Baseball second fiddle for black athletes

The increase in Latino participation could be responsible for the decline.
By ZACH STIPE
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Brent Thomas is black, and like many black 23-year-olds, Thomas grew up playing and excelling in a variety of sports, including basketball and football. What makes the Seattle-native different, perhaps an anomaly, is that he spurred the court and the gridiron for the diamond, a decision fewer and fewer black athletes are making.
A recent report by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport found that only 8.5 percent of Major League Baseball was black in 2005.
The report, the Institute's 14th Racial and Gender Report Card, reported that "the percentage of African-American players is the lowest it has been in 26 years."
Numbers
This season, there were only 69 black players -- roughly 9 percent -- on opening-day rosters in the majors. In addition, the percentage of major league baseball players has been cut in half over the last 15 years. In 1991, blacks made up 18 percent of baseball.
"I think it's a shame to see it," said Thomas, a second-year outfielder with the Mahoning Valley Scrappers, a Class A affiliate of the Cleveland Indians. "Baseball is a good way to keep black kids out of trouble."
Thomas has seen firsthand the declining popularity of baseball among blacks, as America's pastime loses more and more black athletes to the allure of quicker paydays and bigger fame provided by basketball and football.
His high school football and basketball teams were predominantly black, while he was one of only four black baseball players.
"Would you want to make 10 million now or later?" he asks.
In the NBA or NFL you are in right after college, whereas in MLB you have to be patient and work your way through the minor leagues, he said.
Last Tuesday's 77th MLB All-Star Game, in which the National League failed to win for the 10th consecutive season, is a terrific example of how steep the decline has become.
Numbers slip
The last time the NL won the Midsummer classic, in 1996, eight black players were voted by the fans to start the game.
In 2006, biracial Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter was the only black player voted to start the game.
The lack of black participation is affecting all facets of baseball, from youth leagues to college and the pros.
Take a visit to Youngstown's Gibson Field. Once a haven for youth baseball in inner-city Youngstown, the field is a shell of its former self. Overgrown grass covers the field. Benches and bleachers are splintered, broken and buried, strangled amongst weeds. The field is a backdrop to Youngstown's struggle to keep baseball in the urban community.
Youngstown Babe Ruth League Director Al Franceschelli figures that only seven to eight percent of the league's 350 kids are black.
Franceschelli said that at one time 30 percent of the Babe Ruth League (for kids 13-15) was made up of black players. The league even had three all-black teams at one point.
Now the league is lucky to average one black kid per team.
Basketball is magnet
Like Thomas, he thinks basketball is partly to blame. Black kids would rather play street basketball than baseball in the summer, he said.
He noted that as interest waned among the black community, inner-city fields like Gibson weren't kept up and eventually forgotten.
Ernie Brown, an assistant regional editor for The Vindicator, wrote a column about the phenomenon on April 3, 2004. In "Why has Major League Baseball lost its appeal among blacks?" Brown interviewed his brother Mark, a former baseball player at Mount Union and current treasurer of the Babe Ruth League. In 2004, Mark expected no more than 10 African-American children to participate in the Babe Ruth League that summer.
A little over two years later, Mark said that the situation is "more horrific now."
He singled out the decline of the black family along with transportation as key factors contributing to the decline.
"It's very difficult for single mothers, after working [long] days to try to cart their children around," Brown said. "[Kids] used to be able to ride a bike to games, but not now. No parent would let their kid ride to a game clear on the other side of town and then ride back."
Logistics
There are few inner city parks, so some games and practices must be held far from where a kid might reside, he added.
The problem has hit colleges hard too. Historically, even black colleges have baseball teams comprised of more whites than blacks.
According to a NCAA survey in 2004, only six percent of the Division I baseball players were black, compared with 58 percent of basketball players and 44 percent of football players.
Locally, Youngstown State had no blacks on this year's 33-man baseball roster.
The increase in Latino participation and the cost of baseball could also be responsible for the decline.
In 1991, 18 percent of major leaguers were black, while 14 percent were Latino. In 2005, 8.5 were black, while 28.7 were Latino.
"The Latin players, in their countries, baseball is it," Thomas said.
Money is another factor, as well. Its much cheaper to purchase a basketball or a football, than a baseball, bat and glove. (Although many leagues cover all or most of equipment costs.)
So what can be done before, as Mark Brown said in 2004, "this sport for black males will slowly fade away"?
Outlook
It appears hope is out there.
Young black baseball prospects B.J. and Justin Upton and Delmon Young were all among the top picks in recent MLB amateur drafts. Also, MLB has made an effort with programs like Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities to increase interest in the black and urban communities.
Youngstown isn't giving up either.
Franceschelli and Mark Brown have made it a major priority to recruit more blacks and inner-city kids into the sport.
"We've never stopped trying and I'm never going to stop recruiting kid's from the inner city," Franceschelli said. "It's a major mission to bring baseball back to the city."
zstipe@vindy.com