Who Plays Baseball?

Who Plays Baseball These Days?
by Torrey H. Brinkley

ESPN this past week has spent much time lamenting about the number of black players in professional baseball. Every ESPN radio show on June 6th was devoted to this subject, with every talk show host repeating the same tired arguments, hour after hour.

Gary Sheffield, the much traveled slugging outfielder, has given his commentary, which incensed many observers, when he opined that American blacks are too hard to control, while the newly recruited Latin ball players are more easily manipulated into co-operating with the rules & structure of the current baseball scene. Sheffield and the other "sports experts" claim that blacks in America have gravitated to football and basketball because they are easier to play in "the hood" and cheaper on the family's budget.

Hogwash. There are some very obvious distinctions between the major American sports, which Sheffield and his critics are missing:

1) Baseball is a difficult sport to master.
--Very few humans can throw a fastball at 95 mph+ accurately, plus a curve ball to deceive other players.
--Even fewer humans can see and hit a 98 mph fastball from 60'6" distance. They never could and never will have that skill.
--Slow pitch softball, which is enjoyed & played by millions, has little in common with the scary speed of major league baseball.

2) Climbing the ladder to the major leagues in baseball requires many steps: high school ball, college baseball experience, A-level ball, AA baseball, and then AAA experience are the typical stages which a player must endure. For some baseball players, that can be 11 long years of a grinding, boring existence, with little or no national recognition, riding on old buses, staying in cheap hotels, playing in small towns (before tiny crowds), and getting a low salary.
--In a society predicated on instant gratification that is no fun for young men which believe they are entitled to everything now.
--For the last 15 years or so, blacks in America's inner cities have seen talented, athletic basketball players skip college/university and jump immediately to the NBA, making millions without any of the requisite maturing and team-building skills deemed helpful in "playing sports."

3) Oddly, although baseball has been an American phenomenon for over 100 years, it is not glamorous as a sport anymore.
....Few stars in American baseball are idolized or seen/heard doing commercials for any kind of products. Certain young people feel that they need to pursue endeavors which get them lots of name recognition & TV face time.
....Many American colleges have dropped baseball from their scholarship-level athletics, under the Title 9 requirements to have an equal number of men's & women's sports available. Thus, if there were American blacks wanting to go to college 4 years, play baseball & then move on, there are fewer & fewer schools which would offer such opportunties. Being a top baseball star on campus also does not offer the same status as a recognizable football or basketball hero.

4) American baseball is undeniably a long grind. There are no other major sports that play 162 regular season contests, plus Spring Training games, plus post-season series of 7 games apiece. The schedule means that baseball players are away from home from February to almost November , if they're on contending teams. Only NASCAR has a similarly long schedule, but they only race on Sundays (unless they do truck or Saturday racing).

++This kind of grueling schedule would not be fun for whites, blacks, Asians, Latins or Europeans, who desire to have quality family time. Few baseball players would consciously wish to postpone marriage or family until after their playing career is over (potentially age 37 or so).

++Only half of all baseball games are played at the home town ballpark, and all of Spring Training takes place away from home in either Florida or Arizona. Many ethnic groups highly value being around family members and/or those who have meant much to them during their youth. Baseball tears away at that close family experience, and almost exclusively glorifies the individualism, which is so uniquely American.

5) One other observation: baseball is not violent in the normal course of its play.
#Americans seem to love the crashing, banging & slamming to the ground observed in football.
#Even basketball has become a bumping and slam-dunking kind of a sport. #Hockey has been labeled recently as a fist fight punctuated by occasional ice-skating exhibitions.
#NASCAR & other racing fans love to watch fender-banging, often following by "the big crash."
#But, lowly baseball is more of a gentleman's game, requiring good throwing, quick bursts of running speed, and tremendous eye-hand co-ordination, with lots of waiting time out in a lonely outfield, hundreds of feet away from one's team-mates.


---The author taught 150 teens in Spain how to play fast pitch baseball, after they had only known the sport of soccer. A few "imported" teens from Chile and Australia helped to jump-start the action for these European youth, who were more adept at using their feet than their hands.