Nice job naming the one guy among the 14 Red Sox starters who’s not a white American or Canadian. Yeah, yeah, Ellsbury’s Navajo, but if you passed him on the street, you’d assume he’s just another white dude.

That said, it doesn’t seem to be intentional. For instance, Manny forced his way out of town. And I’m pretty sure Red Sox management wishes they could be starting Julio Lugo over Nick Green.

Just to stir the pot….the Dominican Republic is a REALLY POOR country…..yet baseball is far and away the most popular sport there.  We’ve all seen the photos and read the stories about kids playing without any “real” equipment, why is baseball too expensive in poor African American communities but not in the DR?.....“back in the day” when playing baseball was popular amongst African American youth, wasn’t “stick ball” popular?....didn’t scouts “back in the day” go to urban black communities and sign great African American athletes who probably hadn’t spent a whole lot of time playing on “travelling teams”?.....Diane Grassi has repeatedly criticized (ok, she criticizes MLB for everything under the sun) MLB clubs for making player development investments in poor black countries that they haven’t come close to matching in poor black American communities.

Less controversially, there is relatively little (and it is diminishing further) scholarship money available for baseball players, siphoning off more elite African American athletes to football and basketball programs.  Also, for all the successful spin that MLB has waged against “buscone ball”, some argue that it is a more efficient system of producing baseball players (don’t be dissuaded by the relatively small number of intl prospects who get stupid big dollars).

I think Dave Zirin is a smart enough guy and can be clever with a turn of phrase but I would prefer he tone down the sanctimony.

Ok, I just re-read Zirin’s wording. He’s sneaky in saying “African-American,” as that wouldn’t include Ortiz or Cano. You have him dead to rights with C.C., though. On that note, it astounds me how many people I know who don’t know Sabathia’s American.

In Zirin’s defense, Sabathia is the only other African-American player that I can think of. The rest of those players are Dominican, not African-American, which is what he’s talking about. There’s no dearth of black players in baseball.

As for a “bleached” Boston team, that seems to be tapping into the old Boston racism that was true of sports in that city many, many years ago.

Zirin is right to point out the “country club” aspect of travelling team baseball, but wrong to overgeneralize it as “white only”. It’s finacial. I watched my Orlando based nephew’s team get trounced by a largely Cuban American team from Miami. The game was South of Orlando, so the Miami team had to have money for travel, hotels, food, entry fees, etc..

On the field across from that game was the rookie league game featuring Houston’s mainly Latin players vs. Detroit’s mixed team. I spoke at length to one of the Miami parents who’d played rookie and A ball. He remarked that Detroit had a few black rookies, and wondered aloud if they were Latin. About half were.

The feeling from the people I spoke to in Florida was that the absence of black players in a state with large anumbers of black children was due to 2 prevailing factors:

1) cultural: black American sports heroes today are concentrated in football and basketball. Black Latin sports heroes are concentrated in baseball and soccer.

2) financial: no question, seeing the amateur teams in their replica jerseys ($ 120), Mizuno shoes and gloves ($ 300+), and name brand bats (they buy their own, also $ 150) plus coaching fees ($ 200/month), travel, etc, you are looking at $ 3000 for summer ball. That excludes a lot of kids, not just blacks.

MLB realizes it’s competing for young black American interest. The best source for new players is joint outreach by players and MLB jointly to knock down the financial and interest hurdles and reach out into the communities by promoting star players like Ryan Howard, Jimmy Rollins, etc.

But the goal should not be to create subsidized travelling teams per se, with their pricey fees, but to get kids playing locally with good coaching. That’s much less expensive and a more realistic first step.

We may not be able to define blackness, but we sure can define whiteness. Jason Bay, a Canadian who became a naturalized American? That guy’s white.

Well, I used to get upset at the distinction between “African-American” and “black Dominican/etc”, but there is a legitimate distinction there. I haven’t read the piece yet, so I don’t know if Zirin is arguing for the proper distinction, but it does exist: if I’m an inner-city African-American youth growing up in poverty, who matters more to me: Jimmy Rollins/Mike Cameron/Ryan Howard or Vlad Guerrero/David Ortiz/Carlos Delgado? Who will I be able to look up to and say “hey, they followed this path, and so can I!”? Guerrero/Ortiz/Delgado may have the same skin color as I do, but they share no other life experiences with me. Howard/Rollins/Cameron just might, though.

If that’s the distinction that’s being made - America’s African-American children living in poverty are being underrepresented in MLB - then it’s a fair one to make. The larger issue of cultural diversity in MLB may be being ignored to make that point, but it’s still valid.

In my opinion, there are lots of issues involved in that, from the cost of the game and the lack of facilities to better paying scholarships in other sports to a quicker road to riches in other sports (minor league baseball takes a long time and weeds out a very high percentage of people) to a lack of heroes to emulate to a shorter playing season in well-populated cities due to weather and so on. Like Craig said, these things are not mutually exclusive. It’s impossible to lay the fault on one particular excuse.

i agree with you craig, there are many factors that are not mutually exclusive but access is in my opinion the biggest factor. 

but in the end i honestly couldnt give a crap.  baseball is a pure meritocracy, and its also in MLB’s obvious best interests to pick the best athletes from the largest talent pool possible.  im sure they are doing everything thing they can to get the best atheletse EVERYWHERE IN THE WORLD, including american ghettos and every other country on earth to play ball.

anyone who is looking raise issue of not enough black people in MLB is more interesting in promoting themsleves than any notion of social justice.

You missing the point there, kendynamo.  Baseball being a meritocracy is irrelevant.  If underprivileged African-American kids aren’t in a position to learn and excel at baseball, they will never become professional baseball players.  It’s not a question of talent or athleticism, it’s a question of access.

nick - i get the point of access.  and i agree that is a major barrier to getting african american youths to play baseball.  in fact that’s what i say in the first sentence of my comment.  but then i start a new paragraph and talk about a related topic.  specifically that after we recognize this cause and affect, my response is: so what?  these participation study results usually come with an implication of organizational racism or de facto discriminatory practices, and thats crap.  baseball is trying everything it can to get black youths to play baseball, but there is only so much within thier power to control.