What has happened to all of the great African-American players in Major League Baseball? A few weeks ago, on April 15th, as they do every year, all 30 major league teams celebrated the anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color line in 1947. Every player on every team wore Robinson’s #42 to honor this civil rights and baseball pioneer. What was noticed by many broadcasters and anybody watching games that day was that, every year, it seems that there are fewer and fewer African-American players on the field.
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Comedian Chris Rock, a lifelong fan of the New York Mets, appeared on HBO’s Real Sports recently and described himself this way: “I’m an endangered species, a black baseball fan.” In an entertaining but also serious seven-minute rant, the 50-year old Rock called baseball “old-fashioned” and “stuck in the past.” He noted that of the people who watch baseball on television, five out of six are white and the average age is 53: “that’s not an audience, that’s a Tea Party rally!” Rock lamented that “baseball is dying, literally” and noted that last year’s World Series champion San Francisco Giants did not have a single black player on the roster.
(You can see a link to Rock’s full rant at the end of this article)
Technically, if going by the color of the players’ skin, the comment about the 2014 Giants wasn’t true. Led by the beloved Pablo Sandoval (the Kung Fu Panda), there were several black players on the Giants roster; however, none of them hailed from the United States. The black players who shared in the championship title were from Venezuela and the Dominican Republic. The Giants Championship teams of 2010 and 2012 also were without an American-born black player.
For somebody of my generation (I started watching baseball in 1975), the difference is easy to notice. I remember the “We Are Family” Pirates of 1979, who won the World Series with 10 African-American players (plus three black Panamanians). The last championship team that had as many as four black American players was the 1997 Florida Marlins.
So, to me, there are a few questions to answer?
1. How low has the African-American participation rate gotten compared to the past?
2. What are the reasons the the decline of African-American athletes in Major League Baseball?
3. Who are the current African-American stars in baseball? Where did they grow up? How did they grow up?
4. With African-American athletes dominating the professional ranks of basketball and football, does the decline of players in baseball even matter?
To start with the first question, in the last two weeks of April, I scoured the rosters of all thirty MLB teams, counting only players who appeared in a game in the month of April. The excellent website baseball-reference.com breaks down the players by the country of their birth but, for players born in the USA, it makes no distinction between white players, black players, or Latino players.
I watch a lot of baseball so I know personally what most of the players look like. For those who I didn’t know, the website has head shots of everybody. In some cases, especially in cases of mixed ethnicity, it’s hard to determine whether to categorize a player as black, white, Latino or bi-racial, so consider these results to have a margin of error of about 2%. As most people do when discussing presidents named Obama or golfers named Woods, in these results, I’m counting a bi-racial player to the minority side of his ethnicity. Thus Derek Jeter, if he were still playing, would be in the “black player” category (Jeter’s father is black, his mother white).
Remembering the 2% margin of error, of the 645 players appearing in games in April who were born in the United States, 534 were white (83% of the total), 66 were black (10%), and 45 Latino or “other” (7%). Since there were also 237 players born in foreign countries, the total percentage of African American players on MLB rosters in April was about 7.5% (66 out of 882).
The African-American participation rate of 7.5% in all of Major League Baseball represents a sharp decline since the heyday of the the mid-1970’s through the 1980’s, when between 17% and 19% of all players were African-American. Take a look at the racial composition of major league rosters over the last seven decades, starting with Robinson’s debut in 1947. This information courtesy of the Society of American Baseball Research (www.sabr.org).
US Born Players Total % of USA % of all MLB White 534 83% 60.5% Black 66 10% 7.5% Latino or other 45 7% 5%
Year White Black Latino 1947 98.3% 0.9% 0.7% 1955 89.8% 5.2% 5.0% 1965 78.3% 12.7% 8.8% 1975 71.3% 18.5% 10.2% 1985 70.3% 18.3% 11.3% 1995 64.5% 16.1% 19.2% 2005 60.9% 9.1% 27.8% 2015 60.5% 7.5% 29.4%
So what we see here in this table is what we all see on the field when we watch in person or on television: there are fewer African-American players on the field but there are also fewer Caucasian American players on the field. The trends in the game have shifted from the All-American game of the the early and middle 20th century to the “All Americas” game that we have today. Players from the baseball-crazed nations Venezuela, Cuba and the Dominican Republic are taking a greater and greater share of the roster spots in the game.
The decline of African-American players in Major League Baseball has been observed by the guardians of the game and also the those commenting on the sport for the better part of the past three decades. In 1989, MLB started the RBI program (which stands for “Reviving Baseball in the Inner Cities”). The program is designed to provide young people from under-served and diverse communities the opportunity to play baseball or softball. According to the MLB website, the program serves over 120,000 boys and girls in 185 cities worldwide. It is a noble effort but seems to have had very little overall impact on the racial composition of today’s game.
