Ain’t Much Black in the Fall Classic: Racial Diversity and Baseball
by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan
The World Series is set to start on Wednesday between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Texas Rangers. Much will be made of the pageantry, the Cinderella story surrounding the Cardinals, who only made into the playoffs on the final day of the seasons, the Rangers’ attempt to finally win a title, and of course the redemption story of Josh Hamilton (whiteness has its power). Yet, there are more stories to be hold, one being what this World Series tell us about diversity and baseball, and more importantly what the racial and national demographics of the “American past time” tell us about large social forces.
While the National Championship series highlighted an overwhelming number of African American baseball players (8), the World Series won’t showcase a similar level of diversity; as the Cardinals possess 4 African Americans on its roster (Edwin Jackson, Arthur Rhodes, John Jay, and Adron Chambers), Rangers will only suit up a single African American player (Darren Oliver). Representing 10%, this still exceeds the league-wide number, which stands at 8.5%. Mac Engel describes the state of baseball’s diversity in “Baseball continues to see fewer black players:”
For a variety of reasons, from societal to financial, the sport can't seem to reverse the trend of fewer African-Americans playing baseball.
The University of Central Florida's Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports reported this year that the number of blacks in baseball is down to 8.5 percent. The percentage of Latinos is 27 percent. The percentage for African-Americans in MLB is at its lowest level since 2007. When the institute began to track the figure in 1990, 17 percent of all MLB players were African-American. Beginning in 1997, the number has steadily decreased for a variety of reasons.
The consequences of closed parks, globalization, specialization of sports, prohibitive costs, a failing school systems, and expanded prison system has been the steady erosion of baseball. The last thirty years have seen the re-segregation of baseball, an ironic twist given its importance within the larger history of sports integration. From 1990-2000, blacks presence in professional baseball decline from 18% of the league’s players to 13%; in the ten years since, the number has continued to decline, with prospects even worse for the future. While the lack of black baseball roles models and the presumed incapability between an authentic black identity and baseball certainly part of the story, segregation and the systematic divestment, dismantling and destruction of the institutional spaces that produced past generations of black ball players is key to understanding the waning black place within “America’s Past Time.”
The declining presence of African American baseball players, almost 65 years after Jackie Robinson reintegrated professional baseball, transcends the numbers, with the shrinking influence and importance, evidence by the lack of African American star power. It is also evident in the absence of younger African American talent. Two of the players are older than me (Arthur Rhodes and Darren Oliver) revealing beyond the numbers how the systematic destruction of the infrastructure that produced both the great African American stars of yesteryear and the role players has left a barren future for African Americans in baseball
The World Series will equally highlight the impact of globalization, with a total of 17 players coming from outside the United States (8 from the Dominican Republic, 3 hailing from Venezuela, 2 coming from Japan and Mexico). Two Cardinal players hail from Puerto Rico, which has historically produced a large number of Major League players. Similar to their African American brothers, recent history has seen a precipitous decline amongst the professional ranks, which in part reflect the limited development and focus on cultivating talent. Despite its neocolonial status (or maybe because of it), players from Puerto Rico are subjected to the MLB draft, impacting Puerto Rican presence within the game (teams won’t want to invest in players that they might not be to sign). In “Puerto Rico’s Pipeline Has Been Running Low,” Ken Belson reflects on the changing place of Puerto Ricans within Major League Baseball
The pipeline of prospects from the island, once rich with potential Hall of Fame talent, has narrowed as major league teams focus on cheaper and more plentiful prospects from Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela.
In 2009, only 3.5 percent of position players in Major League Baseball came from Puerto Rico, a 24-year low. Meanwhile, the percentage of Cuban and Venezuelan position players has nearly doubled in the last decade.
While the mere mention of the declining numbers of African Americans and Puerto Rican players, or the efforts to highlight the global influences on the game often sets off resistance to the mere introduction of race and politics in the game (see here for a vivid example), we can learn much about larger issues of injustice, social change, economic inequality, and global politics by examining the rosters of this year’s World Series competitors.
The importation of international players reflects the globalization of baseball. Moreover, it reflects the dire circumstances facing many nations that despite participation in the global economy have not secured the promised riches. Although MLB has seen a rash of imports from Japan in recent years, the majority of players come from Latin America and the Caribbean. The realities of a limited economic future (because of globalization and deindustrialization) and the overabundance of role models have led to an overemphasis of sports achievements within places like the Dominican Republic.
