At Black Colleges, the Baseball Teams Increasingly Aren’t

Want inner city baseball in an age where your city has signs on all the play field parks saying “Organized, registered baseball teams with a coach only on this field”? Say about almost every playground in Atlanta or Seattle! In 1983 at Yesler Terrace SeattleHousing Authority I reintroduced INSIDE THE PARK ONLY! baseball, with three former Negro Cracker League players as umpires and Co Coaches, half a dozen elderly ladies as cooks, barbecue pits, . . . It was a small field with a fence and a deep drop to mini agriculture plots. The youth had been jerks to the elderly and their gardens. The elderly had told them off. But not anymore. Now they grew close. Cookies and sweet potato pie can do that. And their young moms coming too. And then the elderly men and the immigrants came. SE Asian and African youth joined in. HIT THE BALL OVER THE FENCE and YOU ARE OUT! Fast line drives. Lots of work for the infield and the out field. Superb coaching and umpires. No more vandalism for now there were no foreign enemies next door. Some interest from the professional ball teams in making a league of Inside The Park for various ages and middle and grade schools. But then I received orders to the Defense Language School in Monterrey. Two and a half years of Chinese Mandarin and when I returned I was no longer eligible for the student housing. But let us bring it back in every city. Note: At 9 I had a 38” Babe Ruth bat and huge wrists because mom had encephalitis. No homers allowed.

I came home and saw your story and I had to comment . Let me thank you for bringing this topic to those who are unfamiliar with HBCU Sports in general, and their colleges or universities. I played baseball at a HBCU, Miles College in Birmingham,Ala. when I played from '79-83 our team was 100 percent African-American. Now it's in the ball park around 45% African -Americans, there is not a shortage of quality African-American ball players ,Birmingham where I played has a ton of black high school with baseball teams ,Memphis,TN, Atlanta,GA, Mississippi, Montgomery ,Ala just to name a few. There are four HBCU Conferences, the y are the CIAA, MEAC, SIAC AND THE SWAC in the SIAC there are 11 baseball teams, that have a total of 275 young men that play baseball , of that 275 over 165 are African -American , that just in the SIAC so the shortage is not there the coaches want teams to look like themselves, as the case at BCC. So look at the other conferences and let me know what you find.

Unlike other sports, baseball requires a wide range of disparate skills (throwing, catching, hitting) and complicated rules that usually require formal instruction and then endless repetition before a young child can even play at a rudimentary level. Historically, that instruction came from fathers spending time with their sons. From the Washington Post (April 5 2015): “In a 15-year study of 10,000 youth baseball players, Ogden found that the sport is drawing a more affluent, suburban and white base than it once did. In another study he conducted, 95 percent of college baseball players were raised in families with both biological parents at home — at a time when only 46 percent of Americans 18 and younger have grown up in that traditional setting. “We’re looking at a generation who didn’t play catch with their dads,” Ogden says, “and that’s at the core of the chasm between baseball and African Americans. Kids are just not being socialized into the game.”

Very few African American kids played Little League during the years when my son played 12 years ago so I'm not surprised that colleges aren't finding African American players to recruit. Our area was pretty diverse yet it seemed only white, Latino, and Philippine kids came out to play baseball. Look at a Pop Warner youth football team or a youth basketball team, however, and the story was different. That's where many of the African American kids were.

One wonders about the disparity in focus on male African American athletes (and overall male athletic opportunities, salaries, leagues, TV coverage etc etc) and female African American athletes. It always seems to be that when discussing diversity, African Americans seems to mean male African Americans. It’s a shame that funding for local programs for African American boys is far lower than it should be. I wonder what the funding for local athletic programs for African American girls is in comparison (those children who don’t even have any shot to be in the “major leagues” because they don’t exist (not in any way on the same level) for women - white or African American). Just saying.

An interesting article. But there need be no call to action. People/athletes can select the sport they prefer. Glad to see the diversity on the team and the pride in the school.

"“There’s more swagger to it,” Joe Fernando, a senior infielder from Brooklyn, said of H.B.C.U. baseball. “You look at our team, you’ve got guys here with gold chains, dark shades, whatever. Look good, feel good, play good.” As MLB says -- Let the kids play! This was true in the "shadowball" days of the Negro leagues and it is true today. Black baseball has its own swagger. We are in desperate danger of losing it.

It really seems to depend on the sport and where people's interests and talents lie. Just one example: the University of Kentucky basketball team this past season was 78% African-American while the university as a whole was 8% African-American.

Lynn Thompson joins the ranks of HBCU legendary Athletic Directors, like the great Jake Gaither of Florida A&M and Eddie Robinson of Grambling University. Lynn is of the generation where he could of landed anywhere but he chose to stay at his and his parents alma mater. The Historically Black Colleges unlike other schools in the south have always been open to those who chose to teach or matriculate on one of many wonderful campuses.

