Honoring Jackie Robinson

[bob jenkins]

Originally Posted by SAump

Anybody wondering why anyone would blame our society on the declining numbers of quality black baseball athletes?

I don't think there are many people who are wondering this.

[JRutledge]

Originally Posted by bob jenkins

I don't think there are many people who are wondering this.

Not trying to be funny Bob, but there are many people wondering this. It has been talked about for years in the wake of what Jackie Robinson did in baseball. Also this conversation was elevated because of the anniversary of Jackie. I know Major League Baseball has been trying to develop a program to go to many urban areas to help youth baseball programs that would (in their opinion) develop Black baseball players. I personally feel their efforts are pointed in the wrong direction, but that is my opinion. Maybe you are not aware of this, but many people are concerned about this issue.

Peace

[GarthB]

Originally Posted by JRutledge

Not trying to be funny Bob, but there are many people wondering this. It has been talked about for years in the wake of what Jackie Robinson did in baseball. Also this conversation was elevated because of the anniversary of Jackie. I know Major League Baseball has been trying to develop a program to go to many urban areas to help youth baseball programs that would (in their opinion) develop Black baseball players. I personally feel their efforts are pointed in the wrong direction, but that is my opinion. Maybe you are not aware of this, but many people are concerned about this issue.

Peace

Jeff:

I think you misread Bob's intent. He wasn't saying it's not a concern. I believe he was responding that not many are "wondering" about the issue, instead they "know" the issue.

[JRutledge]

Originally Posted by GarthB

Jeff:

I think you misread Bob's intent. He wasn't saying it's not a concern. I believe he was responding that not many are "wondering" about the issue, instead they "know" the issue.

I think if people knew the answer they would do more to alleviate the "problem." I personally do not see this as a "problem." I think it is the natural evolution of things. There was one time when baseball was the main sport in this country. Now baseball has fallen big time where hardly anyone watches a national broadcast anymore as they did when I was young. It also does not help when one of the most dynamic athletes was not a baseball player and many of the up and coming athletes that everyone knows are also not baseball players.

There was a story on ESPN last week about the Historically Black Colleges which focused on Florida schools like Bethune-Cookman (I have a cousin attending there this year) and Florida A&M (My mom got her undergraduate degree as did her sister and her widowed husband) where the baseball teams hardly had a many Black players on the teams. There was even some coverage of a mostly Black High School where the football and basketball teams were entirely Black but the baseball teams had only a couple of Black players. Now the subjects in those stories did not have any definitive answers, so I do not know how anyone has figured out this problem.

Peace

[GarthB]

Jeff:

This time the miscommunication is my fault. I didn't mean to suggest that Bob or anyone knew the answer.

What I should have said is:

I believe he was responding that not many are "wondering" if there is an issue, instead they "know" there is an issue.

GB

[bob jenkins]

Originally Posted by GarthB

Jeff:

This time the miscommunication is my fault. I didn't mean to suggest that Bob or anyone knew the answer.

What I should have said is:

I believe he was responding that not many are "wondering" if there is an issue, instead they "know" there is an issue.

GB

Actually, I was responding to a literal reading of SA's words -- I don't think many are wondering why anyone would blame our society ON the declining number of black baseball players. In fact, I don't think anyone is blaming society ON the decline.

Now, some might wonder, or blame, society FOR the decline.

Originally Posted by JRutledge

I think if people knew the answer they would do more to alleviate the "problem." I personally do not see this as a "problem." I think it is the natural evolution of things. There was one time when baseball was the main sport in this country. Now baseball has fallen big time where hardly anyone watches a national broadcast anymore as they did when I was young. It also does not help when one of the most dynamic athletes was not a baseball player and many of the up and coming athletes that everyone knows are also not baseball players.

There was a story on ESPN last week about the Historically Black Colleges which focused on Florida schools like Bethune-Cookman (I have a cousin attending there this year) and Florida A&M (My mom got her undergraduate degree as did her sister and her widowed husband) where the baseball teams hardly had a many Black players on the teams. There was even some coverage of a mostly Black High School where the football and basketball teams were entirely Black but the baseball teams had only a couple of Black players. Now the subjects in those stories did not have any definitive answers, so I do not know how anyone has figured out this problem.

