It used to be apple pie, baseball and Chevrolet. {{{SIGH}}}
Posted on 04/14/2007 8:39:51 AM PDT by DCPatriot
It doesn't seem like it's been 35 years since baseball was so important to black America; it seems like another century, like the story should be illustrated in black-and-white clips. The 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson integrating baseball is tomorrow, and African American participation in what was once American's pastime has dropped to a stunning low. Only 8 percent of Major League Baseball players are African American. Historically black colleges and universities field teams that are often one-third to one-half white and Hispanic because African American children have no interest in playing the sport their fathers and grandfathers would play from sunup to sundown from the time slavery ended until the mid-1970s.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying Robinson wouldn't be proud of what he started that day in 1947 when he played in that Brooklyn Dodgers uniform for the first time.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Back then we all knew Robinson was a great ballplayer, but none of knew the political significance. It may not have been taught in school and it wasn’t of much interest to the kids anyway. We did wonder about the Red Sox and Pumpsie Green and why the Red Sox couldn’t get another Robinson, so we sort of knew without knowing.
For some cultural reasons baseball and hockey have come to be seen as white sports, while basketball and football are for blacks. I don’t know why.
I still think it has to do with a lack of little league in this country.
When I was a kid there were some 15 or 20 different teams in my rural community. Today you’ll only find 4 or 5. When I was 8 years old “what team are you on” was one of my first questions when I met a new kid aroud town.
Back then...1958, a Negro League was beginning their batting practice, the groundskeepers were painting the baselines.
One team was about to forfeit because several of their players had not arrived and they lacked enough players to field a full team.
They asked me to play!
To a twelve year old kid, these guys were mature men...some in their 30's.
I played 2nd base and had the time of life...it was a life-changing experience for me as a young boy loving baseball.
BTW...no errors in a half dozen chances. LOL!
What is sad is the last of the article:
But it's fair to wonder whether we, African Americans, ever will embrace baseball the way we once did, whether we'll love it, obsess over it the way Robinson and Mays and Aaron did, whether we'll see the powerful and skilled Ryan Howard as an American sporting hero or somebody who plays a sport that was important to us once upon a time.
and the saddest part is the statement likely holds true not just for African Americans but for all Americans. From what I have noticed baseball mania is all but dead for most under 35 years of age....
That is very cool. I played on a black softball team (Graybeard League), and they were all very good except me. A couple were annoyed by my presence but most simply wished my glasses weren’t so thick I couldn’t judge a flyball.
It used to be apple pie, baseball and Chevrolet. {{{SIGH}}}
This whole baseball race thing IS ONE OF THE MOST INSANCE, UTTERLY UNEXPLAINABLE POLITICALLY CORRECT ISSUES of recent time.
Blacks used to not be permitted to play baseball.
Blacks and anyone else can now play baseball.
Blacks, who have individual choice, ae not playing baseball despite the huge salaries its players get.
So friggin’ what?
As some one who grew up playing baseball in New Jersey, but who has lived in the South for the past 15 years, you could not PAY ME to go to a baseball game. Too boring, too slow, too long. Football and basketball are the modern, great sports. Blacks are simply more aware of that.
Instant gratification. A talented 20 year old can play basketball about as well as he will ever play it. It takes a decade to maximize baseball skills and the thug culture does not teach waiting for anything.
Bo Jackson could have been the greatest baseball player of all time instead of just another running back if he had been willing to spend 3 or 4 years working his way through the minors.
"Black kids stopped playing baseball, to some degree of their own free will. Nobody forced them out, or even nudged them. They fell out of love with baseball..."
"Now that Major League Baseball has restored fields from Compton, Calif., to Brooklyn and spread seed money all over the country, African American kids aren't interested. Baseball "takes too long" and "there's not enough action" and "it's too complicated."
About sums it up. Basketball has been their sport of choice for at least 20 years now. It can be played pretty much anymore, on the cheap, and of course advertisers (like Nike) have convinced the impressionable that owning the right basketball shoes is as essential to life as food, water, and hos. .....and many have (literally) committed murder to get them. Baseball doesn't have a chance with that community, and no marketing campaign can save it.
