RACEBALL OR BASEBALL? BLOG #2242; FRI JUN 26, 2020

THE COMEBACK:

WHERE DID YOU GETTHE BALL

TICKETS?

I’M BUSY RIGHT NOW,   

CAN I IGNORE YOU 

ANOTHER TIME?

THE MESSAGE:

Apparently the 'Black Lives Matter’ needs to add some letters to the movement, NJSPS (that is: Not Just In Some Pro Sports )

At the start of the 2014 season, NFL surveys revealed that the National Football League was approximately 68% African-American and about 28% white, with the remaining 4% comprising Asian/Pacific Islander, non-white Hispanics, and  a  Mixed Race categories.. By 2020, 70% of players in the NFL are black. According to The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, the NBA was 74.3 percent black during the 2015-16 season.  .

TONY TODAY:

WHY IS MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL SO WHITE?

There’s been a trend of fewer and fewer African Americans in this sport. They are  largely being replaced by Latino players.

ALVIN CHANG, 

He covers policy by making explainers with charts and cartoons. 

Baseball is a white man’s sport according to Alvin Chang. He states that the general managers, who tend to make the baseball decisions, were 87 percent white in 2016. Vice presidents of teams were white 86 percent of the time. The fans are largely older white men. These people insist baseball culture should stay white. 

A few months ago, Chang was emailed a study that blamed absent fathers for the decline of black players in baseball.  “It takes a father to make a professional baseball player. Baseball is passed down from generation to generation, with fathers being the natural teachers. Is the reason for the statistics  due to the fact that many black children don’t have a father, or a stay at home father to teach them an interest in the game?

Other causes definitely come into play.  Many black families are channeled into poor neighbourhoods  that make it difficult  to have enough income to afford certain benefits to children.  Baseball youth camps, summer programs and traveling teams,  help a son develop skills and interests but cost a lot of money.

DEREK JETER

 His mother is of English, German, and Irish ancestry,
while his father is African-American.

"Something needs to change. It gets to a point where you say enough is enough," Jeter said in a publicized conversation after the death of George Floyd. "For the first time, you're seeing people across all 50 states and roughly 20 other countries  in agreement that now is the time  things  need to change, because it's been going on for too long."

Several black players acknowledge that in a sport like baseball, where only about eight percent of Major League players are Black, it’s harder to speak out for fear of retaliation. That became abundantly clear after what happened to Colin Kaepernick in the NFL.

INTERESTING STUFF:

Coca-Cola was originally green. 

THE MUSIC:

THE QUESTION:

Do baseball fans really miss the significance of Jackie Robinson’s intro to the game?

THE LEMON:

Awarded to the fans who hung the sign at Fenway Park: ‘Racism Is as American as Baseball’. 

THE QUOTE:

"I was imprisoned in the flesh of an utter stranger, an unsympathetic one with whom I felt no kinship. All traces of the John Griffin I had been were wiped from existence.”  Author of the book Black Like Me. 

Griffin darkened his skin and travelled south to experience the discriminating hatred by whites against black people.

 

THE CLIP: