Black Baseball Players

I hope you've all had a great week! Yesterday I was surprised to see that the number of black players in the major leagues was only 67 total and three teams (D-Backs, Giants, Cardinals) didn't have a single black player on their entire roster! Raise your hand if you could've answered that trivia question! The percentages break down to just a hair under 8% at the moment and that's down from over 16% from the early 1970's through the late 1990's. Baseball is spending a significant amount of resources on making sure that the black youth of inner cities are introduced to baseball. Why is this not worried about with other ethnic populations in other sports? The number of whites in basketball I don't think is an issue. The issue isn't access…it's popularity. Kids growing up these days are not worried about emulating their baseball heroes because they have none! Lebron James and Colin Kaepernick, just to name two, are guys that are being emulated across the sports landscape with kids today. Once baseball worries about being popular to all kids, across all socioeconomic backgrounds, maybe they'll have an easier go of it. Until then, I don't think it's that big of an issue. Have a great week everyone!

-Jubb