Daughter: MLB lags on issues

basketball, where you have a group and you can take a group action. Baseball players, if they speak out individually, they could be the only African-American player on their team and it could be a difficult spot for them to be in.”

Though no one in MLB is kneeling during the national anthem, or has been as outspoken as NBA stars, Sharon added that baseball players are still making contributions to the African-American community in other ways.

“Part of the protests, in NFL, NBA, is how are we getting these proceeds in from games and funneling them into the African-American community?” she said. “So baseball players do that through their own charities or work within communities that they’re playing. They’re in a much more difficult position to do something collectively. They collectively acknowledge we need to put more effort into reaching kids with color, and at this point, that’s as collective as we’ll see from them.”

The latter was the other aspect of Robinson’s legacy Sharon expanded on — paving the way for athletes of color to play professional sports. However, baseball has been struggling to generate interest within the African-American community in recent years, as evident by its lagging lack of representation in MLB.

The Mets, in fact, had no AfricanAmerican players on the roster for Jackie Robinson Day. Dominic Smith, who was a product of MLB’s Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities program (RBI), is on the 10-day disabled list.

While Opening Day rosters this season saw a slight increase from 7.1% to 7.8% of African-Americans represented in the league, Sharon said she is encouraged by the uptick and expects that it will continue.

“I’m encouraged, not just by the uptick, but by the fact we are seeing some of the programs producing players going into the draft from our academies and our RBI program,” she said. “I really do think that we should continue to see numbers rise. Most people feel we won’t get to 18%, but look at the overall picture. It was a color barrier, not just African-Americans excluded from baseball. So if you look at that, the impact of his legacy is still strong within baseball.”