Peter Schmuck, Baltimore Sun, March 4, 2009
Orioles center fielder Adam Jones is well aware he’s the only African-American among the 73 players in camp at Fort Lauderdale Stadium—on a team that represents a predominantly black city—and he views it as both a sign of the times and a call to action.
“It doesn’t bother me,” Jones said yesterday, “but I’d like to see more black athletes playing baseball.”
In that, at least, he isn’t alone. Baseball commissioner Bud Selig has made it an industry priority to increase the number of African-American children involved in baseball, and Major League Baseball makes grants to supply equipment and build baseball fields in urban areas through the RBI (Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities) program. Jones said now that he has become more established in the major leagues, he plans to get more involved in the RBI program and try to help change the fact that the national pastime ranks third as the sport of choice for aspiring young black athletes.
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He’s clearly an elite athlete with the speed and strength to be successful at just about any sport. The only question left is whether he’ll be able to fully express all that talent on the baseball field. If he does, he could be an important role model for a new generation of black baseball players in the Baltimore area.
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“I don’t see why a young African-American wouldn’t want to be like Adam Jones, wouldn’t want to wear a T-shirt with his name on it and be an outfielder,” added Shelby [Orioles coach John Shelby], an African-American.
And, in Baltimore, it still might be a tough sell when there are so many NBA players from the area. The kids in the inner city are much more likely to identify with Carmelo Anthony than anyone who plays for the Orioles, but Jones has a chance to get their attention.
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Shelby is the first to acknowledge the other reasons it has become a major challenge to lure the top young black American athletes into baseball. The world has changed since baseball was the clear sport of choice for the generation of athletes who followed Jackie Robinson into the major leagues. There are many more options for today’s young black athletes, and some of them make more sense on a pretty basic level.
“One of the reasons they don’t continue to play is the expense of the sport,” Shelby said. “You’ve got to buy your own bats and gloves, and all those things are expensive. If you play basketball, all you need is a ball and a court. You go to college and everybody’s getting a full scholarship in football and basketball, but there are only 11 1/2 scholarships in baseball. Even at the lower ages, my 13-year-old got invited to play on a summer travel team and it costs $2,000. There aren’t many African-Americans who are going to be able to pay that. I don’t want to pay it. I’m not going to pay it.”
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Original article
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Peter Schmuck
at peter.schmuck@baltsun.com .
(Posted on March 5, 2009)
Comments
If you replace Orioles with Nuggets, Black with White and Baseball with Basketball wouldn’t that be a ridiculous article? Is the NBA reaching out to White Americans so the NBA can have more white players? I didn’t think so…..
“but I’d like to see more black athletes playing baseball.”
Baseball has gone to the latinos. It’s a fact. Deal with it. Blacks dominate basketball, blacks & whites in football, and whites still have hockey pretty much to themselves. I think. The demographics are what they are.
Hate to tell you this Jones, but my beloved Orioles have more important things to worry about than having more blacks on the team. Finishing better than last in the American League for instance.
“One of the reasons they don’t continue to play is the expense of the sport,” Shelby said. “You’ve got to buy your own bats and gloves, and all those things are expensive. If you play basketball, all you need is a ball and a court. You go to college and everybody’s getting a full scholarship in football and basketball, but there are only 11 1/2 scholarships in baseball. Even at the lower ages, my 13-year-old got invited to play on a summer travel team and it costs $2,000. There aren’t many African-Americans who are going to be able to pay that. I don’t want to pay it. I’m not going to pay it.”
Always whining. Always… Something tells me we’ll be paying for this with our tax dollars, most likely as a part of one of Obama’s future “stimulus” packages.
I think baseball is declining in popularity among blacks, both in raw terms and in relative comparison to football and basketball, because baseball, unlike those other two, is not rewarding of impulsive behavior, and is conducive to slow deliberation. Football and basketball are fare more flashy, and far more appealing to those who want instant and compulsive gratification, who want the big flashy play right now.
I don’t buy the bit about the money. Football is far more expensive than baseball, and there are a lot of black kids and schools playing it and paying for it.
Question: Why so much obsession from Bud Selig about blacks? Players from the DR are crowding out whites as much as they are blacks, seems to me that they should be spending money to attract whites.
So what do they want now? A government subsidy to help blacks play baseball?
Why is this desirable? Is there a similar effort to recruit whites to the sport of bullfighting, or basketball, or boxing, or any other sport dominated by blacks or hispanics?
Can you believe that the powers that be are hyperventilating because there are “not enough” blacks in major league baseball? Just how many would be “enough”? We didn’t hear them expressing concern back in the late 1950s through the 1980s, when blacks were increasingly crowding White players out of the majors. And White players have been an endangered species in the NBA — and to a slightly lesser degree, the NFL — for many years. Where have you seen anyone worried about that, except on White nationalist websites?
