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Blacks Find College Baseball Less Attractive Than Basketball, Football

By Kendrick Marshall
Black College Wire

Ping! That�s the sound that vibrates through every college baseball diamond when a player�s aluminum bat connects with a ball. That kind of vibration created Lou Brock, Dennis Boyd and Ricky Weeks, some of the best players in the history of black college baseball.

Credit: Bethune-Cookman College Bethune-Cookman College has nearly an all-Hispanic team.

But to masses of African Americans, the appeal of what was once called �America�s pastime� is fading, as such rival pursuits as football and basketball gain favor.

Experts have tossed around reasons for the decline of baseball among blacks. One sure bet is the leisurely pace of the game in a world where most things have speeded up. Even athletes who could play with astounding grace have said their attention wanders quickly when a game slows down.

You can already see the impact in the locker rooms at black colleges. There are more non-African Americans playing baseball at black universities. HBCU schools with rich traditions that fielded powerhouse all-black teams in the �70s and �80s now turn to whites and Hispanics for talent.

For example, Bethune-Cookman College, home to a great baseball dynasty for more than a quarter-century in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, has nearly an all-Hispanic team. Mississippi Valley State University, an HBCU in the Southwestern Athletic Conference, has only four black players; the rest of the team is Caucasian.

Nearly all HBCU programs have at least one non-black player. Jackson State University, which has an all- black roster, is the exception.

Black colleges have to compete in a tough marketplace. Not only are HBCUs poorer, but their athletic programs aren�t able to come up with the scholarship dollars that today�s top-rated schools can offer. Many talented players no longer go to HBCUs because they are lured by promises of greater exposure at larger schools.

Would you believe that no HBCU has ever played in the College World Series since its inception in 1945?

Of course, the number of opportunities is limited. Baseball America magazine recently listed the top 15 college programs, and those schools had a total of 15 African American players.

And then there�s the contrast with other sports.

Under NCAA rules, college football coaches have the luxury of filling 85 scholarship slots. College basketball teams can run to 10-12 players, but the coaches have 13 scholarships. But baseball gets only 11.5 scholarships, even though half the teams in the NCAA field 25-30 players on a roster.

College football and basketball are media darlings, televised nationally, and, in the case of football, in prime time. College baseball is televised nationally only during the College World Series.

A basketball player like Chris Duhon of Duke, picked by the Chicago Bulls June 24 in the second round of the NBA draft, will get more publicity than Ricky Weeks of Southern, who was the second overall pick in the entire 2003 Major League Baseball Draft.

The lure of making millions right after college -- or in some cases, after high school graduation -- has not helped baseball. Many young black athletes want to have $90 million shoe deals and aspire to go pro at 18 instead of 22 or 23, as major league baseball players do.

They wanted to be like Mike (Jordan), and now they want to be like Lebron (James) and Kobe (Bryant), who both made the jump from senior prom to the NBA.

Baseball tends not to hand out millions to teen stars. The normal salary for the No. 1 pick in the draft is $10 million-$17 million, and it might take three or four years before a talented athlete reaches the major leagues. With money being given out in the NBA and NFL faster than you can turn pancakes, many black players seem to feel that waiting for a baseball dream might take longer than they can bear.

Most important, though, baseball lags behind football and basketball because of how it is marketed. Rarely do you see top black players selling shoes, soda and the latest hip-hop gear. It isn�t common to see a black player wearing a FUBU, Sean John or Ecko outfit during a news conference. Those popular brands are mainly seen in the thug-style culture of the NBA and NFL.

Nearly everyone knows Barry Bonds, Derek Jeter and Ken Griffey Jr. But they don�t know underrated performers like Torri Hunter of the Minnesota Twins, Derrek Lee of the Chicago Cubs or Frank Thomas of the Chicago White Sox. These are some of the best all-around athletes in the world, but their talents are overlooked because they don�t have the street credibility of football or basketball players.

In the major leagues, less than 10 percent of all players are black, and that concerns both the league and the players.

Jackie Robinson, Larry Doby and Henry Aaron fought hard just to be allowed to play in the major leagues.

Now, it looks as though the black community has forgotten that the game is rich in tradition and legend. Back in the �40s and �50s baseball was the most popular sport in the black community. You can go back and look at film of Willie Mays playing stickball in the streets of New York with black children. In those days, players like Mays and Robinson were bigger than any other black athletes.

Today, black players are dominating baseball even more than basketball and football. Bonds set the single-season home run record by hitting 73 in 2001. In 1999, Griffey was voted by the baseball writers of America as one of the all-stars of the 20th century.

These are accomplishments worthy of the effort by any young black athlete who aspires to reach and exceed them.

Kendrick Marshall is a student at Jackson State University.

Posted July 12, 2004