Gary Sheffield knows why African-Americans are disappearing from MLB

Imagine someone attempting the same excuse for the declining percentages of white Americans in any of the three major sports. Obviously it would unanimously be ridiculed as utter insanity. But wouldn't the guy also have the PC police attack dogs after him (and his career) for making an offensive or racist statement by suggesting that non-white players were "easier to control"? I'm confident a couple leaders from the black community (guess who) would try to construe that as an insult and make it as big of an issue as they could get away with.

So, I'm wondering, should Latin American players take Sheffield's statement as an insult and be equally offended?

 

The facilities and equipment are easy problems to solve. What is not there is the people to coach and run the leagues. Anyone involved in youth baseball know how many dads it takes to run a league.

The biggest factor though is the one that has been made - black kids are not that interested in playing baseball. The latin kids don't start with great equipment. As we have all read some even don't have gloves and have to craft a baseball out of whatever is available.

 

Not necessarily on point, but latin players aren't subject to the draft, are they?

 

Hey, I agree completely with a Boom post. The equipment/facilities argument makes sense, but here's where it breaks down: kids in the places that produce the MOST major leaguers per capita, like the Dom Rep, Venez, and Puerto Rico, usually have even worse facilities and equipment than our cities do. But it doesn't stop em, they'll play in vacant lots, streets, and without gloves if necessary. They just have a greater love for baseball than our kids now do.

The cultural shift is the biggest reason. If you polled African American kids on their sports idol 35 years ago overwhelmingly the names you'd hear most would've been Mays, Aaron, Gibson, Brock, etc.; conduct the same poll today and overwhelmingly the names you're gonna hear most'll be Jordan, Iverson, Lebron, Kobe, Jerry Rice, etc. But try that in the Dominican Republic today and nearly every kids gonna rattle off baseball names like Sosa, Papi, Pedro, and Vladimir.

 

I know what I am saying, "dude." If you want Sheffield to show you one A-A player, offer himself as an example.

Now, do you understand that brushback, Newbie?

 

Julian Tavarez, Jose Mesa, Jose Lima.

 

More than that, they learn to play baseball. In the U.S., kids who play baseball start out on t-ball teams at the age of 7, they move on to little league and pony league and Babe Ruth and Connie Mack and Musial/Ripken, etc etc etc, (of course far fewer of these teams exist in heavily A-A areas) if they're good they stick with it and eventually play high school ball, so on and so forth. But they don't spend mornings and afternoons of their youth playing baseball. If their team has a practice today, they get in the car and go practice baseball, for a couple hours, then they go home.

Kids in Latin America play baseball most free moments of their youth. Only a very small percentage of their time is spent on organized teams with coaches flashing signs, running infield drills, etc etc. As a result, they have actually learned much better than kids in the U.S., how to actually play baseball.

 

I've always been curious what the ethnic breakdown is between short-season A and the Show. If Sheff is right, blacks would make up a higher percentage of signees than they do Major Leaguers. Sheff does have a point in that Latin (non-citizen) players are more leveraged than African-American players. They usually are given smaller signing bonuses as well because they don't have the option to play college ball or earn a scholarship in another sport.

 

But that makes my point about lack of facilities and lack of exposure. There are recreation facilities in the inner cities, mostly basketball courts, but there aren't many baseball facilities. In the Dominican Rep, etc. etc. there isn't that option.

And remember there WERE baseball facilities in the inner city at one point, they are gone, ravaged, torn dorn to build housing, etc. etc. So when the option was there in the 60s, 70s, 80s, there was more participation. When those facilities were gone and not replaced, kids decided to go play basketball. If the Dominican they were never there to begin with.

And that's not exclusive to one race or age bracket in America. When things are bulldozed and replaced, Americans find something else to do. The local roller rink closes down, kids stopped skating. The local baseball park closes, kids stop playing baseball. Move on to something else.

 

In the 40's and 50's kids in the city played stick ball in the street. They did not need fields.

It just shows that if someone really wants to play a sport they will find a way. Kids in the city don't want to play baseball.

 

Considering I grew up playing stickball, I see what you're saying. But we also have to see the changes that took place in the 80's where many of the schoolyards many of us played in were locked down during the crack era of the 80's, and places to play became far and few between.

But I also feel that baseball when handed the reigns from the Negro Leagues did a poor job of keeping interest in the game to the African American community. The game didn't suddenly become more expensive or harder.

 

Another example of double standards and hypocrisy among the politically correct and the race hustlers in this country.

If this were a white player talking about a black player, the tone of people like Big Chee would be far different and this thread would be about 23 pages long by now and filled with a bunch of self serving and self righteous left-wing bullshit about bigots, racism, intolerance, mean-spirited vitrol and yes, "he should be fired" or in this case "he should be suspended" It would be the lead on sportscenter and every other sports show and page and most of the news networks would be leading their shows with this....

Call it what you want but this isn't much different than John Rocker, other than Sheffield is black, which is apparantly a get out of jail free card in the eyes of the self-appointed thought police if you want to make ignorant or racist statements.

I mean, imagine if a white player had said the following (I've changed Sheffield's Latin references to black in bold)....

"I called it years ago. What I called is that you're going to see more black faces, but there ain't no proper English going to be coming out. … [It's about] being able to tell [black players] what to do -- being able to control them,"

"Where I'm from, you can't control us. You might get a guy to do it that way for a while because he wants to benefit, but in the end, he is going to go back to being who he is. And that's a person that you're going to talk to with respect, you're going to talk to like a man.

"These are the things my race demands. So, if you're equally good as this black player, guess who's going to get sent home? I know a lot of players that are home now can outplay a lot of these guys."