And I wish these people who should know better would quit saying with a straight face that most blacks can’t afford a $2,000-per-year fee for their kids to be on a team. Hey, folks, the days when all blacks were supposedly “poor” are long gone. Bring your tender sensibilities up to date!
Blacks are statisticaly overrepresented in baseball(27%) compared to their percentage of the general population of the US(13%). So what are they complaining about? And thanks partly to steroids, they have the most coveted baseball records, the most home runs in a year, and the most home runs.
David Ortiz, Mariano Rivera, Pedro Martinez etc don’t count as “black” because thety were born in Latin America!
I also love the part about black kids supposedly not being able to afford a bat, ball and glove- even though they could afford them during the Great Depression and even though they spend thousand$ on video games, Ipods, gold chains, etc.
“Baseball has gone to the latinos.”
No true. Baseball was 63% white last year and even more so if you include the white Hispanics (like Texeira). Teams like the Red Sox and Rockies have 70% and 80% starting lineups. In 2005, the Astros were criticized for having an all-white starting lineup that made it to the league championship series.
Despite affirmative action and special training camps for Hispanics (often from the Dominican Republic) whites are showing their class in baseball.
“…but I’d like to see more black athletes playing baseball.”
I stopped watching all professional, college, and amateur sports years ago because not enough Whites were involved. I don’t care to watch other races or spend money supporting them. It’s that simple.
I turned off TV years ago, too, for the same reasons.
As Putnam found, when diversity increases, everyone in society closes down.
Blacks belong in Africa, not civilization. Because they are supported and propped up artifically in civilization, our society is ruined and getting worse each day.
That is wrong. Black americans are about 8% of baseball.. at their peak in the 80s they were 27%
They may not be “African-American” but there are lots of black and mulatto people from Latin America in baseball. Guys like Sammy Sosa look pretty black to me.
The article fails to mention that baseball is one of those sports where, more often than not, fathers taught their sons the fundamentals. Since most Bantu families are headed up by a single/divorced female, who’s gonna be there to teach a black kid the game? Certainly not mama.
I love how John Shelby admits he’s too cheap to pay the $ 2,000 to send his kid to baseball camp.With Bantus like him, no wonder there’s a dearth in their numbers.
To Question Diversity and Wayne Engle:
Do you get the impression that Bud Selig is engaging in necrophilia, when it comes to the slavish devotion to Jackie Robinson? He has more love for the memory of Jackie Robinson, than a saint has in Christ. I should have realized something was up when Selig ordered the No. 42 to be retired from basball uniforms forever. The man’s devotion to a man that died some 37 years ago, is more pathological than America’s obsession with Marilyn Monroe or Elvis Presley. It’s not normal.
I know, how about we start a “MIDNIGHT BASEBALL” program that will cost a hundred million and take all the criminals off the street for a friendly game? That worked so well for basketball, it can’t possibly fail.
As soon as there’s a quota for Whites in football. Not bloody likely!
One good reason for the lack of Blacks in the majors is because the Black family is in shambles. Unwed mothers, lack of male mentors for coaches, and the whole litany of Black dysfunction insures that little leaguers that would have gone big league doesn’t happen.
“Is the NBA reaching out to White Americans so the NBA can have more white players?”
That might imply whites are human beings, and have an existance outside of their official role as, ironically of all things, ignorant oppressors. Can’t have that.
Adam Jones may play on a team in a 70 % black city but the Orioles fan base is pretty much the whole state of Maryland but for the suburbs of Washington. I would guess that black attendance at Orioles games averages, at best, five percent. Nationwide, black interest in baseball has faded fast over the past thirty years, a situation that is very unlikely to change. Baseball is a much more nuanced game than basketball or football, which adds to the diffident attitude most blacks have towards baseball.
Soprano Fan:
Selig does seem to be an odd bird, but not that odd — I think he’s just reading the tea leaves. Thing is, the Cardinals had already retired 42 for Bruce Sutter, so it’s weird to have a number retired for two players, one of whom was never on your team.
Many players from the DR are mulatto, mixed with black, so you can’t count them as not black. They’re just not the typical black American.
” … and it costs $2,000. There aren’t many African-Americans who are going to be able to pay that. I don’t want to pay it. I’m not going to pay it.” “
Funny how they always seem to find the funds for car rims, hair weaves, gold teeth, …
Baseball, rock concerts and the symphony; about the only places left for a white experience. By the way is there a symphony in America that doesn’t have the black pianist Andre Watts at least every other year?
>>>Baseball, rock concerts and the symphony; about the only places left for a white experience.
What about libraries, art galleries and science museums? Last time I was in any of those places, I didn’t see a nonwhite face. It would honestly bother me if Blacks were being stopped at the door. However, everyone knows that this is not the case.
