Rosters no longer reflect student bodies
Historically black schools now fielding teams of diversity
Texas Southern pitcher Ryan Hawkins played football, basketball and baseball at nearby Foster High School.
He naturally stuck with the sport that took him the furthest.
“My senior year in high school, I just decided to stick with baseball,” the senior righthander said. “I was a dominant pitcher in high school and decided to see how far it would take me. I ended up at Texas Southern, and it’s worked out so far.”
It is a common enough reason that many other black athletes have chosen the baseball diamond over the football field or the basketball court. Still, the perception remains that black baseball players are few and far between.
TSU, a historically black college and university that competes as a member of the Southwestern Athletic Conference, begins play in the NCAA Tournament against LSU on Friday at Baton
Rouge, La., and the Tigers will do so with a roster that is much more diverse than what might be perceived.
Last season, 45.3 percent of the baseball players in the SWAC identified as black, 24.3 percent were listed as Hispanic/Latino and 24.0 percent identified as white. That is quite a contrast from 2007-08 when SWAC baseball was 73.5 percent black, 14.9 percent white and 11.0 percent Hispanic/Latino.
Texas Southern coach Michael Robertson said talent is talent, and coaches ultimately recruit the players who can best help their team win regardless of ethnicity.
But being the coach at an HBCU, Robertson still hears the questions about how diverse his team is: Where are the black baseball players?
“We think that they’re not playing, but they are playing,” Robertson said. “I think the problem more so is us landing them here in HBCU programs.”
Black participation in baseball has long been a topic for discussion — this year marks the 70th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball — and a look at this year’s MLB rosters reveals a glaring statistic — only 7.1 percent of players on opening-day rosters were black, according to a USA Today survey. That is the lowest since 1958. A study by the Society of American Baseball Research put the overall number at 18.3 percent in 1986.
“When I grew up in the 1970s, I could remember the All-Star Game,” Robertson said. “It was a field of blacks. That’s all I knew. I could tell you each one of them position by position.”
Conversely, Hawkins said he has seen more black players participating in youth baseball programs. He notes that the diversity on the Tigers’ roster is more the rule than the exception these days at HBCUs and not just only in athletics. At TSU, considered one of the nation’s leading historically black colleges, about threefourths of the school’s 10,000 students are black, with the rest a mix of Hispanics, whites and other races.
Robertson said black baseball players are there to be recruited, but that the opportunities for them relative to HBCUs have increased.
Robertson said there are many different avenues that provide exposure to young black baseball players. He cited the Double Duty Classic hosted by the Chicago White Sox. It showcases some of the top inner-city baseball players from around the country in an all-star game at Guaranteed Rate Field. He also noted that MLB’s Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) programs are thriving as well.
SWAC commissioner Duer Sharp said the conference hosts a talent showcase for high school student-athletes in front of SWAC coaches before the annual conference tournament.
“There are definitely players out there,” Sharp said. “Do you have to look a little harder for them? Yeah, sometimes you do just based on the area we’re in. The majority of our states are really football states. But I do think those student-athletes are our there, and they can be found.”
While the numbers may not reflect it at the major league level or with other NCAA Division I rosters, Robertson said jumping from high school to the MLB draft is becoming a more common option for black players along with the programs from schools in the power conferences.
“It’s very competitive, but to say the black ballplayer is not out there, I would have to say is not true,” Robertson said. “We’re still playing. You just may not see a lot of them at HBCUs. So we’re forced to go out and get players who we may not necessarily want to get but we need to get in order to have a successful program.”
Robertson and Sharp agreed that how a roster ends up being put together simply depends on the coach finding the right players to fit his team. However, Robertson said he strives to make sure to at least give black baseball players the opportunity if they don’t already get it.
“I’m obligated,” Robertson said. “I can’t speak for what North Carolina A&T is trying to do in their program. I can’t speak for Mississippi Valley. But for the most part I would say it has a lot to do with the leadership and who’s running that program.”