Posted on 03/11/2016 4:33:33 PM PST by reegs
This foreign influx into our National Pastime may help explain why our youth is abandoning baseball. Youth who play baseball have declined by more than 40% since 2000, and some communities where baseball was once booming now struggle to fill teams. Television ratings for World Series games are less than half what they were three decades ago.
Baseball owners are doing the same thing that big corporations do – bring in foreign labor to take jobs that should go to Americans. American baseball players are better, as the awards and Hall of Fame prove, but perhaps baseball owners think that foreign players are cheaper and easier to control.
It is time to cut off visas for foreign baseball players, and return our National Pastime to Americans.
Ah yes the good days of TV!
Nope, it’s out there
Caribbean ballplayers are more hungry. They don’t take walks. Walking won’t get you off the island. It’s hitting. It’s like blacks in the NFL. Do you want to see a lower form of play?
Do it her way and the World Series will be more Worldly.
We originally had him in wrestling when he was very young. He loved it. There was lots of parent involvement including the coaching staff. If you know anything about wrestling, it is intense, but instruction and safety always came first. It was not perfect but there was no internal politics. The club folded after a couple of years and he wanted to try baseball, so we did. He was born very early in the year and wound up in a league with kids 2 years older, a head taller and 20 lbs. heavier. We asked if he could be in the division with his friends from his grade that were more or less his age and size. We were given 3 pages of rules why this could not happen. It went down hill from there. The final straw was when his coach and the umpire got into a shouting match while my son was at the plate trying to bat in front of 100 people. In order to teach the coach a lesson, the ump call 3 strikes on 3 balls that my kid laid off. And these were not close calls. I'm talking over his head. I've had kids go through 6 different sports. Nothing was as bad as baseball.
While the idea in its pure form seems ridiculous, she does have a few points that need some consideration.
When a sport becomes too concentrated with only one ethnic group, it does reduce the overall interest in the players and the sport. with professional sports, it can reduce attendance at the games.
A few instances: Tennis - aside from the Williams girls, the USA has not produced any top notch players in at least a decade. American interest is down which further lowers the number of young people training in a sport.
Another example - the NBA is mostly black kids from the inner cities, and since they are great players, it is fun to watch them - until it gets boring as they all seem to become a blur as they play so fast and are mostly hot dogging it - interest wans among many fans.
I think Phyllis Schlafly is incorrect in banning foreign players - but her observation does have some legitimacy.
If foreign players were banned from US teams, would American players be allowed on the Blue Jays?
WTF? LOL.
I think the author has cause and effect mixed up here. I have had several conversations with coaches and scouts in baseball about this very subject, and I'll give you the two biggest factors that every one of them cited for the decline in baseball participation among American kids:
1. football
2. basketball
This isn't even a recent trend, by the way. There was a time when the best American high school athletes chose baseball as their primary sport. Everyone I've spoken with pretty much agrees that this ended as far back as the early 1970s. It took a while for the changing demographics of baseball to reflect this, but by the late 1980s the influx of Latin Americans was obvious.
This rant on Baseball is some of the silliest shit I ever heard.
And I'm a Trump supporter.
The majority of MLB players are white Americans.
I tend to agree with her sentiment that there needs to be fewer foreigners in baseball. Some cultures just stink and shouldn’t be allowed to mix with ours.
I see the same thing at work in the semiconductor industry. The groups that I have worked in have too many foreigners. I don’t identify with them at all. I hear things like ‘you guys should get rid of 2A because we don’t need it in India’ and ‘Are you voting for Bernie?’.
>> She’s 91, so may have dementia coming on
Not a clever comment.
>> It is time to cut off visas for foreign baseball players, and return our National Pastime to Americans.
God forbid we support a National Pastime to Americans.
Competitive imports must be subjected to domestic productivity/quality, and not be valued on cost disparity alone (i.e., greed.)
Yeah, maybe. I love Phyllis, but how do you explain her going off on baseball? Pretty bizarre, don’t you think? And that would explain why a classy lady would endorse a con man.
Wow. So you’re good with quotas as long they are quotas you agree with?
Around 60% white anyhow, last time I recall checking. MLB reported in 2013 that around 28.2% of current MLB players were foreign born.
Freegards
Americans have increased their percentage in the NHL, with the percentage of Canadians declining from 90% at the inception of the league to 50% today. Americans represent about 20%, with other nationalities, such as Swedes, Russians, and Czechs, making up the difference. About two thirds of NFL players are black Americans, with most of remainder being white Americans. The NBA statistics are about 76% black Americans and 20% white American. Asians and Hispanics represent a small percentage of the NBA and NFL.
For Americans, yes. Americans first, foreigners last.
Baseball?
Hells bells, I just want them out of DC and NYC.
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