The establishment of “schools” – baseball’s sweatshops that produces its raw materials – has exacerbated this process. Beyond filling the League with talented ball players, MLB teams use “third world” because the “raw materials” (the players) are cheap. Dick Balderson, a vice-president of the Colorado Rockies, called this process a “boatload mentality.” The idea behind this approach is to sign a "boatload" of Latin players for less money, knowing that if only a couple make it to the big leagues, teams will still profit from the relationship. “Instead of signing four [American] guys at $25,000 each, you sign 20 [Dominican] guys for $5,000 each.” The desperation and poverty facing those in Latin America is facilitating this “single-minded” pursuit of sports, creating a situation where professional baseball teams are able exploit this labor force. Charles S. Farrell, who is the former director of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Sports, described the dangerous predicament facing youth in the Dominican Republic
Baseball is mainly the sport of the poor in the Dominican Republic, and viewed by so many as a way to escape poverty. Mothers and fathers put a glove on boys as soon as they can walk in order to pursue the dream of la vida buena.
But with every dream there are dream merchants, those who promise to pave a path to glory and riches for a price. The buscones, as they are known, latch onto prospects at an early age, giving them advice and consul on how best to pursue the dream. Some are genuine in their mission; others simply hook into a potential meal ticket. Either way, good or bad, the buscone has become a part of the Dominican baseball scene.
The consequences of overdevelopment of the institutions of baseball alongside the underdevelopment of society at large (thanks in part to the polices of the IMF and World Bank) will be on display this Wednesday evening. Likewise, the consequences of segregation in the United States, structural adjustment programs, and the overall defunding of public spaces of play within America’s inner cities will also be in full view when the fall classic starts this week.
Beginning in the 1970s, and continuing today, American society has seen the systematic defunding of public institutions, such as Park’s and Recreation. These policies shift, along with a decreasing tax base in inner city communities, due to middle class flight, shrinking home values, high unemployment rates and devastating levels of poverty, have left the training grounds in shambles. For example, during the 1970s, the Department of Recreation in Cleveland, Ohio was forced to close down 250 million dollars worth of recreation facilities. New York City experienced similar developments with a sixty percent decline (40 million dollar drop in its annual budget. From 1976 to 1980, the number of park employees went from 6,100 to 2,600 in New York City as well (Kelley, “Playing for Keeps, pp. 201-202). Throughout the 1990s, Los Angeles, and a number of other cities, saw a virtual end to park baseball leagues, as well as many basketball programs, with opportunities residing only from private leagues and traveling teams. This trend continues today with the overall privatization of space, play and recreation, literally leaving America’s poor and youth color out in the cold. As evident with a myriad of studies published within the American Journal of Preventive Medicine(AJPM), African Americans don’t have equal access to space of player, exercise, and recreational sport: “that unsafe neighborhoods, poor design and a lack of open spaces and well constructed parks make it difficult for children and families in low-income and minority communities to be physically active.”
What we see with baseball is how sporting cultures are racialized just as space is racialized, leading to very different types of investment and development. This not only impacts what we see on the field, but the types of institutional development or underdevelopment. Writing about “soccer, race, and suburban space,” David Andrews, Robert Pitter, Detlev Zwick, and Darren Ambrose highlight this issue:
Particular sports and particular physical activities became synonymous with the emergence of this ‘consumerists body culture’ (Ingham, 1985, p. 50), whose various physical manifestations represent compelling markers of normalized suburban existence. The most celebrated derivatives of the rigidly class-based fitness including jogging, aerobics…. The rise of soccer within suburban America cannot be divorced from the metamorphosis of the body into a corporeal commodity through which self-worth is expressed? (p. 207 in Sporting Dystopias).
Baseball’s confinement in suburban and upper middle class communities, as well as its prohibitive cost, furthers this process of segregation and black athletic underdevelopment. For example, while only thirty three percent of school-aged kids play organized sports in Boston, over ninety percent of those residing in suburban kids play at the organized level. “Parks and ball fields are well developed in the suburbs,” notes a black baseball coach, compared to America’s urban centers. Black youth are “growing up without the facilities or equipment,” leaving them with a limited number of athletic choices (in Ogden 2001).
All of this furthers the marking of space and sport as white and therefore unavailable to black youth. As white youth and middle class youth of color develop their talents in private batting cages and with professional pitching coaches, poor youth of color are left with few spaces to even play, much less develop their athletic talent. The reality of access to both these informal and formal spaces is startling and dramatic. White kids have more opportunities in both youth and high school sports, offering greater career choices and the increased likelihood of an athletic scholarship. The chance to play baseball isn’t simply an opportunity to play in the World Series but a window into the differential investment afforded to the little league generation.
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David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He is the author of Screens Fade to Black: Contemporary African American Cinema and the forthcoming After Artest: Race and the War on Hoop(SUNY Press). Leonard is a regular contributor to NewBlackMan and blogs @ No Tsuris.