Peace

I think you have a lot of societal dynamics changing.
- TV exposure - in the 60's it was almost exclusively baseball; the NBA was only about 10 teams, the NFL was only about a dozen, and hadn't merged with the AFL. Kids played around on the sandlot in the summer. The number of opportunities was smaller. Fathers played catch and tried to teach some of the finer points.
- Today, there are more outlets - between baseball, basketball and football you have some 90+ teams. The focus is no longer on baseball. In the last 20 years there has been a great influx of latin players, a lot of whom get the benefit of playing year round. This influx has reduced the number of open spots.
- Players - the emergence of Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Charles Barkley, LeBron James, Shaq, and others as people that other's want to be just like has gravitated more towards basketball. The same applies to football. By comparison to a lot of people, baseball may seem boring with not enough action or excitement. Baseball is not the kind of sport where players butt helmets, do funky dances after a score, spike the ball, that kind of thing. About the most you see is a high five. No glamour
- Free agency - Baseball is no longer the only place you can make a lot of money or sign lucrative endorsement deals.
- Entertainment value - Baseball is too sedate by comparison to be "entertaining" despite the fact that I love it. People gravitate to what they see as fun and entertaining.
- Demographics and society in general - go anywhere in the US and try to find a pickup game of baseball. Everybody has other activities, parents work, a lot of single parent homes. When I was 16 we used to be able to get enough guys in the neighborhood for two full 9-player teams. Now you're lucky if you can get 5 kids from the same neighborhood to do anything, except maybe basketball where there is usually at least one court in the surrounding blocks. For whatever reason, it's not that there aren't talented black baseball players out there, I'm just not sure that there are enough that are interested in pursuing it as a career. As a kid growing up in suburban Chicago, I didn't go to school with one black student until I was in high school, and the one that did played basketball, and he was a starter and very popular. I used to come home from school and watch the end of Cubs games. There was a lot of black players then, but as a kid I was only concerned with whether the Cubs won. Now, still in the suburbs, my 16 year old son goes to a US Department of Education Blue Ribbon high school that is somewhere between 30% and 40% minority. His closest male friends are one black, two hispanic, one Egyptian, and three white.

When it comes right down to it - kids have so many more choices. As long as the demographics of the US continue to change, the make-up of players in any sport will continue to evolve. When, if ever, it will level off, who knows.

[JRutledge]

Originally Posted by BigGuy

When it comes right down to it - kids have so many more choices. As long as the demographics of the US continue to change, the make-up of players in any sport will continue to evolve. When, if ever, it will level off, who knows.

I am in my mid-30s. When I was a kid we played sports in the back yard before we even played any organized sports. We did this almost every night after school when the weather was good. I played varsity sports in baseball, basketball and football. We did not have AAU and travel baseball as it is today. Even if we did not play organized sports, we played different variations of sports. I also grew up playing a lot of video games. I owned an Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Commodore 64, Nintendo Entertainment System (the original), and a Sega Genesis. I still own a Playstation (original), Playstation 2, XBOX and I have a XBOX 360. The games have gotten more realistic and lifelike and I think kids play those much more than I did when I was a kid. When I played Atari Football on my Atari 2600, the NFL did not endorse the product and the players and football was a couple of dots on a screen. And if you look historically at the one sport that has had the worst video games it happens to be baseball. Madden Football is an institution and if nothing else players that know little about everything about a real football player, they know a lot about their video game counterpart. So the kids that might be talented to play baseball, regardless of their race and class choose not to.

Even in the ESPN story one of the HS players said, "It is not seen as cool to play baseball." And that fact that we know more about OJ Mayo as a HS player than any top baseball prospect is very telling to the overall sports culture. OJ Mayo was not recruited to go to USC, but he just told them he was coming. This story made SportsCenter. Even they way recruiting are covered in football and basketball is totally different. I have no idea who is even thought of as a top prospect in baseball.

