by
Tom Verducci
Originally Posted: July 7, 2003
On meticulously clipped adjacent diamonds in Fort Myers, Fla.,
this spring, one could catch a glimpse of the future of major
league baseball. About 150 premier high school players from
across America ran, hit, pitched and fielded at a privately run
camp at which they hoped to catch the eye of pro scouts and
college coaches. Al Davis watched proudly as his 16-year-old son,
Stephan, competed among the mass of young men running about in
the bright sunshine. At this moment baseball shimmered with the
possibilities of youth; perhaps even a future star or two was in
the mix. But there was something else about the scene that struck
Davis with the force of an open palm across the face. "One
hundred and fifty kids," says Davis, an African-American who
works in sports marketing, "and I counted six blacks."
More
than half a century after Jackie Robinson courageously began the
integration of major league baseball and a generation after
blacks filled one of every four big league roster spots, the
African-American ballplayer is becoming a rarity again. As the 2003 season neared its midpoint on Sunday, there were only 90 blacks
in the major leagues, or 10% of the players on 25-man rosters and disabled lists. "And you can expect that number to go down even
more," says Southern University coach Roger Cador.
The trend in high school and college, coupled with what some
blacks identify as a cultural disconnect with the game, suggests
that the disappearance of black players from the major leagues
will continue. According to the 2003 Racial and Gender Report
Card, prepared by Richard E. Lapchick of the Institute for
Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central
Florida, the number of blacks (defined as U.S.-born
African-Americans) in the major leagues dropped almost by half
from 1995 to 2002--from 19% to 10%. The number is down 63% from
1975, when blacks filled 27% of roster spots.
The evidence is on view at every major league ballpark. On the
weekend of June 13-15, for instance, the New York Yankees and the
St. Louis Cardinals met for the first time since the 1964 World
Series and drew 165,000 fans to the three-game interleague series
at Yankee Stadium. Between them the Yankees and the Cardinals
suited up only three blacks: New York shortstop Derek Jeter and
outfielder Charles Gipson and St. Louis outfielder Kerry
Robinson. When they last played in '64, during the heyday of the
civil rights movement, the Yankees and the Cardinals featured six
African-Americans combined.
Among other evidence that the black presence in the game is
diminishing:
*Seven African-Americans were named to the 2002 All-Star team,
compared with 15 in 1972.
*There are 13 black pitchers in the majors, including only five
starters.
*There are 19 blacks younger than 26 in the majors; only one of
them (Philadelphia Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins) has been an
All-Star.
*The Boston Red Sox do not have a black starting pitcher or
every-day player for the first time since 1961, two years after
they became the last team to integrate their roster.
The picture in college baseball, which provides a great portion
of the next generation of major leaguers, is also bleak:
*In 2001, according to the most recent analysis (using data
supplied by the NCAA) from the Institute for Diversity and Ethics
in Sport, African-Americans made up 6.7% of Division I college
ballplayers on scholarship (excluding those at historically black
institutions, such as Southern).
*There were 52 blacks on the rosters of teams in the six biggest
conferences (ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10, SEC),
including three in the 11-school Big Ten, according to The Daily
Northwestern.
*There were 11 blacks on the eight teams that participated in the
recently concluded College World Series.
"My wife and I talk about it every night," says Al Davis, who has
an older son, Julian, who plays college baseball at St. Leo
(Fla.) University. Stephan plays first and third base at
Hillsborough High in Tampa. "It's a sad thing, to be honest with
you. You ask the black kids, 'What is Cooperstown?' They look at
you like, 'What's that?'"
The Pittsburgh Pirates won the 1979 World Series with 10 blacks
on their 25-man roster. As recently as 1994 all six starting
outfielders in the All-Star Game were African-American (Barry
Bonds, Joe Carter, Ken Griffey Jr., Tony Gwynn, David Justice and
Kirby Puckett).
