Featured All black LL team to LLWS ...

RDude, Zaac- Are you two related? You bicker like some married couples I know.

 

To the people that are complaining about the Little League team from Chicago being referred to as an all black team, some perspective is in order.

The percentage of black players in major league baseball has been in a free fall decline since the 1980's. As a result the number and percentage of black players in the major leagues is at an all time low. Black kids don't relate to baseball because there aren't many players at the major league level.

Playing sports has been a way for disadvantaged black youth to be involved, be social and to escape enlistment into gangs. The hope is that by getting these kids to participate in sports, which are usually tied to their school leagues, they will stay in school, stay away from gangs, and graduate.

So here you have a team of 12-13 year old black kids playing baseball at the highest level. They seem like nice kids. Their story could inspire other black kids to play baseball or other sports. And then comes along some hard-headed, hard-hearted, short sighted posters on BB that complain because "there's no way they could refer to a team as being an all white team". Incredible.

The fact is that an all black team IS newsworthy, on many levels. An all white team is the status quo, not worth a mention. I just looked at JDF's post and I almost puked.

What world does this fool live in?

 

Thank you for this. I've been trying to avoid calling this BB "racist" for a while because I am honestly starting to believe that it may just be ignorance talking. That being said, this place has a certain uncomfortable tone whenever race is discussed. Your mileage may vary of course. The OP in this topic is cringeworthy and the you brought around the whole point of the IL team being "newsworthy" quite nicely. MLB and its host cities are trying to combat the lack of interest in baseball with intiatives like the RBI program and the urban youth baseball academies. I think Joe Morgan just opened the one in Cincinnatti and was quite emotional about it as it was a similar program that got him into the sport as a child.

If your first reaction to this story is "what about the white kids," then you probably ought to revaluate your world view. By the way, there were "all white" and "all asian" teams in the LLWS. As I recall the South Korean team defeated the team from IL in the finals. Maybe "all white" baseball teams aren't newsworthy because often times that is the status quo.

 

Thanks for the kind words. I've said it a hundred times that people on BB don't understand the news cycle and what is newsworthy. To them it's the big bad liberal media out to step on their toes everyday.

Yep. Watched the game and Korea won 8-4. Chicago manager left his starting pitcher in too long. That Korean team was a machine--highly skilled and well-coached. I could do without their celebratory pose, but hey, they won the whole thing.

 

Does the Dominican Republic field a team in the LLWS ?

 

Not sure if they have Little League Baseball® in the DR, but in any event Puerto Rico won that region.

Edited: I just looked it up and yes, the DR has teams in the Caribbean region.

 

http://ilovebaseball.org/dominican-republic.html


Developmental programs are baseball training programs that are designed to get baseball players, as young as 10 years old, ready to be signed by major league academies. These programs are run by one of the 5,000 buscones (independent scouts, who find, feed, and train the players) in the Dominican. The buscones are often corrupt and accused of exploiting these young boys, by taking sometimes as much as 50 percent of a ballplayer’s signing bonus if the ballplayer gets drafted by an academy, although the legal limit is 30 percent. It is estimated that only two to five percent of all kids who play in a program ever get signed by an academy.




Academies are official farm teams for major league organizations located in the Dominican Republic. Boys must be at least 16 and a half years old to get signed by an academy. The academies will often pay players a bonus between $5,000 and $25,000 (U.S.) to sign the contract. These signing bonuses can sometimes be more than $2,000,000; however, large contracts are extremely rare with only one player ever receiving more than two million. While in the academies, all the baseball players receive the same monthly salary, ranging from $600 to $1,000 depending on the organization. Once an MLB team signs a player in the Dominican Republic, the players have seven levels to get through (DSL, Rookie League, High Rookie League, Low Class A, High Class A, Double A, Triple A) before making it to the American major leagues.

 

I just assumed if they had a team, they would be in the finals, every year. Not the case.

