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4 x Coach of Year and 3 x World Series Champ Weighs In
HFNY
Member Posts: 5,210 
in Tug Tavern
La Russa points out MLB's efforts in expanding black participation in baseball and points out that it's also in MLB's best interests to do so.
And he basically calls Kaepernick a walking circus:
espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/17549357/mlb-hall-famer-tony-la-russa-questions-adam-jones-comment-questions-colin-kaepernick-sincerity
And he basically calls Kaepernick a walking circus:
espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/17549357/mlb-hall-famer-tony-la-russa-questions-adam-jones-comment-questions-colin-kaepernick-sincerity
Comments
Everybody says so.
To claim that baseball is not a diverse sport (which is essentially what Jones is saying) is completely missing the mark ... add up African American players + Latino players + Pacific Rim players and you have a significantly diverse team makeup.
Harold Reynolds made a comment on MLB Network just now that essentially said that he was the only African American player on his team a lot of times. But if you go back to 1989 and take a look at the 9 hitter "starting lineup" for the Seattle Mariners and you'll find that 6 of the 9 typical starters were African American.
LaRussa is 100% accurate that the larger issue right now is opportunity particularly in the inner city. Between the game not being a choice of kids growing up as well as how the game at the youth levels have shifted (not just in baseball but in a number of sports) towards elite and select teams at youth levels that isolate based on $$$, there are issues that need to be reconciled.
I know this isn't popular to some, but the reality to me is that IF you really want something bad enough, you'll find the way to put the work in to achieve your goals.
Compare that with it being a slow sport that isn't gonna appeal to a wide demographic and that you need to spend 3/4 years in the minor leagues to often even get a shot to play in the majors and make some money you can see why black participation has dropped
they also aren't playing on 2000$ travel teams
Football and basketball also have expensive travel teams here. Doesn't stop the "poor" black kids.
Baseball just isn't that popular of a sport in America.
On a regional and local level it's doing fine.
No one can force anyone to play a sport but it's smart of MLB to expand participation since nearly all young players are future paying fans.
As someone else mentioned, it was the only big sport around for decades; I'd say from the 1910's through the 60's (so participation and interest were bound to decline over the years after other pro sports started).
The Super Bowl only started in 1967 and the NBA & ABA only merged in 1976. Of course Magic and Bird joining the league in 1979 and MJ just a few years later helped the NBA soar in popularity.
The graph below also shows that the percentage of blacks in MLB started to notably decline in the mid / late 90's, after the NFL and NBA had been gaining in popularity with them for a couple of decades. I would also suspect that the growing percentage of latinos in the 80's and 90's (now 17% of the USA population) filled the gap (along with greater international scouting since Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and Mexico all have robust leagues...even Cuba too).