And quite frankly, so what? I'm about as concerned about the dearth of black American MLB players as I am about the dearth of white American NBA players.
African Americans make up about 11% of the population. So they are "under-represented" (as the liberals say) in Major League Baseball by 3/11 or about 27%.
Blacks make up 80% of the NBA. They are over-represented there by 69/11, or about 627%. In other words, there are six times more African Americans in the NBA then in the general population.
A small statistical anomaly in baseball is a big deal. A GIGANTIC statistical aberration in basketball (and a very large one in football) is no problem.
All I can say is that for those of you that don't like baseball the best I can do is work up some I feel sorry for you.
And I truly do feel sorry for you.
But I'm also not inclined anymore to try and explain my interest in Michelangelo to people that are only willing or able to focus long enough to read comic books. It is both a waste of my time and theirs.
Robinson was pretty much taken away from us when he became the big “civil rights” symbol.
I confess I am dismayed however, when they show the offense and defense lineups in the 1st quarter of NFL games at the lack of Caucasians in the starting lineups.
It used to be only positions requiring speed and agility went to black players...now even the linemen are.
I like watching players develop over time. I’ve been watching Tigers closing pitcher Joel Zumaya. Last year there were some 330 100mph fastballs pitched in all of the major league and Zumaya threw around 230 of those.
This year Zoomie has some new tricks in his arsenal. He goes from a 103mph fastball right down the center to and 86mph breaking ball that rolls across the plate.
Good points.
Wow...what a neat memory !!!!
Baseball is the perfect game.
The distance between the bases is exactly ninety feet...not ninety feet six inches.
If it were any closer, those throws from the shortstop hole would be late...instead we're treated to fantastic highlight reels. LOL!
It's also the only major league sport where a guy built like Mike Bordick can replace an icon like Cal Ripken, Jr., and break the fielding record at the same time.
D-lines more than O-lines. The latter still have a majority of white players, I believe. ....although a small one. But it's not uncommon to see entire defenses without a single white player.
I recall they pitched no breaking balls to me and threw at batting practice speed...until I hit one right back up the middle for a single. LOL!
I can still "see" that pitcher being teased.
I concur, DCP. Baseball has always been and will always be my favorite sport.
Especially when as you described...the previous pitch was 100 MPH ...and the guy's wild.
Uhhh, I grew up living and breathing baseball.
So no need to explain.
No way is baseball more complex than b-ball and esp. football with a hundred page playbook.
What you call strategy in basbeall, I call predictable.
Baseball is dull, golf is dull too.
Doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with those who like to watch it or like to play it.
I’m settling in to watch a game now.
Tom Boswell, a great baseball writer for the Washington Post once said...or quoted somebody...saying, "Watching baseball is like going to church...many attend but few really understand".
The game can be appreciated on a multitude of levels...unlike basketball or football.
There is no clock.
At any given moment there are a half-dozen things unfolding right in front of your eyes.
There's nothing predictable about baseball. You're a flaming HERETIC!!! ;^)
According the the supremely fatuous presstitutes these players are not black. Of course Wilbon will respond they're not 'African American.' Yet the DR is wholly within the American hemisphere.
Oy, what a strange world we live in.
To this day, my four sons...age 19 to 36 beg me to go to games with them because they say they appreciate it on a completely different level with me than with anybody else in the world.
For that reason alone, I could die today a happy man.
But, you're correct. Palmeiro isn't the same color as Sosa.
Get a clue, Wilbon, being a nappy head and a thug-for-life is more important than baseball.
How did you do at bat?
Imagine being a left-handed batter facing Randy Johnson in his prime, throwing 90 mph sliders behind you, and having them break over the plate.
Imagine being a left-handed batter facing Randy Johnson in his prime, throwing 90 mph sliders behind you, and having them break over the plate.
I wasn't aware of a single African MLB player. Fifty percent of the All-star teams are latin, and they cover the entire spectrum of shades of black. Liberals are such racists. I guess Latin coloring isn't good enough for them.
Does anyone know if there is any credible research about why white skill players outside of QB and TE are all but nonexistent in the NFL?
