So, take a quick guess… what percentage of players in Major League Baseball are African-American.
Eight percent. Man, that seems low. I mean, I knew it was diminishing, but I didn’t know it was that bad. It was 27% back in 1975. Now it’s down to 8%… the lowest figure since the Major Leagues were fully integrated back in 1959.
So we’re giving it up for Torii Hunter today, who has noticed the decline, and is doing something about it. He’s spearheading an effort to teach baseball and baseball history to kids in the inner cities so hopefully, that number will one day go back up. And I think the first step in raising that number is figuring out exactly what color Derek Jeter is.
Anyway, Torii and a bunch of other guys are kicking in $10,000 each to launch a nationwide Little League program, to get kids excited about baseball again. So I hope it works… and, you know, it’s not that I believe that a lack of black Americans in the majors is a huge problem that we as a society have an obligation to correct, but… promoting diversity is a good idea, getting more kids to learn about Jackie Robinson and the Negro Leagues is a good idea, and I compliment Torii Hunter for stepping up.
Between this, and his clubhouse naked time, he’s one of my favorite players.
adam
Not that what Torii Hunter is doing isn’t good, but that 8% number is bull crap. What is the current latino population in MLB? And how many of those latino players are black? Black players from latino countries are counted as latino, not black.
June 2, 2006 at 10:12 am
Bouj
Torii’s doing a great job here.
I am interested to see the raw numbers here. You can play all sorts of shadow games with percentages. The total number of African-American ballplayers has dropped from 27% to 8% in 30 years. In real numbers, that’s app. 156 players to 60 playes, give or take a few. That 27% is 27% of 24 teams with 24-man rosters, and the 8% is 8% of 30 teams with 25-man rosters.
But I want to see the raw numbers across the board because there has been a MAJOR influx of Latin American players in the last 30 years, and there are now Asian players in MLB too. I get the feeling that the media sometimes plays this issue as black-v-white, when it might be black-v-brown. Has the number of white players increased significantly, or by percentage?
June 2, 2006 at 11:38 am
Kn8
I noticed this trend a long time ago. I grew up in a very diverse NorCal town and there was almost always a disproportionate amount of whites on the good teams. I don’t know if it’s just a popularity, economic or cultural reason but black kids shouldn’t feel pressured to play football or basketball (which seems to be the case).
Guys like Vlad, Ortiz, Delgado could easily be mistaken for “black”. I think what Hunter is doing will probably be more effective than MLB’s initiative to increase baseball’s popularity in the urban areas and wish him good luck.
June 2, 2006 at 12:17 pm
Ty Webb
With this work he is doing and his awesome stats since moving to the clean-up spot. Torii’s on fire!!!!!!!!!
June 2, 2006 at 2:18 pm
theotheruw
That’s a great post. Last year during the All-Star game, Joe Morgan mentioned how the Astros didn’t have any black players. I didn’t Joe’s name on the list of people contributing. It’s refreshing to see someone actually trying to do something about this rather than just talk about it.
June 2, 2006 at 3:02 pm
CincyMan
Ummm…Black people from Latino countries are not counted because they aren’t African-AMERICAN. MLB started a program years ago called R.B.I. (Revitalizing Baseball in Inner-Cities). Hunter should help them instead of creating his own program…but I applaud his idea.
June 7, 2006 at 10:24 pm