The primary reason accurately cited by most observers for the decline of African-American baseball players is that the black youths of American just don’t care about the sport; they are drawn to football and basketball, sports that are abundant with players who look like they do. If you watch an NBA game, you’ll notice that virtually all of the white players in the game hail from European countries or are uncommonly tall.
If you watch an NFL game, there are virtually no white players at the offensive “speed” positions of running back or wide receiver and very few anywhere on the defensive side of the ball. Taking a look at the recently completed NFL draft, a stunning 29 of the 32 players in the first round (the best of the best players) were black. If you look at the first four rounds combined (the rounds for which pictures were readily available), 84% of the players chosen were black.
The days of two-or-three-sport African-American teenage stars choosing baseball over the other team sports is increasingly rare because it’s increasingly rare that they are playing baseball at all. It makes you wonder: if three-sport star and baseball Hall of Famer Dave Winfield had grown up 30 years later, would he have been an NBA or NFL professional? If he had been born 30 years later, would the late Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn have been a point guard in the NBA instead of a member of the 3,000 hit club in baseball? Gwynn holds many basketball records at San Diego State and was recruited there for basketball, not baseball.
Beyond the obvious fact that young black athletes have tons of players to idolize in football and basketball and a scant few in baseball, there’s also the cost factor. Most high schools throughout the USA offer all three major team sports but there has been a trend in baseball recently towards “travel teams.” Little League participation has declined about 20% in the past two decades. “Travel teams,” which play vastly more games per year than any school schedule would, have virtually taken over youth baseball and the cost for participation can average about $2,000 per year, which makes it unappealing for families of limited means. (Incidentally, the explosive growth of travel teams is also contributing to excessive wear and tear on young pitchers’ developing throwing arms, causing an explosion in the rate of season-ending injuries for Major League pitchers).
Now, let’s tackle the third question: where are the current black baseball players from? Who are they? What is their background? What are the likely factors that caused these particular 66 African-American men to pursue careers in baseball rather than football or basketball? I spent a couple of weeks researching the biographies of these players who played in April and the results were stunning, encouraging and a bit alarming at the same time.
The hardest thing to research is the “why” question because it delves into the hearts and minds of these players, but one can find clues. The first and most stunning is that twelve of these players had fathers or close relatives who were either former players or scouts for Major League Baseball teams. Literally, 18% of these players were naturally inclined to play baseball because of a family “legacy” connection. Here is the list:
Prince Fielder (Rangers) — father Cecil was a slugger in the 1990’s, hit 51 home runs in 1990
John Mayberry Jr. (Mets) — father John played for 15 seasons in the majors
Delino DeShields Jr. (Rangers) — father Delino played for 13 seasons
Eric Young Jr. (Braves) — father Eric Young played for 15 seasons
Michael Brantley (Indians) — father Mickey played for 4 seasons
Dee Gordon (Marllins) — father Tom pitched for 21 seasons
Will Venable (Padres) — father Max played for 12 seasons
Delmon Young (Orioles) — older brother Dmitri played for 13 seasons
Mookie Betts (Red Sox) — uncle Terry Shumpert played for 14 seasons
Josh Harrison (Pirates) — uncle John Shelby played for 12 seasons
Khris Davis (Brewers) — father Rodney was a scout for the L.A. Dodgers
Justin Upton (Padres) — father Manny was a scout for the KC Royals, older brother B.J. also plays MLB, currently on the disabled list with the Padres.
This list of twelve players does NOT include Melvin (B.J.) Upton, the older brother of Justin, who has been on the disabled list all season. It also does NOT include Tony Gwynn Jr. (son of the Hall of Famer) and Scott Hairston (father Jerry), who have not played in the majors this year but were on 2014 rosters. And, of course, it doesn’t count the two most famous examples. Barry Bonds and Ken Griffey Jr. are two of the greatest players in the history of baseball and the headliners of the two most prominent father-son duos of all-time.
Now, it is natural for sons to follow in the footsteps of their fathers in all walks of life. In baseball, I counted fifteen other father-son combinations of players with Major League careers. But that’s 15 out of 816 non-African-American players (which comes to less than 2%). Among African-American players, it’s 7 out of 66 (which is more than 10%)! The significance of this is that the number of black players in MLB who one could say “chose the sport on their own” is even smaller.
When delving into murky waters of trying to guess why certain young athletes chose baseball, there are sometimes other clues from the biographical information available online.
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Baltimore’s Adam Jones, one of the top players in the game today, grew up in the lower income Skyline section of San Diego. He didn’t pick up a bat until he was 12 years old; he regarded baseball as a game that suburban kids played (certainly true). Jones only discovered the game of baseball when his stepfather took him to a Padres game in 1998 (this was the year they made the World Series when Tony Gwynn was the toast of the town). Jones started playing baseball and, five years later, the then-retired Gwynn was coaching at San Diego State and offered Jones a full scholarship.
