiced his concern about the lack of African-American players in Major League Baseball.

Next to PED/steroid use among players and the disparity of payrolls, this is arguably the sorest topic within the baseball community. It’s the sorest topic within this country’s borders, let alone its sports. The mere mention of black and lack sends us some folks into a blind rage; giving reason to post pseudo-anonymous incendiary comments online or craft coded messages in other visual media. They also rile up other folks who seem to wake up in the morning looking to be… well, riled up against anything that feels or looks wrong, even if the truth reveals something more.

There have been thousands of conversations about the lack of black baseball players; most, if not all can be cupped into one of the following opinions, theories and realities:

• Black families are unable to afford the commitments to the game: purchasing equipment, traveling, insurance (more of an institutional question than familial), etc.
• Black families have their priorities out of whack: they can “somehow” buy a Playstation 3, the new Kobes and some new rims, but still get welfare money and don’t eat.
• Baseball lacks new black superstars to make young kids pay attention: After Jackie & Larry broke the color line, Mays & Aaron carried the torch and passed it on to Jackson and Morgan, Griffey Jr. and Bonds, Jeter and… and… There’s no one to hand it to.
• Baseball carefully opened the gates to Latino players because black players were getting a bit full of themselves.
• For municipalities, it’s easier and cheaper to maintain a basketball court than a baseball field.
• These kids look for the instant gratification and the dollars in basketball and football; don’t appreciate the hard work to play this game.

Many of us fans and media share at least one of these concerns/excuses. They are convenient to return to every time this comes up because some want to ignore it and some want to force institutional changes.
The thing about progress is that at some point, fighting for and gaining the right to participate in something would eventually lead to future generations having the chance to do what couldn’t be done before.

In the case of baseball, progress led to the idea that black kids just may not be interested in the game.

Jason Heyward,
Top Rated Prospect in Baseball
Photo Credit to AJC

One of the more irksome, but unmentioned aspects of the paucity of African-American players in the game is that the game’s caretakers have this assumption that a finite number of available young athletes must become baseball players. This paucity would be even more glaring if this was 1970; where the sport dominated in the media (especially TV where there were just three networks and cable just came to the mainstream) and the population was 2/3 of what it is today (200+ million Americans).

Yet, this is 2010.

A black President was inevitable. A black man winning an Olympic gold medal in SPEEDSKATING was unfathomable… because you probably didn’t know it was a sport until last week.

Entertainment options are aplenty, to the point that kids don’t really know what to do with themselves. Yes, technology is the sticking point for curmudgeons and sociologists alike, but in terms of sports, there seems to be a new game cropping up somewhere in the world every other day. We’re fascinated by curling because most of us are trying to understand what makes it a sport, better yet an Olympic sport. Alongside the ‘traditional’ sports are all these ‘fringe’ sports that have grown in profile over the past twenty years.

We also have the same diversity in other realms of entertainment; especially for kids without an athletic bone in their bodies. There’s something for everyone in 2010 and the offerings continue to grow, even as the Great Recession takes hold on the world.

Look, considering this country’s racial history, the dearth of black baseball players – superstars or career minor leaguers – is painful to look at. In the face of the NFL and NBA, where the black populations mirror little else in this country, baseball’s stewards will never live this down. However, there will continue to be people who say that baseball is losing black athletes to these other sports and entertainment outlets.

No sport, no company, no one… is guaranteed to anyone in the population for its future. That sense of entitlement doesn’t help the cause.

Baseball is still a great sport and fans who truly love it will embrace whoever suits up in their uniforms. They’ll embrace any player on the roster as long as they help their teams win, even if they harbor uneasy sentiments about social issues in sports.

What they won’t embrace is a long-term debate on this issue. For all the great programs Major League Baseball has initiated to strum up interest in the game within the black community, what they need to do more than anything else is to understand the realities of 2010. Understand that promoting African-American stars, hosting tournaments in urban communities and merchandising itself onto the heads of kids across the country just may not be enough to interest every black child in America.

And that’s okay.