Why has the number of black ballplayers dropped so sharply in
recent years? Baseball's inability to match the buzz-producing
marketing of football and basketball is an easy target, as is the
fallout from the 1994-95 strike. "Football and basketball have
come up," Cleveland Indians pitcher C.C. Sabathia says. "One big
thing: Baseball took a big hit in the last strike with both
races." No African-American ballplayer emerged with nearly the
broad-based marketable appeal of basketball icon Michael Jordan.
Two of the stars headed on that track, Griffey and Frank Thomas,
had their careers and images derailed by injuries and
ineffectiveness. Bonds, one of the game's greatest players ever,
turns 39 this month and has exhibited little interest in a
Jordan-like responsibility to sell his sport.
There are, however, many more complex and grass-roots reasons
beyond how the major league game is packaged and sold. Many
blacks are encountering economic and instructional gaps--they
don't have access to the groomed fields, expert instruction and
the pay-for-play mentality associated with suburbia. The demise
of the two-parent household and the passionate neighborhood
volunteer coach have cut the connection between baseball and
young blacks. And colleges, by maintaining a low ceiling on
baseball scholarships, continue to make football and basketball
more attractive options.
The ominous net effect of the socioeconomic factors is that now
there are so few blacks in the sport that baseball has lost its
aspirational appeal to many African-Americans. The game, built
upon opportunity for European immigrants in the first half of the
20th century and more recently for Latinos and Asians, no longer
is viewed by many blacks as an inclusive sport for them. "I
guarantee you," says New York Mets outfielder Cliff Floyd, who
grew up on the South Side of Chicago, "there are many people from
where I come from that don't even know I play ball. I could say,
'I'm Cliff,' and they'd ask me what I was doing now. There's just
not a high interest in baseball. If I played basketball, it would
be totally different."
Rollins, who grew up in Alameda, Calif., outside Oakland, says
friends there "kid me" about playing baseball. When asked if he
meant they kidded him about playing a sport with so few blacks,
as opposed to football or basketball, Rollins nods and says,
"Exactly what you just said."
"I think there's definitely a sociological element to what we're
talking about," says John Young, an African-American former major
league scout who in 1989 established Reviving Baseball in Inner
Cities (RBI), a development program run by Major League Baseball
for youths 13 through 18. "Now that two girls from Compton
dominate tennis [the Williams sisters] and a kid from Cypress
dominates golf [Tiger Woods], a lot of intelligent black people
that I know--professional, educated people--believe that the last
bastion for white America is baseball. I'm talking about very
intelligent people who believe that."
Outspoken Atlanta Braves outfielder Gary Sheffield says former
Los Angeles Dodgers teammate Eric Karros asked him once how he
could withstand booing and criticism in Los Angeles when he
played for the Dodgers. "I told him, 'Imagine if you looked to
your left in the clubhouse and everybody was black, and you
looked to your right and everybody was black,'" says Sheffield of
playing in a predominantly white atmosphere. "'You went in the
trainer's room and everybody was black. You looked in the stands
and everybody was black. Then maybe you can understand how we
feel.'
"If I'm a kid and I don't see any faces like my own, why do I
want to play baseball when I can play football or basketball?"
The decline of the black ballplayer has coincided most notably
with the rise of the Latino player. (The number of white players
in the major leagues has held between 58% and 62% every year from
1995 through 2002--down from 70% in 1990.) Latins held a record
28% of roster spots last year, up from 20% in '96 and more than
double the 13% in '90. Their number should continue to rise as
46% of the 6,196 minor league players at the start of this season
were foreign-born, with most of them coming from Latin America.
Major league clubs pump $60 million annually into Latin American
scouting and development, which includes club-run academies at
which a 16-year-old can stay for up to 30 days while the team
decides whether to sign him to a pro contract, usually at a
fraction of what a U.S.-born player would cost. By contrast,
players born in the U.S. are subject to the major league draft
and cannot be signed until they or their high school class
graduates. Also, in Latin America major league clubs seldom have
to compete for their players' attention with football and
basketball, college recruiters or computers and other diversions
prevalent among teenagers in the States.