Over all baseball has done a terrible job of marketing their sport to kids and MLB keep hanging their hat on "We are the National Pastime." Then the sport and its fans focus too much on the past and players that are seen as much better than today's athletes. Baseball wants to believe that no one can hit 500 homeruns except Frank Robinson, Babe Ruth or Hank Aaron. No wonder kids today have no interest in this sport.

Peace

Originally Posted by JRutledge

I am in my mid-30s. When I was a kid we played sports in the back yard before we even played any organized sports. We did this almost every night after school when the weather was good. I played varsity sports in baseball, basketball and football. We did not have AAU and travel baseball as it is today. Even if we did not play organized sports, we played different variations of sports. I also grew up playing a lot of video games. I owned an Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Commodore 64, Nintendo Entertainment System (the original), and a Sega Genesis. I still own a Playstation (original), Playstation 2, XBOX and I have a XBOX 360. The games have gotten more realistic and lifelike and I think kids play those much more than I did when I was a kid. When I played Atari Football on my Atari 2600, the NFL did not endorse the product and the players and football was a couple of dots on a screen. And if you look historically at the one sport that has had the worst video games it happens to be baseball. Madden Football is an institution and if nothing else players that know little about everything about a real football player, they know a lot about their video game counterpart. So the kids that might be talented to play baseball, regardless of their race and class choose not to.

Even in the ESPN story one of the HS players said, "It is not seen as cool to play baseball." And that fact that we know more about OJ Mayo as a HS player than any top baseball prospect is very telling to the overall sports culture. OJ Mayo was not recruited to go to USC, but he just told them he was coming. This story made SportsCenter. Even they way recruiting are covered in football and basketball is totally different. I have no idea who is even thought of as a top prospect in baseball.

Over all baseball has done a terrible job of marketing their sport to kids and MLB keep hanging their hat on "We are the National Pastime." Then the sport and its fans focus too much on the past and players that are seen as much better than today's athletes. Baseball wants to believe that no one can hit 500 homeruns except Frank Robinson, Babe Ruth or Hank Aaron. No wonder kids today have no interest in this sport.

Peace

I just turned the big 5-0, so we each have our own perspective, but you are correct about the marketing issue. Baseball just hasn't done it. When I was a kid, I could tell who the top named players were on every team in the league. Even the lowly Washington Senators had a star in Frank Howard. Free agency and runaway expansion have ruined the game that now is so saturated with mediocre players making $1 million a year. I remember back in the late 60's when Sports Illustrated ran an article about who they thought would be the first $200,000 player. Now a rookie makes $400,000. I think a lot of the mystique of baseball has gone away. The great players aren't placed on pedestals like they used to.

How do you market a product that has nothing special about it anymore? Back then if you made the major leagues, it was for a reason. Pitchers pitched every fourth game instead of every fifth and most of the time went to 7th even if they gave up four or five runs. There were no "set-up" pitchers.
Kids had their "hero" players. Now, I couldn't even name one player on every team. Kids don't read the newspapers so they don't really "follow" any teams or players. Baseball needs an Ernie Banks, Mickey Mantle, Sandy Koufax, Willie Mays or Hank Aaron back in the game.

My father took me to my first baseball game in 1962, Cubs vs Houston Colt 45s. Bottom of ninth, two out bases loaded, Cubs losing 5-2. Guy by the name of Ellis Burton who wore number 21, knocks the first pitch into bleachers for a walk-off grand slam. I can honestly say I wouldn't trade that moment in life for a sky box at Wrigley. Nowadays when home team is losing, can't wait to leave early to beat the traffic.

If I could find a good way to market MLB, I'd get a patent on it.

[SanDiegoSteve]

Originally Posted by JRutledge

I am in my mid-30s.

Not meaning any insult whatsoever, in fact quite the opposite, I thought you were much older than in your 30s. Your writing style and sense of history are much more in tune with those of my generation and the one before me. Here all this time I pictured you in your late 50s to early 60s.