Posted on 04/20/2018 1:16:38 PM PDT by ethom
Major League Baseball just observed the 71st anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the race barrier, but it seems little has changed since 1947 when he endured appalling racism. ESPN's Howard Bryant (in photograph) claims that if Robinson was still alive today, "He would be facing the same sort of vitriol that Colin Kaepernick is facing today." Bryant made these and other pointed remarks about race on The Sporting Life with Jeremy Schaap radio program. Oh, and statistical analysis is racist.
It's not surprising that Bryant, an African-American and senior editor for ESPN The Magazine, said race relations haven't improved in the U.S. since the 1940s. It's good for business. He is the author of a racially charged book that will be released in early May.
In "The Heritage: Black Athletes, a Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism" Bryant deals with the "radical politics" of Robinson, Muhammad Ali, Tommie Smith and John Carlos that is being reclaimed today by "social justice warriors" LeBron James, Colin Kaepernick and Carmelo Anthony.
During his interview with Schaap, Bryant mainly focused on race and baseball. Just under 8 percent of major leaguers last season were black, and Schaap asked Bryant if it's just a matter of personal choice. Bryant responded that it's a choice made by baseball and then switched the topic from black athletes playing baseball to the low numbers of black executives employed in professional sports:
"If you're talking about front offices it doesn't make a difference what sport it is. You're always going to be talking about the black body over the black brain. The black body produces. The black brain does not get a lot of opportunities in sports. Look at the number of black general managers in basketball -- 80-percent black league -- and how many GMs are there in basketball? Black executives in football? It's same thing."
It's not just the hiring of executives that makes sports racist either, according to Bryant. The increasing sophistication of the sport is ... yes, racist:
"I believe in baseball that analytics are the equivalent of racism because baseball has created a new barrier to entry. Now you have to have an Ivy League degree to get a GM job in baseball. Only two GMs in baseball right now are ex-players. ... If you're an African-American, being an ex-player is not gonna help you anymore because now you gotta be an Ivy leaguer. Eight percent of the Ivy Leaguers are African-Americans."
Finally coming around to the issue of how many blacks are choosing baseball over rival sports, Bryant complained that baseball is an expensive traveling sport that black families cannot afford. He said public baseball programs have disappeared and baseball scouting has been overhauled to the detriment of blacks.
"Baseball used to look for unfinished products out of high school and it wanted to develop talent in the minor leagues," Bryant said. "Now they want a finished product. Baseball prefers its players to be coming out of college, and if you're going to look for black players in college you're not going to find them. Only two percent of NCAA baseball players are black."
These Black people do seem to always argue that you have to eliminate standards because standards cull out way too many Black people.
Obviously it is racism because baseball never scouts or signs blacks and hispanics from Latin America. Nope, it’s all lilly-white because of those racist GMs. This guy has it all figured out. They’ll probably kill him.
And the $30 million annual budget of Reviving Baseball in the Innercities is a racist plot to keep baseball white.
Feces twice passed.
The problem is luring the black talent to baseball. The minor league drudge is the biggest impediment to talented black athletes picking baseball.
Oddly enough, some segregation in the minor leagues would help. A high percentage of blacks on some minor league teams playing in heavily black areas would raise the comfort level for black players, but PC would probably preclude the solution.
Around the same time, Boy's High, the Brooklyn basketball powerhouse was led by two of the best players in NYC - Lenny Wilkens & Tommy Davis. Tommy chose baseball.
The fact that baseball is ignored by young blacks is a tragedy for baseball. But it is a cultural fact. Maybe if they'd quit tearing down baseball field & putting up soccer goals it might help. But that's just the way it is. It's not racism.
Because math ... and finding the right answer is so.... white.
/sarc
I seem to recall that there was a math bias in the 1950s....I’m not sure about the actual numbers, but it was said that if a white minor-leaguer had to hit .300 in AAA ball to get promoted to the majors, a black player had to hit .340.
What an @ss.
It looks like 13 of 30 GM’s have Ivy League educations.
http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/page/wintermeetings15_GMs/a-breakdown-major-league-baseball-30-general-managers,
with Dave Stewart having not attended college at all.
Andrew McCutcheon wrote a thoughtful article for the players’ journal a couple years ago, about how hard it is for poor kids (of whatever race) to take up baseball as a sport. Poor kids can’t afford travel ball and the big name trainers, so they have to excel in high school ball to be noticed. College baseball may not be an option either - baseball scholarships are not nearly as lucrative as football and basketball. Even a top high school player that gets drafted in the first round with a 7 figure signing bonus is looking at 3-5 years of busing through the minors, with any number of factors that can derail their development. There’s no instant stardom, like football and basketball.
As far as analytics being racist, there is a balance between statistical analysis and old-fashioned scouting. A kid who is not putting up the numbers, but the scouts insist he has the “tools”, will get wide leeway and multiple chances. So this guy is obviously a rat projecting his racism on a sport that he apparently doesn’t like.
Thanks. You know what you’re talking about.
Absolutely not. The Astros have an Ivy League general manager but the "decision scientists" he hired went to schools like MIT and were plucked from places like NASA.
All this explains why they could build a massive database of baseball information dubbed "ground zero" and yet forgot to change the passwords so the Cardinals were able to hack it.
This scout pointed out to me that up until the mid-1960s, the top athletes in a typical U.S. high school played baseball as their primary sport. The growth of the NFL on television marked the beginning of a change where more and more of these top athletes played football instead. Then basketball began to draw top talent away, with this trend picking up dramatically in the 1980s.
That's why it's no coincidence that the Hispanic presence in MLB began to grow dramatically in the early 1990s.
Interestingly, baseball has a great opportunity to start making a comeback as a top sport for young athletes now, as more and more parents keep their kids out of football for safety reasons.
Willie McCovey too. He was a great great player. I met him and Dusty Rhodes way back in another life. McCovey played in Tacoma when he was in the minors, Rhodes was on my paper route. I remember my Dad pointing out Willie Mays, and Luis Tiant over the fog of my memory, but don’t know if it is a false memory, or they spent a little time getting some AAA at bats back in the long ago. The Giants used to bring the big stars to Tacoma for special events, but I was in my single digits in age. I think Luis Aparicio played for them in that timeline too. Back then you could actually touch the infield dirt and there was just a rail between you and the game.
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