One bright January morning during a visit to the Dominican
Republic three years ago, an American reporter noticed scores of
young ballplayers going through drills on a diamond in a Santo
Domingo public park. The reporter asked a bystander what kind of
teams these were. The bystander replied that they weren't teams
at all, that the young men met every morning on their own to work
out. In their midst were big leaguers such as Pedro Martinez,
Pedro Astacio and Jose Mesa.
Such passion for baseball has become as rare in urban America as
a well-maintained ball field.
What used to be fertile ground for African-American ballplayers
now produces mushrooms. The infields at the Belmont Heights
Little League complex in Tampa are so unkempt this June afternoon
that giant toadstools give off shade. The grass and weeds are a
half-foot high. The sun is shining. The complex is empty. Nobody
is playing baseball. When there are games, Al Davis says,
sometimes they are stopped so that adults can comb the uneven
fields for broken glass. The only clue that this once was home to
a model program for black ballplayers is a sign attached to a
rusted blue canopy above the metal bleachers of the one
full-sized diamond. It reads, DWIGHT "DR. K" GOODEN SENIOR LEAGUE
FIELD.
In the 1970s you could have watched a game at Belmont Heights any
night of the week during the season, and chances were there'd be
a future major leaguer on the field. Gooden, Sheffield, Derek
Bell, Carl Everett and Vance Lovelace all played here. Billy
Reed, the beloved Hillsborough High coach, was often at the
complex, coming straight from practice to give the little guys
lessons and encouragement. The Belmont Heights team reached the
Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa., four times.
"What I remember," says Gooden, 38, the 1985 Cy Young Award
winner, "was they'd have registration day on a Saturday. And if
you didn't show up early enough, you'd get turned away because
all the spots filled up. We had six teams on every [age] level.
Now each level has three teams. They have so few kids playing
they have to go play teams from other parks just to fill out
their schedule.
"We used to play all the time, not just Little League ball. Eight
or nine of us would get on our bikes and ride to another
neighborhood and play a bunch of other kids. And maybe next time
they'd come to our neighborhood. And if there was a game on TV or
radio, we were watching or listening. Nothing like that happens
anymore. Nobody's playing."
And there aren't enough Billy Reeds around these days.
Like the folklore of an ancient tribe, love of baseball is passed
down from elders in the form of oral history. Such are the
nuances of the game and the subtleties of its requisite hand-eye
skills that children rarely come to it naturally and
independently--not, say, as jauntily as they learn to fling a
ball through a hoop or tuck a football under one arm and feel the
wind whistle past their ears as their feet fly over the ground.
Baseball needs its elders. Young, the former scout, knew men like
that when he was growing up in South Central Los Angeles,
volunteers whom he calls "pied pipers."
"Now that older guy likes basketball," Young says. "Baseball lost
those pied pipers."
Traditionally those pied pipers have been fathers, and there is
even a media genre dedicated to the father-son dogma of baseball
theology. In 2001, Bob Muzikowski wrote the book on urban black
Little Leaguers. Safe at Home chronicles how Muzikowski, a white
insurance broker transplanted from New Jersey, started a Little
League program in the neighborhood of the famously dangerous and
downtrodden Cabrini Green projects in Chicago. He has since begun
another Little League program for blacks on the West Side. "How
many Little Leagues do you know of where fathers are not
coaching?" Muzikowski asks rhetorically. "The backbone of Little
League baseball is nurturing fathers. Most of our kids wouldn't
know their fathers if they walked into the same room. People
don't want to talk about it--it's not politically correct--but
the facts are obvious. In 1960, 80 percent of urban black
families were two-parent households. Now it's 20 percent."
Al Davis is a pied piper who not only teaches baseball to his
sons but also offers free lessons to neighborhood boys. Davis
lived in Tampa before moving to one of its suburbs, Valrico, for
14 years. He marveled at the manicured, lighted fields, the
batting cages, the expensive bats and gloves and the army of
parental volunteers, who would appear in great numbers to drag
the infield, cut the grass with their own riding mowers, organize
car pools to and from games and provide good instruction.