What we need is a white league of our own.Take the money we are paying to watch pro baseball out and boycott it.Spend the money on the white major league teams.Start a White basketball league and get back to the basics of the game.Take the white money out of the the NBA.They are not happy with the way it is now ,fine lets see how long these leagues last with out white money spent to support them.Look in the stands at a pro basketball game.Take all the whites out of the stands who would be left.Wake Up White people, they will not be happy until it is all black.I go to hockey games and when a hockey game is on TV if i have no time to watch it I leave it on so it gets higher ratings than basketball!
Something doesn’t add up:
“One of the reasons they don’t continue to play is the expense of the sport,” Shelby said. “You’ve got to buy your own bats and gloves, and all those things are expensive…” Many of our leading major league players come from conditions of abject poverty in the Dominican Republic. They learn to play with makeshift equipment and are able to outplay American players who had the benefit of Little Leagues and expensive equipment when they were kids. It would seem that, unlike American blacks, Dominican blacks aren’t whiners or quitters.isn’t
To Bob and Anonymous:
Don’t forget NASCAR, as one of those all-white “experiences”.
To Question Diversity:
I must respectfully disagree paisan - I think Bud Selig IS odd - especially over how he fawns over Jackie Robinson’s legacy. Heck, he never had baseball clubs retire Babe Ruth’s No. 3 - and Ruth did more for the game than almost anyone else, at a time when the Black Sox scandal threatened to tarnish baseball forever. But, because Jackie Robinson was the first black to play in either the National or American League, Selig cloaks Robinson in holy vestments. The number 42 is “too sacred” to appear on anyone else’s uniform.
If Selig had his way, Robinson’s corpse would be exhibited outside the Baseball Hall of Fame, in much the same manner as Lenin’s corpse was exhibited in the USSR. That’s why I consider Selig’s devotion to Jackie Robinson as something bordering on the pathological.
Sad to report to anon.4:40 that blacks have discovered local library. Cheap daycare, with older white librarians doing nothing to stop constant racket. Love NASCAR, but the France family is hell bent on diversity.
Bud Selig and his crew have intentionally flooded the league with latino players while overlooking talented whites in the minors and colleges. This has been well documented. However, there are still too many whites, so MLB is funding academies for American blacks. They don’t want whites. Selig uses Jackie Robinson as a shield to avoid criticism. By the way, the Dominican players, who used to be noted for speed and bat handling, are now so drug fueled to increase power few of them are able to run. (Steroids can be bought over the counter in the Dominican, Mexico, etc) The NFL in fact discriminates against whites, especially in certain positions and this has led to a trickle down effect in Div I etc. If you watch the full NFL combines, not just the highlights, you’ll see this at work. NBA Commissioner David Stern went into panic mode a few years ago when Europeans began entering the NBA in earnest and almost half the players drafted one year were from Europe. He then had the draft rules altered and offered “incentives” to make sure American players, meaning blacks, were drafted. Stern’s protege, Gary Bettman has been producing wild scheme after wild scheme that he says is to bring diversity the NHL, but most observers feel that it’s not out of the realm of possibility that Bettman and crew are intentionally trying to destroy the league while presenting an image of trying to do the opposite. Everything, academia, the govt, sports, entertainment and more are increasingly and more openly anti-white.
Soprano Fan wrote: The article fails to mention that baseball is one of those sports where, more often than not, fathers taught their sons the fundamentals. Since most black families are headed up by a single/divorced female, who’s gonna be there to teach a black kid the game? Certainly not mama.
Nor would I expect mama’s dope-addled boyfriend du jour , just discharged from prison or out on parole, to “step up to the plate” either.
dodger phanatic wrote: One of the great things about baseball is that it isn’t a white game, or a black game, but a game in which people from all races of mankind can compete with more or less equal chances of success. Players who are freakishly tall or heavy (think basketballers and footballers) actually seem to be at a disadvantage when they try to play baseball.
As much as I hate to agree with a Dodger fan, you’re right. Right now the World Baseball Classic is in progress, with national teams from around the world participating. I don’t care who wins; I’m just enjoying good baseball. In fact, one reason I’m also a big soccer fan is there’s no place in that sport for freakazoids either.
Do not worry about this.
As soon as more blacks get signed up the whites will be there to buy the tickets, jerseys, mouse pads, drink cups, caps and assorted ad specialty items.
Of the two hundred unique mobile phone sounds offered by T Mobile, a “German” company, 198 are black.
Ha ha ha white people love blacks. They have their babies out of wedlock and raise them all alone with help from their Christian friends.
I stopped watching baseball, football, basketball….all those infested with black players…I don’t intend to even watch much less buy a ticket to see them play or should I say…make a mockery of said sports. Thanks, but no thanks!!