Past generations fought for so much to ensure that kids of all ethnicities can look forward to how they will participate in society. As the son of parents who have done as such, it’s not lost on me at all that men such as Aaron would love to see greater validation of that blood, sweat, tears and big flys hit so long ago. Yet, I also hope that it’s understood that arguably the greatest aspect of their legacy lies in the fact that millions of children who came after them were allowed another sort of opportunity; to look at the game in a different prism on its own merit…

And respectfully say thanks, but no thanks.

Fanatic

This was supposed to have been published a while ago with some editorial tweaks for another site. While it may seem foolish to have not done so, the voice of this post is one that I did not want to change very much. At the same time, with plenty on the plate these days, Scribe will need all of the updates it can get.

There are too many pieces in Draft mode and eventually, this week, they will be published in the proper outlets and time.

Anthony Erskine got lucky.

Very lucky.

The seventeen-year old teenager was the fan that ran onto the sideline just to say ‘hi’ to LeBron James over a week ago. The Cleveland Cavaliers’ forward had just been taken out of the game against the Knicks after dropping 50 points in front of the New York crowd when Erskine ran onto the court and actually got a hi-five from the star. It was a scary moment, for sure, but one that isn’t exactly uncommon in this era of sports.

This is reminiscent of a college course a few years back when the professor opened up the class with the etymology of the word ‘fan’:

There is some confusion as to the origin of the word fan. Paul Dickson, in his Dickson Baseball Dictionary, cites William Henry Nugent's work that traces it to fancy, a 19th century term from England that referred mainly to followers of boxing. It was originally shortened to fance then just to the homonym fans. The word emerged as an Americanism around 1889. Many assume that it's a shortened version of the word fanatic, and the word did first become popular in reference to an enthusiastic follower of a baseball team. (Fanatic itself, introduced into English around 1525, means "insane person". It comes from the Modern Latin fanaticus, meaning "insanely but divinely inspired".

It was reported that James had extended an invite to Erskine for the Cavaliers’ next game in New Jersey against the Nets. Erskine will likely face a lifetime ban from Madison Square Garden along with what the Manhattan District Attorney may come up with, but it didn’t faze him or James much. James seemed to have reveled in it after the March 7th game, saying that he respects the teen for his bravery to come on the court and share his adulation.

That may sound great if you were a high school point guard that just won the state championship.

That may sound awesome to someone who kicked the winning field goal that clinched a bowl game for a perennial laughingstock college football program.

For a pro athlete? Not so much.

James may have felt like a precocious teen himself – yes, it wasn’t very long ago - when he thought about inviting his admirer to the Nets game, but his peers may think otherwise. The NBA prides itself on not only the skill and physiques of its players, but its emphasis on entertainment. One of the aspects that create this game-as-entertainment aura is the fact that the fans sit so close to the players. Unlike other sports, there is no barrier that separates the athletes from the fans or at least slows fans down from entering the court unauthorized.

This makes you wonder if fans know the divide between admiring and obsessing.

Most of us sports fans tend to recognize that there is a proverbial buffer between us and the players. We wouldn’t exactly cross that for any reason, even if we ogle a player’s stats and highlights too much. So we wouldn’t dare cross the real buffers at a real game, right?

Unfortunately, there are a few fans that would. There are a few that have more than posters, jerseys and taped games. They obsess over any little news clip that mentions the object of affection. They might even buy a ticket in order to get closer to their ‘idol’. At some point, a light goes off and they find themselves hogtied and hoisted into a police car.

Just ask Günter Parche, the man who stabbed the 19-year-old tennis star Monica Seles during a match in 1993.

Or William Ligue, Jr. and his fifteen year old son, who attacked former Kansas City Royals first base coach Tom Gamboa in a 2002 game in Chicago against the White Sox.

Or even Craig Sager, the TNT and TBS sports reporter who, as a fan, actually waited for Hank Aaron at home plate shortly after the slugger hit his then-record 715th home run back in 1974.

Then, there's the fears of another Malice at the Palace. No further explanation needed.

This isn’t to say that Erskine or another LeBron James admirer would go the same lengths. It’s quite possible that the young fan really wanted to say hello and kick it after the game. Yet, if the horrendous Seles incident or other moments of infamy haven’t sunk in the minds of the sporting public, it may take something even worse.

Hard to believe LeBron would appreciate that.

Say What?!?!: Speaking of crazed fans, can someone explain this?