Recently Davis moved back to the city. Sure, the lack of groomed
facilities was obvious, but what saddened him more was the lack
of interest and instruction. In the 14 years he was away, Tampa
had fallen out of love with baseball. Football and basketball had
stolen the hearts of the pied pipers, who were drawn to games
with a faster beat and more players with faces like their own.
The number of black players in the NFL, for instance, grew from
60% in 1990 to 65% in 2002, though the rise of blacks at the
glamour position, quarterback, made their presence seem larger
still. Basketball prospered with money sprinkled around from shoe
companies, whose products became icons not just in the sporting
culture but the increasingly mainstream hip-hop world. The NBA
has been between 72% and 82% black for the past 12 years.
"The thing about baseball is that it's such a team sport," says
the Phillies' Rollins, who was a point guard in high school. "And
when you're in the inner city, it's all about being the man,
about establishing your strength as an individual. So how can you
be the man? You want that ball in your hands with three seconds
on the clock to take the shot, or you want the football under
your arm. That's how."
Without its pied pipers, baseball, the more pedagogic game,
suffers. "Just grabbing a bat and ball doesn't make you a coach,"
Davis says. "I don't see the baseball knowledge [in the inner
city]. Blacks don't understand the degree to which they have to
take the game seriously. By the time the kid tries out for the
high school team in ninth grade, it's too late. I know people get
mad and there's prejudice everywhere in life, but it's not [the
reason in this case]. It's because kids didn't get proper
training to compete."
There is also an economic gap between baseball and basketball.
Baseball requires bats, balls, gloves and a large field that has
to be maintained. Basketball needs only a ball and a court. Larry
Harper, founder and director of the Good Tidings Foundation,
which supports youth programs and builds athletic facilities in
the San Francisco Bay Area, says a state-of-the-art basketball
court costs $30,000, with a generic blacktop one running as
little as $5,000. A baseball field, he says, costs $100,000.
Then, too, Harper says, "even if you get the field built, there's
[only] a 50-50 chance the field will be maintained."
Yet that economic breach was a fundamental truth even when many
blacks were playing baseball. The gap that has recently changed
the landscape is the instructional chasm to which Davis refers.
With the demise of the three-sport athlete (SI, Nov. 18, 2002),
those suburban kids who play baseball are saturated with practice
and games year-round. Parents are doling out up to $5,000 to have
their sons play on travel teams with multiple sets of fancy
uniforms, up to $500 to attend showcase camps in which they walk
away with promotional CD-ROMs of their son and up to $60 an hour
once or twice a week in the off-season to have Johnny take
private lessons. The young African-American without access to
that kind of intensive training is hopelessly behind the learning
curve of a game that is difficult to grasp. "We've lost them by
age 13," says DeJon Watson, director of professional scouting for
the Indians.
Says Al Davis, "By the time the kids get to high school, the white
kid who's had pitching lessons can throw three pitches and the
black kid has one pitch, a fastball, and all the batters can hit
that. Come tournament time you see the inner-city teams get
knocked off quickly. The white kids might not have as good
athletic ability, but they understand the game. It's a sad thing,
to be honest with you. I've seen such good athletes who just
didn't understand [the game], and now you see them hanging out on
the corner. If they had had instruction, maybe you could have
done something for them. The [rich person's] game was golf when I
was a kid. Baseball is almost like golf was. You've got to have
the money or you're in bad shape."
Rickie Weeks, a black ballplayer, was good though not a star at
Lake Brantley High in Altamonte Springs, Fla., and graduated in
2000. He was thin, 180 pounds on a 5'11" frame, with exceptional
speed but little power for an outfielder. Pro scouts took a look
at him, but no club drafted him. No major college was interested.
"We're scouting kids less for tools than we did before," Young
says of the deemphasis of athleticism.
A pro scout who knew Cador, the Southern University coach,
recommended Weeks as a player who would be a good fit for Cador's
program. Cador gave Weeks a scholarship. Three years later the
Milwaukee Brewers took Weeks, now a sinewy power-hitting second
baseman, with the second overall pick in last month's draft. "A
lot of times the pros and the colleges will take the polished
player over the athlete," Cador says. "The coach in the SEC is
getting paid big money to win. And if he doesn't win, he's going
to lose his job. So he can't do what I'm doing. He's going to
take the more polished player."
