Aftrican Americans in Baseball - sydrogerdavid's Blog

sydrogerdavid's Blog

Aftrican Americans in Baseball

Posted on November 1, 2013 at 11:13 PM.

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Journal 7

It is very sad to think that black children are not interested in baseball for the most part. I have really wondered why this is and I�ve tried to search for where black kids lost their interest in baseball, but I have never found the exact spot. I know it had to have started around the mid to late 70s when Julius Erving came into the NBA and the likes of Hank Aaron and Willie Mays retired from baseball.

I started to notice the lack of black players in Major League Baseball in 2005, when the only black players the Cardinals had on their roster was Ray King and Reggie Sanders. Yeah, we had a lot of minority players, ranging from Albert to Julian Tavarez, but King and Sanders were our only black guys. I then looked through the rest of baseball and found even less black players than I had remembered before. There were only two black superstars, one of them was a cheat and the other was constantly hurt. These guys were Barry Bonds and Ken Griffey Jr.

Recently, there have been significantly more black superstars such as: Matt Kemp, CC Sabathia, Andrew McCutchen, Curtis Granderson, Prince Fielder and Brandon Phillips. If I remember correctly, most of these players got their start in the RBI program. Although the number of black players in baseball today is the lowest it�s ever been since Robinson broke the color barrier, I believe these guys are doing the right thing and trying their hardest to pitch baseball to the younger kids. They are all trying to do the impossible by helping kids get into baseball and getting them away from football and basketball.