 

The portion I boldfaced deserves some backstory. Obviously, the "all time low" is intended to refer only to the years since black players became a significant part of MLB. However, looking at the current proportion of Black MLB-ers among American-born players, it is very close to the proportion of African Americans overall. There are lots of reasons for the decline in numbers of American Blacks in MLB. There's often insufficient space for baseball fields; one can toss a football around or have a touch game in a lot less area than any baseball activity that involves using the bat. College baseball is on a far different level than big time football and basketball, and athletic scholarship numbers reflect that. For a population with a disproportionally high percent of people living below the poverty level, college football/basketball becomes more accessible to the top level athletes. In addition, the best college hoopsters/footballers go right on to the major league teams, often as stars, while in baseball all but the extreme best spend several years riding buses in the minors. Were I a high level athlete living in poverty, the fast road to potential reward$$ would certainly be the more appealing.

 

You probably could if on the beginning end you were seeing extremely low numbers of white kids playing basketball. That isn't the case.

I can go into inner city Atlanta and different communities around the area and during the fall everybody is playing football. Go into the majority white suburbs and they are playing football and soccer.

In the winter, everybody is playing basketball.

In the Spring and Summer, if I go into the inner city I may see kids in Track and Field leagues and a scattering of folks practicing for fall football leagues.

Go into the majority white suburbs they are running track and they are playing baseball. They started practicing back during the Winter. They play through the Spring and into Summer. The travel teams play during the Summer and into the start of the Fall school year.

You just don't get that much in the inner city. So when you see a team full of young black kids playing baseball, it's a story because there continues to be a decline in their interest in the game.

There of course is always a factor of skill and talent when it comes to playing at the professional level. But you have to be playing the game in order for those factors to come into play.

Young white kids ARE playing basketball.
Young black kids AREN'T playing baseball.

As much a part as baseball is of the American fabric, and for what it could be doing to keep these young kids on the straight and narrow, we should be ecstatic. Hopefully other young black and white kids will see this and aspire to play baseball or any sport that keeps them away from the negative cultural aspects of society.

 

Baseball is expensive to play. Especially for youngsters. It is important that local businesses sponsor little league teams. Equipment needs to be donated. Umpires and coaches need to volunteer.

You never see pick-up baseball games anymore.

Basketball can be played at a very high level on the cheap, the biggest expense being sneakers. Adults don't need to be around.

 

It's a shame because I remember the good times I had as a kid grabbing a glove and bat and running up the street with my friends to play a pick-up sand lot baseball game.

It was always hot and dusty and lots of gnats. But that water out the fountain was always cold and refreshing.

You couldn't tell us we weren't gonna be big leaguers.:laugh:

 

That was my childhood. We played baseball every day and anyone was welcome. We played a spring and fall league schedule and usually played on a rec basketball team in the winter just to have something to do.

 

Yes, perhaps. I guess I should have said, "in my lifetime it's at an all time low." I've been following baseball since I was a kid in the mid-60's.

Not even close.

In 2012, blacks were underrepresented in baseball, making up 7.2% of players and 13% of the nation’s population.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...r-major-league-baseball-looks-very-different/

Not sure what you mean here. I can tell you that baseball scholarships are "shared", that is they are only partial scholarships, not full rides like football and basketball. A player might get a 20% scholarship, meaning they have to pay the remaining 80%. Not so in football and basketball.

 

My post didn't say that. But I understand what you're saying.

I think the difference is as someone else mentioned, the expense associated with playing baseball.

A lot of the white kids have the option and the families who can pay the equipment and travel team costs that are necessary if you want your child to play baseball past high school. And even if they don't make it to the NBA, they still have the means to try. I'm not sure that's the case when it comes to a lot of young black kids and baseball.

So many black kids are in single family homes and economically they just can't afford it. That's why they tend to get involved more readily in football, basketball and track and field.

 

I don't see where Zaac said anything like that. I said that black youths don't relate to baseball because there are so few black major league players.

What is your point? White youths play basketball. There is no correlation between white youths playing basketball and the disproportionate low number of white NBA players. There is a correlation between the low number of black MLB players and the low participation rate of black youth in baseball.