Ray Fagnant, a Red Sox scout who covers New England, New Jersey,
New York and eastern Canada, says he had "maybe six" black
players in his entire territory this year who were considered
even borderline pro prospects. A National League team area scout
says New York City has generally been without a big-time
African-American prospect since Shawon Dunston 21 years ago.
"Most of the better players in the city are Latin now," the scout
says. "You don't see the [black] players you might have years
ago. They don't play. And if a kid is a good athlete, the high
school football coach or the basketball coach doesn't want to
share him. We're just not seeing them play baseball. Now you can
drive by a basketball court at two o'clock in the morning and
it'll be packed."
Not a single African-American from Boston, New York or
Philadelphia plays in the majors now. Only two current big
leaguers--Floyd and Braves lefty reliever Ray King--came out of
Chicago.
Many major league clubs, such as the Red Sox, the Oakland A's and
the Toronto Blue Jays, emphasize drafting college players over
high school players because the college kids are more developed
and their potential is more easily defined. However, the carrot
of a baseball scholarship is a rather small one. The NCAA permits
a total of 11.7 baseball scholarships at any given time, and they
are typically parsed among most of the 30 or so players on a
roster. Full rides are rare. Parents can find more financial
incentive in football, which is allowed up to 85 scholarships,
and even basketball, which gets 13 for a roster that is half the
size of baseball's. Even softball is permitted more grants (12)
than baseball.
There are 34 blacks in the majors who attended four-year
colleges, including such stars from major programs as Barry Bonds
(Arizona State), Barry Larkin (Michigan), Charles Johnson
(Miami), Frank Thomas (Auburn) and Mo Vaughn (Seton Hall). But
those players appear to be remnants of another era because the
flow from that pipeline has slowed to a trickle in recent years.
Only five of the college-bred black big leaguers are younger than
29--and none of them are stars (Juan Pierre, Ken Harvey, Willie
Harris, Jerry Hairston and Jacque Jones).
At some point," Bob Muzikowski says, "there will be a tipping
point, a societal change that we don't know about yet, and blacks
will return to the sport." John Young believes a three-day
conference among black leaders and baseball executives is needed
to map out a recovery plan. The Indians' DeJon Watson says the
sport needs to tailor part of its packaging to blacks. "We don't
market our game very well," he says. "Take Nelly, the rapper.
From a major league baseball standpoint he's a perfect marketing
tool. He has played the game. Maybe get him to tell his story to
reach kids."
Hall of Famer Frank Robinson is not so concerned with marketing
campaigns. An 11-year-old in West Oakland, Calif., when Jackie
Robinson changed baseball, Frank Robinson became part of the
first generation of great black players in the major leagues,
which also included Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks and Willie Mays. Now
67 and the manager of the Montreal Expos, Frank Robinson says
today's black stars share in the blame for the decline of the
black ballplayer. "People seem to think they owe nothing but
playing the game," he says. "You don't see minorities attached to
the community or going home and giving something back. Now the
stars and the top players, they hide. They don't go into the
community. They don't go back into the inner city or where their
roots were.
"Baseball is now third, maybe fourth in the [inner-city]
household. Golf is now talked about more than baseball. Why?
Because of the influence of Tiger Woods. He gives back through
his foundation."
Says Sheffield, "We need to do more. We have to do a better job
giving back." Several years ago Sheffield and Gooden wrote checks
to the Belmont Heights Little League program for improvements,
such as the installation of batting cages. Now Gooden, Sheffield
and Everett plan to develop a youth center in Tampa. In the
meantime Gooden, a pitching coach for the Yankees' rookie league
team in Tampa, says he would like to run camps and clinics at the
Yankees' minor league complex in his off-hours, perhaps busing
kids there. "It's time to take the first step," he says.
Mets first baseman Tony Clark, formerly with the Detroit Tigers,
has donated baseball equipment to Detroit public schools through
his foundation. San Francisco Giants outfielder Marquis Grissom
runs a foundation that supports youth programs near his childhood
home of Red Oak, Ga., renovating fields and distributing
equipment. "I believe in what [Hall of Famer] Joe Morgan once
said," Grissom says. "If baseball is concerned about the decrease
of black players, it should open clinics and academies in the
inner cities of the U.S., just like they do in the Dominican
Republic."
There is agreement at baseball's highest level. "I'm a product of
the '50s, '60s, '70s and '80s, and I remember the strong level of
interest in the African-American community," says commissioner
Bud Selig. "Over the years that interest declined. We've tried to
deal with it, but we clearly need to do more. That means
expanding the RBI program and spending more money on building
fields. The Baseball Tomorrow Fund, our joint program with the
players, is building fields in the inner cities to give those
kids the same access to baseball that they have to basketball and
football. We need to intensify our effort. This [decline of black
players] is startling."
Last year the Baseball Tomorrow Fund awarded approximately $1.4
million to 28 youth baseball and softball programs, an average of
$50,000 per program, or about half the cost of building a
baseball field.
Major League Baseball is planning to open its first urban academy,
in the Los Angeles area. Members of the major league scouting
bureau will help provide instruction. The academy is expected to
include two full-sized fields, a youth field and one softball
field. Along with the on-field training, there will be classroom
instruction and the use of computers to teach the sport. The cost
will be borne by Major League Baseball. "The idea is that every
major league club will want one in the shadow of their own
stadium," says Jimmie Lee Solomon, Major League Baseball's senior
vice president, baseball operations. "Hopefully all 30 clubs will
have one, and there will be more in places that are not major
league cities." Such academies, Solomon says, would reach kids as
young as eight years old.
"What I've learned is that we need to get kids when they're
younger," says Young, the founder of RBI. The 185 RBI programs
around the world are run with varying degrees of success. The
programs in Houston, where Tampa Bay Devil Rays outfielder Carl
Crawford played, and Atlanta are regarded as strong centers. The
ideal RBI program may be the one in Los Angeles, which is
thriving--it sends youths to showcase camps and out-of-state
tournaments--because of the financial support of Dodgers pitcher
Kevin Brown, who is white.
"We can do things here because Kevin Brown gave us a million
dollars," Young says. "I get saddened sometimes because when I
started RBI 14 years ago, 17 percent of the players in the majors
were black. And now it's 10 percent. I feel like I've failed."
Young understands, too, that inner-city demographics are
changing, especially in places such as Los Angeles, Miami and New
York, where the number of Latinos is increasing significantly.
Blacks accounted for 65% of the participants in RBI two years
ago; now they account for 50%.
"The RBI program is nice," the NL team area scout says, "but
they're not getting the best athletes. Those athletes are going
into other sports."
Says Phillies general manager Ed Wade, "If you're a young
African-American, and you see LeBron James out of high school
getting $90 million and going straight to the NBA, and you have a
choice of sports to play, baseball isn't going to have that kind
of young role model."
Imagine a black youth watching the April 11 game at Minute Maid
Park between the Cardinals and the Houston Astros, two of the
best teams in the National League Central. The game is a
thriller, with Houston second baseman Jeff Kent beating St. Louis
ace Matt Morris with a two-run walk-off homer. The two teams used
23 players in the game. None of them were black--just as it was
in 1946.
There is a saying in baseball that scouts go where the talent is,
from the heart of a big city to the edge of a one-stoplight town.
Every tank of gas is a chance to see the next Sheffield. "Nobody
slips through the cracks," says Fagnant, the Boston scout.
One hot day two springs ago, with baseball season in full bloom,
Fagnant was driving in Fort Myers on a road that runs between the
Red Sox' minor league training complex and their spring-training
ballpark. Off to the side of the road he saw young, fit, athletic
blacks playing a spirited pickup game in a park. He saw what he
figured were as many as 150 people watching and cheering with
delight. The baseball man's heart sank as he kept driving, the
image shrinking in his rearview mirror. The boys were playing
football.