https://www.outkick.com/deion-sanders-why-few-black-players-mlb-today/ Major League Baseball has the lowest percentage of black baseball players since 1991, and Deion Sanders believes he knows why. Sanders of course offers an interesting perspective of the situation seeing as how he played 641 MLB games over the course of nine seasons while spending 14 years in the NFL as well. For Sanders, he believes that both the price to play baseball at a high level and fathers are playing a role in fewer black kids getting into the game. “This is the problem with baseball,” he told Desi Banks on the ‘How It Goes Down’ podcast. “Black fathers never played baseball so black fathers are not pushing their kids towards baseball. So, when the black father wants to play with his son, he puts in his hands what he’s accustomed to. Baseball is not the option.” Baseball Is Far From A Cheap Sport To Get Into For anyone that played high-level travel baseball or has put their kids on that path knows just how expensive it can be. Back when Sanders was playing as a kid baseball was much more affordable. Nowadays, a season of travel baseball can cost thousands of dollars. You add equipment and travel costs to the mix and you could easily be looking at a five-figure hit for a season of travel ball. Sanders believes baseball has “priced out” black kids from the sport. “Back when I was coming up we had a lot of African-Americans in Major League Baseball. Now that is not a thing because they priced us out as well,” Sanders said. “Back when we played baseball in the little leagues it was so cool, maybe about a hundred or a hundred fifty dollars to register. To play on a select team now it’s at least two thousand. So kids are not playing it. They cannot afford it; they priced us out.” According to the 2022 Racial and Gender Report Card, on Opening Day this season, 38.0% of MLB players were players of color. The percentage of black players was 7.2 percent, which is a 0.4 decrease from the year prior and the lowest that number has ever been since data started being collected in 1991
It’s just not being marketed as much as it once was. Black mlb players used to go to inner city areas to promote the game.
I think this is spot on. The $ part. I have three sons who play/played. Youth sports - not just baseball- is completely out of control. Year-round. If you don’t play club you are being left behind, or at least feel like it. Signing a 10 year old up for club baseball is probably all in $7000 a year. Then the gear. And then you might want to attend games out of the area with your family and are paying for that. And the individual coaching, hourly, so little Johnny can be an MLB player.
My first thought was; then how do all these black kids afford to play basketball, as it is pretty much the same type of "system". It might be a little cheaper to tog out a basketball player versus a baseball player, but it is still a year round, club (or AAU) type of deal, where they travel all over. Which is expensive. So it would seem the costs would be very similar. I think Sanders hit it on the head when he said black fathers never played baseball. Too, how many inner city kids have access to actual baseball fields? That's valuable real estate. I get (from personal experience) that baseball can be expensive. But by that same experience, so can basketball. But these kids (and their parents?) alway seem to find a way........
I think there's a major economic difference in baseball for kids as opposed to basketball or soccer ....the poorest kids on the planet show up with a basketball and hoop in public courts all over the planet and everywhere I've traveled I see kids with soccer balls kicking them down the street or at the beach, etc.....I don't see them showing up to batting cages or golf courses for the most part. Soccer is the most accessible sport we have in my view and baseball is expensive...my granddaughter is touring the country with her championship softball team from San Diego and it's costing her parents a small fortune...sports with just one ball are going to be the sport of choice for the vast majority of poor kids. A baseball coach needs a van full of gear to put a team on the field with bags for bases, catcher's gear, bats, bags of balls, cleated shoes, helmets etc.....I completely understand how kids veer toward hoops and soccer...basketball a kid can play by himself or herself and work on your game but baseball...you need teams
AAU/club basketball teams know black kids can play so they find a way. They raise money as well - I don’t think I’ve even heard of club baseball players out fundraising. Travel baseball doesn’t “need” inner city baseball kids anymore since they don’t play. It’s sad. Club basketball wants/needs inner city kids. There are plenty of suburban club basketball teams. once they start getting into real tournaments they get absolutely smoked. Also, if there is a stud suburban white kid out there- he gets snatched up by an AAU team outside the area anyway.
Why the hell is everything getting so expensive. Wages aren’t climbing nearly fast enough to keep up.
Teams give scholarships to great players to ride their coattails. Basketball has few enough players that having 1 dominant athlete can give you a dominant team if you put good players around them. So the other 9-ish players (sometimes 20, if they run B teams as well) subsidize it for the great athlete and benefit off of the increased exposure.
For the most part wages aren’t climbing at all. The entire system needs to be torn down and started over. It won’t happen but it should.
I played baseball through high school. It was Babe Ruth in the summer time and then when I turned 16 it was American Legion til I was 19. This was before the days where AAU baseball was really a thing. Travel tournaments almost every weekend when I was in American Legion all over the Northwest. It was a huge time commitment for my parents and many times they took turns whether they’d go to my brothers game or mine. This was 20 years ago and my parents weren’t poor but I remember them being frustrated a lot with the money aspect of it all. Not to mention it was kind of expected to buy a new bat every year and those were easily $300 back then who knows how much now. Bat bag, cleats, uniforms…etc. This was 2 decades ago. I can only imagine everything is way more expensive now. Point being, baseball isn’t cheap so it doesn’t surprise me that inner city kids aren’t really playing it as much as they used to.
It will happen eventually because as soon as people can’t afford food or housing, that’s when revolutions happen. The greed of this county is pushing people to the brink. We could very easily find ourselves in a scenario where people just start killing the rich. People do crazy shit when they’re starving.
Well for the first time in forever basically employees have leverage over things like wages and working from home. Hopefully that begins to change things a little bit.
The cost of youth sports is astounding! For some it pans out, for some not so much. Depends on what you want from sports for your child. Prices are only going up FAMS!
SideNote: I NEVER see kids playing baseball around us….EVER! Back in the day you would see kids in the streets playing baseball, football and hoops….now, only hoops. All sports are expensive. The kids are finding ways to play hoops and summer 7v7 football. Baseball just isn’t America’s pastime anymore. It’s just a boring sport. Not exciting or fast enough to grab the attention of the youth anymore.
That might be part of it, but really, I think it just comes down to the ease of ability. Like river was mentioning, if you have a ball, you can find public hoops all over the place. And you could have a fine time shooting around all by yourself. Add 1 more person, and you've at least got a 1-1 game going. If you have a crowd of 6, it's a solid 3 on 3 game going. With baseball, not a whole lot you could do by yourself. With 2 people, you could play catch. But it requires double the equipment. I suppose you could throw batting practice, but if you only have 1 ball, it's a whole lot of chasing. to actually have an ok-ish game going, you need probably need 5-6 per side. So to get an actual "game" going, you have to have 10-12 friends around wanting to play.
I threw a ball against a wall when I was growing up. Boring, yes, but doable. Set up a tee and a net in your backyard. People still love baseball, MLB isn't going anywhere. Some people hate it, I'm unphased.
All that makes sense, but that also made sense back in the 80s when I was growing up and you used to see kids playing baseball everywhere. You logic here FAMS is scewed.
I think baseball would benefit from shortening the season to anywhere from 110-120 game season. Then maybe even making the game end at 7 rather than a 9 innings. I think that alone would help quite a bit. 162 games is way to long of a season.
