Black talent driven elsewhere
Major League Baseball teams celebrated Jackie Robinson on Monday, dressing every player on every team in jersey number 42 as they do every year.
Singer and actor Jamie Foxx commemorated the anniversary of Robinson’s big-league debut in Philadelphia, throwing out the first pitch at the Phillies-Mets game. MLB’s Twitter account sent out a Budweiser ad featuring the trail-blazing baseball star, adding the hashtag #ThisBudsForJackie. (The tweet was deleted after critics pointed out others managed to celebrate Robinson’s lasting impact without hawking a product that Robinson, who didn’t drink, would never use.)
But on-field numbers suggest MLB could do a better job marketing itself to African-American athletes. On opening day, African-American players composed just 7.7 per cent of big-league rosters, down from 8.4 per cent last spring. Those low numbers are less a trend than a new reality. The 1980s and early 1990s, when African-American players routinely made up more than 15 per cent of MLB rosters, aren’t coming back. “We have to find a way to get these kids back,” Hall of Famer Ken Griffey Jr. told USA Today. “We lost them to football. We lost them to basketball. We lost them to golf. People don’t see how cool and exciting this game is.”
Boosting the numbers at the big-league level is possible, but it means addressing cultural and structural issues beyond MLB’s direct reach.
This season started with 68 African-American players. Several teams had none. The Marlins and the Mariners each have three. The Blue Jays have one, pitcher Marcus Stroman.
Heisman Trophy winner Kyler Murray had a chance to join that small fraternity, but instead elected to return the $4.66-million (U.S.) signing bonus he collected as the Oakland A’s top draft pick last spring, and pursue an NFL career.
The move reflected poorly on the A’s, who watched a possible future star turn down guaranteed money to bet on success in a more dangerous sport. But Murray, who could be the first player selected in this month’s NFL draft, didn’t choose the NFL over Major League Baseball. He chose the NFL over the minors, and could make a solid argument that football, for all its physical risk, actually offered more guaranteed money and opportunity.
Football is the bigger, richer cousin that prompts two-sport high school stars in the U.S. to favour full scholarships over baseball’s partial rides. Factor in race and the impetus to abandon baseball for less expensive sports grows stronger.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median household income for white families in 2017 was $68,145. For Black households, the median was $40,258. And how do those numbers play out in the real world?
Growing up in Petal, Miss., Blue Jays prospect Anthony Alford played high school football for free. But elite baseball meant joining a club team at costs his family couldn’t cover, so they staged fundraisers to keep him enrolled. It worked out for Alford, who played college football before committing to baseball fulltime. But for a teenager with similar options and less dedication to baseball, a focus on football makes financial sense.
“Someone who’s in my shoes, their parents are going to push them to play football or basketball because it’s a full ride,” Alford told the Star last September.
“If I had to depend on baseball to go to college, there’s no way I would have made it. There’s no way my family could afford to cough up the extra money.”
Alford made those comments after a tumultuous summer in baseball and race relations. Over a four-week span in June and July, three white American big-leaguers — Trea Turner, Josh Hader and Sean Newcomb — were found to have authored homophobic and racist Twitter posts as teenagers.
Hader took his Twitter account private after users unearthed several tweets from 2012 peppered with the Nword. And if confusion still lingered about where a teenage Hader stood on racial issues, he also tweeted a white fist emoji along with the words “white power lol.”
All three men expressed remorse for their offensive posts. Newcomb said the tweets didn’t reflect his true beliefs, and Turner called his old posts “inexcusable.” And the racist tweets all dated back to the players’ teenage years, which is the point.
Robinson endured racism because he had accepted a mission to integrate the major leagues. Racial abuse was a job hazard, and he handled it with stoicism and restraint. But most people aren’t Jackie Robinson, nor should they have to be.
So imagine being a Black teenager sharing a team with white guys who post N-words and white fist emojis. Would you hang around, hoping they would outgrow their racism, or would you find another way to spend your summer? Would you accept that they really didn’t believe the racist stuff they tweeted, or would you focus on another sport?
At this point the question isn’t why so few African-American players make the majors. It’s whether lower levels of the sport are set up to attract and retain Black talent. Fix those issues and MLB’s dilemma will solve itself.
“If I had to depend on baseball to go to college, there’s no way I would have made it.” ANTHONY ALFORD BLUE JAYS OUTFIELDER