Baseball…still America’s Past-Time?

For those of you who weren’t near a TV, Major League Baseball recently celebrated Jackie Robinson Day. The number “42″ was on the backs of players everywhere, confusing me greatly during the Pirates/Dodgers game (fortunately for me, none of the Pirates did anything productive, so I had no worries about who just grounded into a double play).

So, what’s the big deal? Well, every year, while we’re being reminded of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier, we also are privy to the information within the MLB Racial and Gender Report Card; a look at diversity in baseball from its players and coaches to its front office executives.

So, what do the statistics show this year? Lets go to the author of the MLB Racial and Gender Report Card, Richard Lapchick, shall we?

A total of 40.1 percent of the players were Latino (29.1 percent), African-American (8.2
percent) or Asian (2.8 percent). MLB has been remarkably consistent in terms of the
percentage of white players. Between 1997 and the 2007 season, 58-60 percent of the
players have been white in each season. However, there have been significant changes
during that period. Latinos and Asians have increased by five and nearly two percent
respectively while the percentage of African-American players has dropped precipitously
from 17 percent to just over eight percent in that 10 year period.

The information to be gleaned from this years report card? (In Kanye West voice) “Baseball doesn’t like Black people”. All kidding aside, Black people obviously aren’t flocking to the sport of baseball. While true, baseball does have some diversity initiatives in place such as the MLB Urban Youth Academy and Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI?…oh baseball, you bastion of cool acronyms!), the fact of the matter is that the best black athletes, those that would be successful in the major leagues, aren’t playing baseball, they’re playing basketball or football.

But Why? I’m not going to bother breaking down census statistics for you, but single family homes are a part of the issue. I don’t know about you, but whenever it was time to “Throw the old apple” around, I always called my dad, and we headed outside. It takes at least two people to play baseball. Basketball? all you need is a ball and a hoop, or some reasonable facsimile. Baseball’s other issue is space. It’s hard for the next Jackie Robinson to hone his skills when there’s no space for him to play. If you live in the city you aren’t exactly surrounded by baseball diamonds or empty corn fields with which you could build your own baseball diamond. Sure, you could go to the batting cages, but who has the money to go to the cages every time you want to play some ball? Basketball and football can be confined to closed spaces, putting baseball at a disadvantage in that regard.

Another issue deals with role models within the sport. Race, obviously, is a sensitive issue in American culture, but I will say that people tend to idolize those with similar ethnic backgrounds (Obviously, this is a generalization to some extent, but I would argue that it is true to some extent as well). The current generation of black baseball players idolized Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, etc. The biggest black star today has been accused of perjury and is basically vilified everywhere he goes. If the most prominent role model in a sport is a villain, how many young people are you going to attract to that sport (especially when other role models in other sports are still revered and awed?)

Finally, an issue that I think many who speak on this issue overlook is baseball’s existence within today’s American culture. Like it or not, America is an “ADD Culture”; everything needs to be faster than before, text messages, computers, media recorders, hectic workdays, etc. We don’t always have a lot of free time, and the time that we do have is usually spent multi-tasking. Baseball, is, was, and always will be a slower paced sport. Truthfully, there are huge lags in baseball when there is no excitement at all. If you’re today’s teenager, do you sit there for three hours watching baseball or do you go play basketball, or football, or video games? or to your computer? Major League Baseball has to reconcile the fact that they have a 100+ year sport that doesn’t necessarily fit into the format of today’s American culture. Like I said before, its an ADD culture and Americans need something to keep their attention. Basketball adapted (see the “dunk” etc.), football is constantly tweaking the sport to make the game faster, with bigger hits and excitement…As for baseball, their adaptation occurred after the strike in 1994. We now refer to it as the “Juiced” era…I won’t bother mentioning the problems surrounding the era, as they’ve already been overkilled by everyone, including myself. Besides that, what has baseball really done in terms of changing the way the game is played to increase excitement? Not much.

With all of that being said, how is baseball still pulling in record revenues? Clever marketing promotions, is the short answer and random luck might be the more complicated answer. Baseball stadiums across the country are able to pull fans in night after night because of their promotions. The Pittsburgh Pirates are the perfect example. There are plenty of fans in Pittsburgh that go to the Pirates game, or take their family of four to the Pirates game for the various promotions that happen almost nightly, (fireworks night, bobble heads, mugs, etc.) not for the product that the Pirates put on the field. I would pay to see a statistical study comparing fans that go to the game for the baseball, and those that go for a non-baseball reason (i.e. the promotion). Baseball is also very fortunate due to the fact that for a majority of the baseball season it has no competition. Basketball and hockey are over before the first half of the season is over (although the NBA is seemingly trying to drag their playoffs on as long as possible) and football is only getting started when baseball is winding down. Would baseball’s revenue be effected if the football season started in July? Or basketball didn’t end until August? Finally, I think that baseball has been successful at finding new streams of revenue in America, due to their marketing outside of America. The Latino population in America is growing at astounding rates and so are the number of Latin players in Major League Baseball (29.1% according to the survey). Latino people in America are visiting these ballparks and providing revenue for MLB that didn’t necessarily exist previously, allowing MLB to continue to increase its revenue.

So, back to the question initially posed in the title of this post. Is baseball still America’s past-time? Well, the numbers may show that baseball is doing increasingly well, but the fact that the largest (or maybe second largest) minority group in America is paying increasingly less attention to the game seems to imply that America, as a collective, has turned its attention elsewhere.

National Consortium for Academics and Sports: 2008 MLB Race and Gender report Card

Sports Business Digest: Bud Selig loves…the Wu-Tang Clan?

Sports Business Digest: The Pittsburgh Pirates…Still the best AAA team in the Majors

Tags: Americas Past Time, Baseball, baseball ethnicity, Blacks in Baseball, Major League Baseball

Category: Baseball