I played baseball at Father Lopez High School in Daytona; I was younger and thinner then. Some of our games were at City Island Park (which was later renamed for Jackie Robinson). While it is true that African American athletes prefer football and baseball to baseball, the time has come to rethink that inclination. Football is a cruel and punishing sport. Just look at the many former players who have suffered CTE. In addition, their careers are typically much shorter than those athletes who pursue baseball. Financially, Cookman is in trouble due to a few bad business decisions on how to finance dorm construction. Baseball is the least of its problems.

Hello, I'm Commissioner Rob Manfred. I'm commenting here on the New York Times sports page dot com to announce that from this day forward, Major League Baseball will no longer hold its confusing annual labor auction, also called the amateur draft. From now on, every prospect is an unrestricted free agent. That includes foreign-born players, and all major-leaguers on rookie or arbitration contracts. On behalf of the owners, I want to thank the college athletics programs for letting us offload some of the costs of player development onto your institutions, but your services are no longer needed. To the executives of the Dole Fruit Company, I thank you for the advisory role you played as we developed our patchwork of international-player regulations that have given so many Caribbean and East Asian players such great opportunities here in the big leagues, at a fraction of the financial risk of similar or better domestic workers. It was a good run. And my sincerest thanks to the MLB Players Association for leaving minor-leaguers and young big-leaguers hanging out to dry for so many decades. Though the circumstances we've long been accustomed to must now change, I'm optimistic that the many ambitious, Ivy League-educated analysts who have taken our clubs' front offices by storm will keep you on your toes as they find innovative new ways for our owners to keep labor costs down. Last but not least, to my friends in the media, thank you for showing us the errors of our ways.

These colleges are now known as "Historically Black" so how is this anything other than the changing mission/enrollment playing out on the baseball field? If there's anything disturbing it is this: The New York Times has doubled down on identity politics to the point that it has become the paper's theme. It's relentless and often pointless. If we want to examine the tragic under-representation of African Americans anywhere in this country, I'm not sure baseball is the place to look at it. Aftrican Americans make up about 8% of the major leagues and about 12% of the overall population. There is a gap here but it isn't huge and given that more than a third of major leaguers are immigrants, it's probably statistically exactly where it "should" be. There is really no story here. But the writers for this paper have their marching orders and they are cranking out story after story, all including race, gender, etc. as central themes. Of course, only when the story fits the overall theme of oppression. There have been zero stories about how there are more African Americans in the NBA than there "should" be. This has to end. It would be great if the Sports section could take the lead on this and start writing about sports again.

“I would have thought coming to an H.B.C.U. there would be more black people,” said Clarence Carter III, “but things aren’t always what you expect.” Can you imagine this being said by a white person lamenting the dwindling numbers of his race. Well try to be open minded, things certainly aren’t always as you expect to be.

I work at an elementary school library, grades 3-5. The student body is quite diverse with the white students making up about 20 percent of the population. I run the library and monitor recess. Students are neither interested in reading about baseball nor playing it. Out of the 300 students, there is one baseball player. He's white. They are however very interested in basketball, soccer, four square, tether ball, and kickball. But not baseball. It's just not popular.

"Black" in this instance to exclude latino players is a misnomer -- there are many latinos both in the MLB and the MEAC that are black but not African-Americans. Young black athletes don't flock to baseball? The success and popularity of young Latino black stars begs to differ; Vlad Geruero Jr's debut was practically a national holiday in the Dominican Republic. For an article like this to confuse the two terms is quite shocking.

Baseball is rural, white Americana writ large on a national stage. Integration never really had the impact on baseball that it did on mainly urban sports of football and basketball, most especially basketball. IMHO, the only flaw in "Filed of Dreams" was making Terence Mann a Black, radical writer, rather than a White cracker-barrel philosopher who had seen the "old-timers" play.

Basketball is less expensive and has lots of money. Not so much baseball, hence, it is the dream of kids to follow Jordan, not Robinson. It is not racism

This article ignores important factors, some of them outside the world of baseball. Using statistics from this article, I have two comments: - 7.8% of the opening day rosters in Major League Baseball this year were African-Americans, down from 18.7% in 1981. What has happened to the population in the United States since 1981? And, similarly, what has happened to the signing of baseball players in the majors since 1981? By what % has Euro-American player representation gone down since 19821? This is from MLB News: A total of 254 players represented an all-time record 21 different countries and territories outside of the 50 United States on 2018 Opening Day 25-man rosters and inactive lists, marking another year of unprecedented diversity on Major League rosters, Major League Baseball announced today. So the question is - why is MLB going out of their way to support talent from all these countries, while not helping our own young kids, many of whom may be financially disadvantaged? - The current roster of the college in question is: About half Euro-American, the other half made up of players from Latin America, plus 4 African-Americans. Does this mix not approximately represent the current US population? The US has become a global magnet for many non-Americans, for many different reasons. As long as MLB continues to sign onto this global agenda, ALL Americans will face stiffer competition for everything from baseball rosters to computer programming jobs.