Same here. As a white kid growing up in the '50s and '60s, a couple miles from Wrigely Field, two of my heroes were Ernie Banks and Billy Williams, both black U.S. citizens--and classy guys, guys you could root for.
I followed the NFL more in the 1960s than I have in the last ten years. I followed the NBA more in the early '70s (had Bulls' season tickets back during the Dick Motta-Jerry Sloan-Bob Love-Chet Walker era).
A big part of the reason I don't follow the NFL and NBA these days is the dearth of good guys to root for. I can't pull for tattooed, trash-talking, b*st*rd-breeding, showboating thugs with criminal records. They disgust me.
I still believe in good old-fashioned sportsmanship, and I like guys who exemplify that, no matter what their color.
Because the toxic waste that passes for black mass-media “culture” these days doesn’t celebrate American black baseball players. They celebrate the NBA and NFL thugs with their Hummers rollin’ on “twenty-fo’s” and their posses and, dare I say it, “nappy-headed ho” groupies. Why should a black kid in Compton or East St. Louis care about a black American ballplayer (or even Jackie Robinson) when all he gets is a steady diet of Ron Artest, Pacman Jones, and their ilk? You don’t even hear that much about the NFL and NBA players that ARE good role models for young blacks. It’s all thug, all the time. And baseball players, generally, don’t thug it up.
}:-)4
Great story!
“Bo Jackson could have been the greatest baseball player of all time...”
Pretty tall claim there. How about backing it up? I don’t remember him breaking a lot of records in college. When he played for the White Sox he was pretty good, but he whiffed a lot.
“The only game, I think, is baseball.” - Babe Ruth
Speaking from the point of someone who saw him play both football and baseball in college and baseball in the minors I'd have to agree with tickmeister. I don't do "could have been" since no one will ever know. He was the best athlete I've ever seen in person bar none.
I also saw Mike Jordan play live with both the Barons and the NBA.
Jordan was probably the most dominant I've ever seen in one sport but Jackson was probably the all around better athlete.
Interestingly I only saw Jordan live in the NBA vs. the Hawks - and I don't think he ever had to put his best game on the table for them. He toyed with people just for his own personal amusement. LOL
Jackson was a mix of a better Herschel Walker and a worse Kirby Puckett, even though he was a sorry ass Aubie. ;0)
It was pretty well known here in Alabama that Bo was not much of a "practice player" which is what people wink, nod and say when they mean he was not a hard worker. Frequently I had heard him accused of getting special treatment in practice by being allowed to loaf. That is scary because if it is true it means he was mostly working on raw talent.
It also might explain why he wasn't all that willing to do the hard work in baseball and get the curve down right.
Walked twice, singled and my last at bat he struck me out...looking. His defense was egging him on and everybody on both benches was teasing him.
Those two walks though...being a baserunner when everybody else is twice or more as old as you. It was scary and exciting all at once.
You could have said the same thing about Deion Sanders if he pursued baseball fulltime.
Good for you.
The time I spend with my dad watching football and basketball is also priceless. Lucily my wife loves both too so we get to spend a lot of quality time together too.
He hit leadoff and his feet were NAILED inside the box.
I swear he must have just figured...at least Johnson's not wild...I'll look for the slider in the count...afterall, Randy Johnson was a strikeout pitcher not one who tried to get them to hit the ball in play.
So in his mind he only had to protect the strikezone at the knees. Blocking out that fear though....you have to tip your hat to him.
There were memorable playoff games vs the Mariners where the Orioles flustered RK.
Moyer the junk-baller OTOH owned the Orioles. To think the O's let him go.
Since you've always been one of my favorite Freepers, that only reinforces my beliefs on the virtues of The Game!
The Benchmark here isn't Orlando Cepeda...it's Jackie Robinson.
He played in an era when men in the stands wore fedoras and derbys.
There was only one camera...directly behind and above home plate.
Therefore, in the context of the story he is lamenting the dearth of USA born African Americans playing baseball.
Maybe Michael Jordan screwed it all up by failing at it and the running back to the hardwood courts.
Hitting a baseball, I'm sure you know, is the single most difficult thing to do in all of professional sports.
Exactly...I used to idolize Hank Aaron when he played with the Braves.
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