Baseball lacks support from black community (article)

Exactly. LSU has fielded few black players over the years.....and we're ahead of many programs. All of the points made in the article add up to the fact that black kids just aren't embracing baseball. And that's sad. Hope it gets fixed.

 

I really have always wondered why that is. I think maybe it's just due to family members encouraging participantion in other sports (i.e. basketball and football.)

 

Why is that sad? Baseball is available to everyone. Why souldn't they participate in the sport they choose rather than the one some liberal chooses for them.

 

I can tell you exactly why that is. Money...plain & simple. Baseball gets something like 11.7 scholarships divided between a 43 man roster. Very few full scholarships are provided, therefore most blacks opt for minor league ball out of HS instead of trying to figure out how they are going to pay for college.

 

This is nothing new and it's not unique to LSU......

So what?

Even at the Major League level many of the black players are from Latin America. American Blacks have never been huge baseball fans and this has been discussed for years. It isn't unique to college baseball. As a matter of fact, the reason college baseball has so few black baseball players is because so few blacks play in high school.

I coached little league baseball and football for years and there was always an obvious lack of baseball participation by Blacks in any little league I coached and that included the relatively inexpensive American Legion league.

One season, in Legion ball when my son was playing "D-league" there were
26 teams playing in that age group. Of that entire number of teams, there
were very few black kids on any team and there was only 1 team which was entirely black.

In football, there were plenty of black kids playing and most of the teams were around 30 percent black.

The makeup of college baseball team is merely a reflection of the lack of participation by black kids which begins much earlier than even the high school level.

 

In general it's a lot easier to pickup a single basketball or football and get a game going as a kid. For baseball, everyone needs equipment.. gloves, bats, balls, etc etc.. a large area to play.. Not to mention that little league baseball is geared towards families with the money to pay for their kids to play.

I'll prolly get flamed for those comments but in general a lot of it is truthful. It can be a reflection of why most basketball players are black and most baseball players are white.....

 

No it makes sense. I also believe it may be closely related to the families knowing the rules and regulations of basketball and football. This could be a result of what they were raised on.

I on the other know very little about the pigskin and wouldn't know a shotgun formation from a quarterback sneak. I can however, tell you the kind of pitch that just passed by the plate at 90 mph.

 

Even football is somewhat hard to get going with the high level of contact required and number of players on a team.

You can't play 1 on 1 or 2 on 2 football. Not true with roundball. And that, in essence is why roundball is my favorite sport, even before football because any of us can pick up one and start playing. The athletic ability of the best basketball players is simply unmatched.

 

LSU99, Much of what you say is correct....

Many Youth Baseball Leagues are quite expensive and that limits participation
but there are inexpensive youth leagues as well. One such league is the American Legion league which has a very low registration fee of around $25 to $30 dollars yet there are still VERY low participation rates by Blacks in the inexpensive leagues.

The cost factor of baseball is one area which leads to this low participation rate by Blacks but it is over-rated in its' true impact regarding the participation rate. In fact there are quite a few Blacks who can definitely afford to play but simply CHOOSE not to play baseball. While costs have some effect on this lack of participation by Blacks, the cultural aspect is also a major factor as well. Look at Southern University for example. No matter how well their baseball team may do, it has virtually no impact on attendance
or fan support. It has always been that way.

 

I guess we read different articles or maybe we define "available" differently. I'm for baseball. Baseball is better when more kids participate and weaker when fewer kids participate. When youth baseball is better in Louisiana, LSU baseball is better. That's it.

I don't know what you mean by the "liberal" comment. Are you suggesting I'm a liberal or are you having trouble typing with that sheet on ? :hihi: