Years after Robinson, few African Americans in baseball

Posted

It was 68 years ago this week, April 15, 1947 to be exact, when Brooklyn Dodgers second baseman Jackie Robinson broke into the Major Leagues and, in the process, changed the face of baseball by breaking the sport’s color barrier.

But as Major League Baseball prepared to celebrate Robinson this week, the game itself has seen the number of African Americans playing baseball wane over the years. In fact, according to the most recent stats available, the number of African Americans playing on Major League teams at the start of the 2014 season stood at just 8.3 percent, the lowest level since the late 1950s.

“Just from the naked eye, the eye of a coach that is out there recruiting, there certainly are some talented young African-American men out there, but there are not a lot of them,” Manhattan College baseball coach Jim Duffy said. “Talented or not, I haven’t seen a lot of African-American kids competing in recent history for one reason or another.”

College of Mount St. Vincent baseball coach Vinny Todino has seen the same shortage of African-American talent.

“This is my first year so I’m new to recruiting but in the Bronx, I agree African-American kids are not playing the game as much,” Todino said. “I do believe there are opportunities in this area. There are some kids playing, but the numbers are low.”

So why such a decline in African-American kids playing American’s pastime? Opinions vary from the game’s traditional slow pace to a lack of access to baseball fields in the inner cities.

“It might be a little bit more sensible to play basketball,” Duffy opined. “The other thing is the pace of a game like basketball or football compared to baseball might not be more exciting or energetic to these kids. I think that might also have something to do with it.”

But Duffy thinks there could also be an economic component to the low participation levels as well.  

Jackie Robinson, Manhattan College, CMSV, Lehman, Jim Duffy, Vinny Todino, Ja’von Collins, Evan Brown, Sean Brennan
Page 1 / 3

Comments