Oddly enough, the Tigers have a fairly large percentage of black players but aside from himself, most of them aren’t big hitters.
On the other hand there are guys like Magglio Ordonez who had a 5 hit game last night including a home run, a couple of doubles and singles. Then there’s Placido Polanco who is a practically guaranteed RBI hitter. Pudge is a hitter and also arguably the best catcher in the game.
Personally I suspect it has more to do with the fact that we don’t play baseball as kids as much as we used to. In latin America it’s still a major passtime. Also, latin American blacks generally aren’t considered black.
Which leads me to my original question that I posed when the Tigers acquired Scheffield. Why? The team was pretty good, and the only thing that stopped them from winning the whole shebang was a few choice fielding errors. And the fact that they didn’t hit worth a crap. But I digress...
...and we finally beat the Indians!