It’s not rocket science. Poorer people in general have fewer resources to work with. Fewer resources means lesser outcomes. Americans are stubborn in believing this bootstrap thing to the nth degree.

How much of the reduction in black participation has to do with the fact that the NCAA limits D1 schools to 11.7 baseball scholarships per year, where rosters of about 35 are typical. In contrast, football gets up to 85 scholarships per year for a roster of 85 (63 scholarships for FCS schools), and basketball 13 scholarships per year with rosters of around 15. Besides the factors mentioned in the article, one might speculate that black families are doing the math and concluding that baseball is a bad sports bet for their kids.

"...in neighborhoods where his friends once rode their bikes to play sandlot ball, redevelopment paved over ball fields in favor of basketball courts and parking lots." Well, yeah. This affects blacks disproportionately in this country. Add in that it's much harder to play baseball without a large enough field, bats, and a glove for each player. Also consider when you have only a handful of players available, or even just two (a bigger impediment when competing against sports already more popular for black kids). Ball fields are fewer and farther between. How do you get everyone there without parents having to drive them? Basketball? You can rack up a milk crate on a light post or buy an inexpensive portable hoop, for right outside your house, that everyone can use, and all you need is one ball. Football? You can play on any road that's straight enough for long enough, and all you need is one ball. Similar rough and ready facsimiles don't work for baseball.

There are two routes to the major leagues — college and the minor leagues. If you’re a top player and go to college you get a full scholarship. If you sign with a major league team, you get a signing bonus in the millions and you then work your way up through the minors. If your family doesn’t have a lot of money, you’ll opt for the bonus and the minors, and not Bethune-Cookman, 100% of the time. So there aren’t a lot of poor kids who are top prospects playing Division I baseball.

That truly is the only hope for America.

Again?! Why is it an issue what color the players are? Just let things unfold organically. Let it go. Live.

At primarily white schools you see teams (football, track and basketball) fielded by more black students than whites. In the pros it is the same thing. I don’t think that is any better than having white and Hispanic players in baseball. How do we even it out? Or is the goal for baseball to be black too?

given the great black major leaguers who have played baseball it seems a shame that so few African-americans are playing the game now.

At least many of these students are American. Look at Golf, Tennis, Swimming and Diving at the Division I level. Many of the student athletes, if not the majority, at some schools are foreign students. Why should tax payer and student fees be used to fund non-academic scholarships for foreign students? If a private school wants to do it, that is the schools money, then great. State schools should not be doing this. The mission of State schools should be to educate children of the state.

Baseball requires a community effort to put kids on the field. Who does the grounds keeping before and after the games, maintains the backstops and bleachers, raises money for new equipment, uniforms and snacks? Baseball is a game of repetition, kids need someone to pitch batting practice for them, and play catch endlessly to hone the hand to eye coordination needed to compete at higher levels of the game. The abilities to do these important things is extremely difficult in socioeconomic disadvantaged neighborhoods, or in families without a male parent. Even if a kid rises to prominence above the high school level, the lack of scholarships or partial scholarships do not get the student athlete through college. I wish the game was still kids riding their bikes up to the park to play a pickup game as it was when I was young, but the game has changed in many ways, and some of the changes not necessarily for the better.

Major League Baseball has a program called RBI (reviving baseball in our inner cities). The problem is that it’s for kids 14 and up. Baseball is a game that has to be played at young ages and until MLB shows it really cares by trying to get to the grassroots level, this problem will persist. We need to get kids on them ball fields when they are 6-10 age. Also- To be good at sports these days, kids all do travel programs that cost upwards of $1,500 per season and often a lot more.

It doen't help that elite multi-sport athletes like Kyler Murray choose the NFL or the NBA over baseball. They are looking for instant success and Instant money and are not looking forward to toiling away the MLB's minors for years before getting a chance at the major league level.

As I understand it, few, if any, players have the opportunity to receive full scholarships at the Division I level, while such scholarships are the norm in football and basketball. If the NCAA is serious about increasing the number of African-American baseball players, it may want to look at making changes which provide such full rides in baseball and other sports in which there is a low level of African-American participation.

I wonder how much of this is related to the fact that baseball is not on free air tv any longer on a regular basis. I know growing up for me, the games were always on as a background of our lives. My children did not receive this same indoctrination in the game as I had since we could not afford cable. What chance do inner city kids have at the same kind of immersion in the game as we had as kids?

Traveling teams in the k12 years are another way parents segregate their kids. Unless a low income child exhibits talent right away, they will likely not participate on a traveling baseball team and not be given a chance to develop. In convincing parents they need to travel for baseball, soccer, softball, etc. hotels and restaurants make more money and geographic areas that can attract these teams make more hotel and motel tax. Plus, side industries spring up to make money off of developing kids talents. Even if a child starts out in a recreation league, high school athletic teams often need parents who can volunteer their time and money. The shoes, gloves, bats, etc. get expensive over time. The deck is often stacked against kids from low income families being given the opportunity to develop as players.