THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Friday, April 20, 2007

Where have all the Blacks gone?

Phil points to an article by Chris Isodore asking about where Black ballplayers went.  I recently read that the number of black players was in the 30% range in the 1970s.  It is under 9% today.

The number of black people is around 10% in USA.  But, that’s not the pool of people to select from.  The pool is the 17-23 year old males athletes, mostly in USA, but also from Latin America among other areas.  And, in USA, it’s not just 17-23 year old male athletes, but the 17-19 year old male athlete in HS, and 18-23 year old male athlete in college.  And, as Chris points out, teams are targetting college players.  So, what percent of male athletes in HS are black?  I dunno… 30%?  How many male athletes in college are black?  I dunno… 10%?  One-third of one and two-thirds of another gives you 17%, which is still twice as much as what we have in MLB.

So, where are they?  Football and basketball are also viable places for athletes to go.  Maybe 30% of male athletes between 17-19 in HS are Black, but what’s the split between the 4 majors sports?  60% basketball?  30% football?  20% baseball?  1% hockey?  As someone else who commented in Phil’s blog said, Michael Jordan may be responsible for the huge shift, if there was one, of black athletes choosing basketball.  (In hockey for example, Patrick Roy is single-handedly responsible for all the Quebec goalies in the league; Bobby Orr may be responsible for all the rushing defensemen in the league.) And as Chris notes in his article, football scholarships give more opportunity than baseball scholarships in college. 

I also think that while the Vince Colemans, Otis Nixons, Miguel Dilones, and Gary Pettises were all the rage in the 1970s and 80s, the move away from small ball to long ball means power is emphasized over speed.  And, real or perceived, Black = speed.  Is it any surprise that the players that MLB.com choose for its all-hustle ballot was the “scrappy white guy”?  Also, the “extra player” on MLB roster is now a pitcher, not a position player.  And, the talent pool of pitchers that are Black is much smaller than for position players.

What we have here is an entire set of independent circumstances, each plausible, each on its own not having enough of an effect, but when accumulated results in a huge swing in Blacks in MLB.

By the way, I can’t stand the term “African American”.  I’m from Canada, so am I supposed to say “African Canadian”?  In Canada, we have a huge number of people from Haiti and Jamaica.  What am I supposed to say?  And my parents are from Europe, so should I be termed as “European Canadian”?  I don’t have a problem with the label, but rather the labelling process.  Why target only one group for labelling?  The correct answer is that the group be called whatever it wants to be called.  But, I hear “African American” mostly from White people not Black.  Then again, alot of my Black exposure is Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock and they definitely don’t say “African American”.