Major League Baseball has a diversity problem, experts say. This year’s World Series is proof

Baseball is a major father-son sport/pastime. That's a major reason why.

 

I don’t get the monetary argument.

A rock, a stick, a small patch of dirt and a group of friends is all you need to play baseball. Cheaper than soccer.

 

I think it's just logistics. Baseball is impractical in an urban setting.

Once white flight took hold, there was no stopping the demographic changes that would hit baseball in the decades to come.

Now it's self-perpetuating. We play the sports that our friends, family, peers, etc are interested in... and most of those folks are going to be the same race as ourselves.

 

It's not coincidence the two most popular sports in the world are basketball and soccer. One games involves kicking a ball around, the other involves bouncing a ball and tossing it through a hoop.

 

JV struggled and McCullers got shelled. Other than Pressley I’m not sure we should allow another white man to pitch.

I’m all for white replacement and replace JV tomorrow with Garcia and Javier for McCullers for Game 7!

 

Baseball relies a lot on little league and travel teams. In general those are very expensive with lots of travel, time commitment and money. Also in many cases the fathers are heavily involved. It can be very intimidating and it really isn’t very welcoming to those that are not born into that clique.

 

The home run king is Barry “Bones” Bonds.

Aaron Judge is sitting on his ass watching the Astros.

 

Well first a lot of the kids are not just playing little league. They have parents involved in training them. A lot of them go take private lessons that are expensive. Then there are travel teams that cost money, and commitments from parents that can take whole weekends and sometimes during the week. Then there are bats that can cost many hundreds of dollars… so it makes it very hard for people that don’t fit in that clique to compete, and it is very cut throat with a lot of politics involved and there is less leagues in areas with higher amounts of black people.

 

Basketball and soccer have lower logistic and monetary barrier to entry.

They require less exclusive land (and that land requires less maintenance).

They require less gear (just a ball shared by X number of people).

They require a lot fewer people to play.

 

You quoted me and didn't read what I wrote.

I'm talking about poor kids playing a game.

• Baseball: Free: Rock, stick, empty field.
• Soccer: Cost: Ball. Free: Field
• Basketball: Cost: Ball, concrete pad, hoop

 

Need to remake “Sandlot” with an all-black cast.

 

You're shooting too low. That's the breakdown when you live in a mostly rural, piss-poor country.

 

People from the Dominican play it. They aren't coming from the suburbs.

The MLB most represents the makeup of the US. There are more hispanics and fewer blacks, but it has more diversity than the other major sports.

 

Basketball is getting like that too with traveling teams and camps.

 

I thought the decline in baseball was because it is a team sport. You need more people to play than you do other sports. You can't really go out and play 1 on1 baseball.

 

The main diversity problem is basketball and football are simply significantly more popular among black athletes, and they represent a very heavy percentage of those professional athletes. How many black kids want to go play a sport they are an extreme minority in when they can play sports they are majority in and are more popular?

Baseball also suffers from a lot of sitting/standing around. I love playing, but in a 9 vs 9 game, you only get to hit a few times per game, and may not field a single ball all game.

 

But you can. You just hit or pitch every time or play catch. Not really different from any sport other than maybe basketball where it is really hard to play the complete game without other people. I'd be curious if this is the norm, but we don't have batting cages where I live. Multiple places existed growing up, but they closed a long time ago.

 

Yeah, it's like saying basketball has a diversity problem because there aren't enough white guys from the US playing on NBA teams.

 

Hockey? That's an urban sport!

 

I'd imagine in the DR there is a lot more space a lot less infrastructure/resources. Again, apples to oranges though.

If you're a poor kid in the city in the USA, the sport that is has the highest barrier of entry for you is baseball.