Race in Sports

What a shocker, someone wants to talk about race in American sports. I would actually be shocked when someone doesn't want to talk about race in American sports. I'm not some naive white guy who wants to sit at home on Sunday and dismiss any minority when they want to talk about racism in sports. Well I'm probably naive but not about this, well maybe but not that much. In American sports the majority, that is white men, control most of the money, make most the decisions, and hold almost all of the management jobs. Yet the talent, the people actually playing the games are minorities, either black, latinos, asian, whatever. Anything hierarchy with that dynamic is going to cause racism and probably a lot more than average American sports fan will ever begin to understand. That being said, there is real racism, real problems to fix, and then the useless, sugarcoated stuff.

The current topic with baseball and it has been all year is black players or rather the lack of black players. This is the made up stuff, the useless topics that shouldn't get any bandwidth. Let's spend time talking about the lack of minority GMs, managers, scouts, coaches in baseball or the lack of minority coaches in college football. Spend time fixing those problems. This is just a made up problem. Outside of being openly gay (which is a completely different topic) I have no doubt that professional sports teams look for talent far and above everything else. It isn't about white or black or yellow or purple. If you can throw a ball 95 mph or hit a 12 to 6 curveball, you can get a job in the MLB if you're bright pink.

The lack of black players and the rise of latino players is due to two things in my opinion. Of course these two things are exactly what Ozzie Gullien said in response to Gary Sheffield's latest foot in mouth comments. I told my comments to JDub today at lunch, I will summarize my version.

One is popularity. Hold baseball tryouts in a large US population center for blacks the same time as basketball tryouts, I'd be surprised if you got enough baseball players to field one team. Do the same in white community against football or soccer, again you're lucky to get enough players. Even things like golf and NASCAR take potential players away from baseball. In addition baseball is a very expensive sport on parents, much more expensive than some of the other choices. So the children who'd make good baseball players are just playing other sports.

The other one is the draft set up. Countries outside of US and Canada are not subject to the MLB draft, if I find a player he is mine. I spend a bunch of money scouting JD Drew it doesn't matter, he goes to the draft. I spend a bunch of money scouting Andruw Jones and he is mine, no draft. In addition to 'finders keepers' the draft is subject to tremendous contracts. Many teams do not draft a player because they are afraid they wouldn't be able to sign him, that doesn't apply in countries outside the US and Canada (and now Japan and Cuba). Albert Pujols is one of the best players in baseball, probably top 2 or 3, and the Cardinals signed him for not a lot of money. Johan Santana is easily the best pitcher in baseball and the Twins signed him without a huge signing bonus. Players like Jason Varitek, Travis Lee, and JD Drew were passed over by teams because of the 8 figure plus signing bonuses they would require. Todd Van Poppel in almost any other draft would be picked first but he wanted a huge signing bonus and Ted Turner wouldn't pay it (of course that did work out well for the Braves).

It isn't always about race, sometimes it is but not always. The silly crap just turns the American public off and makes them ignore you when it actually is about race.