I don’t feel guilty.
How many hispanics play baseball?
Nearly half the players were black when I was growing up in the ‘70s. In those days, I was a Dodger fan. Our best hitter was Reggie Smith. Dusty Baker was one of the four Dodgers who got 30 home runs in the same season for the first time. Weak hitting Glen Burke was Rick Monday’s backup in CF, along with Lee Lacy. Pinch Hit specialist Manny Mota was on that team. Teddy Martinez was a backup infielder. We are well about 12% there. No pitchers. However Bob Gibson already proved that a black athlete could be the best of the best in that department. Dwight Gooden was also exceptional for the Mets a few years later.
Some of the best of the best were black in that era (Dave Winfield, Reggie Jackson, Vida Blue)
They trot out the story EVERY year.
There’s no damn ‘war on DEI’. DEI is at war with common sense and fairness. I’m on the side of common sense and fairness.
6% is American black players. How many world black players are there. What is the percentage of blacks in the world? They always select a bar that shows what they want to show.
I feel sooooooo victimized!
Several schools by us have dropped baseball along with wrestling in part due to diminishing interest, in part to offer girl’s soccer or girl’s volleyball etc.....
Baseball hasn’t been big in a long time.
Wrestling OTOH was represented quite a bit in the states
I’ve learned since that a lot of the state universities have dropped wrestling as well. It is a sport that is clearlyu being taken out in the name of equality.
Professional Sports are the ultimate meritocracy. No one wants to watch a subpar player. If you’re good, you play. Period. Skin color doesn’t matter.
US Olympics team is going to get embarrassed. The players don’t even know how NOT to travel or carry the ball. Plus the white guys are better now than the blacks. Hell Steph Curry is more white than black and he is the best shooter in the world from 3 point line.
Garbage. What about the NBA?
Apparently, MSNBC has not reviewed many TV commercials lately. They are getting to look like the NBA. Tawana is now playing Buffy, the suburban mom. No need to get piggy. Baseball is not the NBA. They’re going to have to beat out a lot of excellent short Dominican and Venezuelans Latino guys who are there because they are really good at the game to horn in as the preferred POC. But, hey, they can always play a baseball player on a TV commercial.
whites and chinese and filipinos are disproportunately represented in major league sports, oh and women.
they don’t play baseball in da hood...
There was an article about this in our local paper this morning. My husband observed that they never counted the Afro Caribbean players. They only counted the African-American players. If you only do that, yes, there are few African-American baseball players. Of course it is possible that the Afro- Caribbean baseball players did not want to be considered or counted in this pity party. They do not necessarily respect African-Americans who are resentful or self pitying. Those Afro Caribbean people, born and raised in countries much poorer and less democratic than America, do not feel sorry for themselves. They proudly stand on their own efforts.
The reduction of black and white players in the mlb is directly related to financial and quick entry of latin players. And now with the growth of asian players and the clubs spending so much on latin entries the whites and blacks are not as numerous.
wy69
OMG!!! When was there a time when young black atheletes did not prefer Basketball or Football over baseball??? What are the DEI folks going to do now, go out and browbeat some young black atheletes for not choosing baseball???
The DEI folks now nothing about human nature. They mistakenly think everyone of different demographic groups should always share a proportionare interest in every kind of job, profession, career, and if that is not what the statistics show then they think something MUST be wrong with the people who are choosing people for jobs, professions, career paths. They, the DEI folks are the only thing that is wrong.
Kids in America (black, white, whatever) don’t play baseball.
That is why there are so many Hispanics and Japanese in MLB.
Well we didn’t have “DEI” until fairly recently, so this is garbage...if anything it would be evidence DEI achieved the reverse, right?
Professional baseball requires a MAN to try to hit a ball with junk on it travelling 95mph. Only a few in the world can do it more than 30% of the time.
It is not a place for diversity hires.
Why do racists expect blacks to be over-represented in baseball?
In 2023, whites constituted 60 percent, Hispanics 30 percent, blacks 6 percent, and Asians and others 4 percent. Considering MLB draws from about half the world, I’m not sure blacks are underrepresented.
The percent white has hardly changed since the mid 1980s. The percent other than white has changed substantially, shifting from black to Hispanic and now a little bit to Asian. These changes among the other than white mostly reflect the entry of foreign players.
The last time I looked, nobody was holding any body back. No chains binding anybody’s feet. Indeed, baseball is kind of a funny team sport, with most of the players staying quite a distance away from each other. Except every now and then, you get a double play or maybe a pitcher covering first base. But, to show you how smart we human beings are - and it’s really kind of amazing - did you ever see an outfielder take off for a fly ball right when it’s off the bat.
These racial things change. There was a time, Italians seemed to dominate baseball. Also boxing. And, a time when college kids dominated track and field, and Jewish kids dominated basketball. There was a time, a long time ago, when blacks and Irish dominated horse racing. There’s a lot of history jammed packed into this still young country. Better enjoy it before the anti-Americans flush it all down the toilet.