Jones, however, had blossomed into a player worthy a first-round draft pick by Seattle and went straight into the Mariners’ minor league organization. Besides the fortuitousness of Jones’ late interest in baseball, there was another unusual event that contributed to his quick development from a novice into a first-round pick: the parents of a friend of his became a second family, offering an escape from the dangerous streets but also the financial support to participate on one of those afore-mentioned “travel teams.”
Jones plays today for the Baltimore Orioles and the city in which he plays, of course, has been the focal point in controversy because of the untimely death of Freddie Gray while in the custody of six Baltimore police officers. Five different Orioles games were postponed because of the rioting that resulted from the incident. One of the images I noticed during the news coverage of the event was the sight of basketball superstar Carmelo Anthony of the New York Knicks; Anthony participated in one of the peaceful marches in the streets. Anthony was born in Brooklyn, NY but moved to West Baltimore at the age of eight and marched in solidarity on the streets where he grew up.
Anthony grew up in Baltimore and plays in the NBA. Jones grew up in San Diego and now plays baseball. But Anthony is one of many inner-city kids who play basketball or football while Jones is a rarity. I found only a handful of inner-city-raised African-American baseball players: childhood friends Carl Crawford and Michael Bourn (from Houston) and Anthony Gose (Los Angeles in the mostly Latino Bellflower area). The high schools attended by Crawford, Bourn and Gose have very few white students; the majority of students are Latino with the second biggest demographic being African-American.
Besides those three, I was able to find high school information for all of the other 66 players and I found only seven whose high school had more than two-thirds of their students listed as “black” (from www.muninetguide.com). An additional six players went to high schools whose student bodies numbered between 51% and 66% black students.
Some notes about the schools attended by these players. A few, while hosting a majority of black students, are hardly representative of inner cities. The Cardinals’ Jason Heyward’s parents met at Dartmouth and chose an upper-middle class neighborhood in McDonough, GA, with a median income of $55,000. The Pirates’ Josh Harrison’s high school, though with a Cincinnati address, is in Sharonville, a suburb north of the city with a median income of $59k. Harrison’s high school counts former White House Chief of Staff Tony Snow among it’s notable alumni. The Mets’ Curtis Granderson’s family (his parents were both educators) lived in Lynnwood, MI, with a median income of $70k.
The remaining 50 black players in MLB went to high schools which were predominately white and many went to private schools. A good number grew up with more privilege than most professional baseball players of any ethnicity.
I’ve listed some biographical information below of some of the players I researched. There isn’t a real point here except that I found some of these stories interesting and there are additional themes of players’ who were likely steered towards the game of baseball by their fathers.
— The father of Dexter Fowler (Cubs) was a baseball coach. Fowler was recruited to play both basketball and baseball by Harvard and Dartmouth.
— The father of Michael Bourn (Indians) was also a baseball coach and served as a father figure for another future major leaguer, Carl Crawford (Dodgers).
— Justin Maxwell (now with the Giants and their only black player in 2015), was born in Olney, MD (median income $133k). His parents are dentists and his father worked in the White House, serving the dental needs of Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush
— Micah Johnson (a rookie with the Chicago White Sox) went to the Park Tudor HS in the Meridian Hills section of Indianapolils (median income $143k). He later went to the University of Indiana and intends to go to law school after his playing career.
— The Houston Astros’ George Springer (the son of a bi-racial marriage) went to a single sex boarding school in Connecticut before enrolling at UConn.
— Chris Young (Yankees) attended Bellaire HS in a well-to-do part of greater Houston with a median income of $159k.
— James Loney (Rays) grew up in a Missouri City, TX (a suburb south of Houston) with a median income of $91k.
— Ryan Howard (Phillies) went to high school in Wildwood, Missouri, a town with a median income of $125k.
— Hot-hitting rookie Devon Travis (Blue Jays) grew up in Wellington, Florida (near Palm Beach). The median income in Wellington is $88k. His father worked in the sheriff’s office for 30 years.
— Ben Revere (Phillies) grew up in Lexington, KY and went to a private high school. His father John was a long-time running backs coach at Eastern Kentucky University.
— Tyson Ross (Padres) went to a private high school in Oakland; his father is a pediatrician. Clearly he grew up in a nice house because, as a young player with the Oakland Athletics, he chose to live at home.
— Edwin Jackson (Cubs) was born in Germany; his father was a cook for the military.
— The father of baseball playing brothers Dmitri and Delmon Young (Orioles) was a Navy F-14 pilot.
— Rookie Michael Taylor (Nationals) went to a private school in Fort Lauderdale. His father was a logistics officer for 22 years in the Army.
