Baseball’s needless tensions

Opinion: April 9, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

By Ed Morales

McClatchy-Tribune

Another baseball season brings a new, misguided attack on Latin American ballplayers.

Jackie Robinson Day, a celebration of major league baseball’s first black player, is coming on April 15. Yet the percentage of black players today is languishing at less than 10 percent, down more than half from a decade ago.

This has prompted stars like C.C. Sabathia, Gary Sheffield and, most recently, Torii Hunter to complain that Latinos, many of whom are black, are taking away major league jobs from black athletes.

“It’s like they had to get some kind of dark faces, so they go to the Dominican or Venezuela because you can get them cheaper,” Hunter told USA Today in March. “It’s like, ’Why should I get this kid from the South Side of Chicago and have Scott Boras represent him and pay him $5 million when you can get a Dominican guy for a bag of chips?”’

Over the last several years, the number of foreign-born players in the major leagues has soared to approximately 28 percent. Since Dominicans and other Latin American players are not subject to the rules of the major league draft, they are often cheaper to sign to a contract than their U.S. counterparts.

With many teams battling the recession and decreased revenues, baseball’s division of labor may elicit more hard feelings as clubs increasingly look toward the bottom line when making personnel decisions.

We don’t need another needless quarrel between blacks and Latinos.

Ed Morales is a contributor to the New York Times and Newsday and is the author of “Living in Spanglish.” This article was prepared for The Progressive Media Project and distributed by McClatchy-Tribune.