— Denard Span (Nationals) went to the private Catholic HS in Tampa.
— 2013 NL MVP Andrew McCutchen (Pirates), the son of members of the Peaceful Believers Church, went to a middle school that didn’t have a baseball team (he studied drawing and poetry) so he played baseball in youth leagues and AAU travel teams.
So, when you look at the backgrounds of many the 66 African-American players who appeared in MLB games in April of this year, with the exception of the high percentage of MLB father-son combos, the collective picture is not a whole lot different than the collective picture of the rest of the US-born players in baseball.
What is especially notable is that the vast majority of these 66 players come from two-parent homes. As most of us know, one of the chief challenges in the African-American community is the prevalence of single-family homes. According to a study published a few years ago in the Huffington Post, a whopping 72% of black children were raised by unwed mothers (another study shows the number at 67%, still shockingly high).
These deplorable statistics do NOT apply to the upbringings of the African-American players in baseball. Through this research, I was able to determine the family upbringing of 60 of the 66 players and 50 out of 60 were raised by two parents. That is an astounding 83% rate of two-parent homes compared to the nationwide average of 28% or 33% among African-Americans as a whole. I literally found only 10 of these players who were not raised by both parents and some who were raised without a father (like Adam Jones) had a strong male presence in the home (Jones’ stepfather).
If all of this were representative of our entire society, this would be a reason to celebrate, a testimony to true equality between the races in the United States and strength of the American family. Of course, this is decidedly not representative of the rest of America. It’s also a further indicator that baseball is slowly turning a sport that is played by mostly the middle and upper classes and less available (or not of interest) to those on the lower end of the economic spectrum, particularly in the mostly black communities.
Finally, the question is whether this actually matters. It’s sad for Chris Rock and for those of us who are baseball fans first and who would love to see more of the best athletes playing baseball. But it doesn’t mean that black baseball is declining because of discrimination or racism (although possibly in part due to economics). The opportunity for the athletically blessed but economically disadvantaged black youths in America remains; most just tend to choose football or basketball. This is mere speculation, but another possible cause is the lack of fathers in the lives of black youths in America and the distance of time from the civil rights movement. From the days of Jackie Robinson through the 1980’s, playing baseball was “cool.” Robinson was such an American icon (not just in baseball but in the civil rights movement in general) that black fathers would naturally want to get their sons onto the diamond. Through the passage of time and the lack of fathers in so many homes, that historical perspective is largely lost.
Now, while the economically disadvantaged black youths in the United States are more and more frequently gravitating to the other team sports, the percentage of black-skinned men on Major League baseball rosters is actually not dramatically different than it was 30 years ago. The difference is that the black players in baseball today are now a mixture of American and Latin American.
Here are the overall results, listing the country of birth of the 882 players who appeared in Major League Baseball games during the month of April:
Country of Birth Total Percentage United States 645 73% Dominican Republic 88 10% Venezuela 63 7% Cuba 20 2% Puerto Rico 18 2% Mexico 9 1% Canada 8 0.9% Japan 6 0.8% Panama 6 0.8% Columbia 5 0.7% Other 15 1.7%
The participation of Dominican-born players is particularly remarkable. This is a small island nation of just over 10 million people, compared to the 320 million population of the United States. America’s total population is 32 times larger than the Dominicans and yet, on MLB rosters in the month of April, there were only 7.3 US-born players for every Dominican-born player. The reason for this, of course, is that virtually every athletically gifted Dominican boy plays baseball. There were a total of two Dominican-born players in the NBA this year and I don’t know of any who have ever played in the NFL.
In the next decade, with the normalization of diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba, you’ll very likely see a large influx of players from that island nation, one that has been baseball-crazed for decades. There have been a small number of Cuban defectors in the majors but the number will swell if players are free to come to the United States without fear of the wrath of the Castro regime.
So again, does it matter? To the Commissioner of baseball, Rob Manfred, it does. In a recent interview with Bob Costas on MLB Network, Manfred discussed this topic and indicated that it was a particularly important one to the sport in light of Jackie Robinson’s legacy. He also pointed to one good sign, that 14% of this years’ top 100 draft prospects are African-American (the top 100 list from ESPN’s Keith Law).
Anyway, despite the decline of African-American participation, baseball is still diverse, it’s just diverse in a different way than it was when those in my generation grew up. With an immense amount of product to sell on television (162 regular season games per team and three rounds in the postseason), the sport is awash in cash, so much that the average MLB salary is $4 million and teams are doling out $100-to-$325 million contracts to individual players. But there are warning signs of an eventual decline. As Chris Rock notes in his rant (the link is below, it’s worth watching), World Series TV ratings are down and the demographics are older. How many years will the term “America’s Pastime” no longer resonate in the hearts of our country’s sports fans?
Thanks for reading.