Angels’ Torii Hunter is baseball’s canary in the coal mine
Torii Hunter's has given us some food for thought on where baseball should be getting its talent (image via Wikipedia).
Torii Hunter’s done us a good service.
Not as big a one as Al Campanis giant-foot-in-the-mouth did in 1987 about minority representation at the baseball management level. But Hunter’s recent slip of the tongue, a big clumsy and unintentional, serves as a reminder that we’ve gotten away from what once made baseball such a grassroots sport and in effect the national pastime.
Hunter no doubt spoke out from frustration when he termed dark-skinned Latin players as “impostors” as the players of color to which baseball will point in lieu of real African-American players. Like everyone else who gives thought to the well-being of the greatest sport around, Hunter wonders why more African Americans aren’t playing or watching the game. He probably is puzzled why more young white players aren’t populating empty diamonds on beautiful summer days, too.
The minor controversy into which Hunter, one of the baseball’s top go-to guys for quotes and analysis, stumbled really points to Latin players emulating us, 50 or 75 or 100 years ago. That is, young athletes with an abiding desire to play and succeed at baseball, and willing to literally use sticks and stones to hone their skills playing morning, noon and night. No wonder scouting directors allocate so much resources to talent evaluation in the Caribbean. They can’t afford to be left behind if all other teams are trying to dip into the mother lode of prospects.
Meanwhile, where is our similar desire to play, black or white, within the continental United States, Alaska and Hawaii? While the Dominican kid is playing a pickup game and strengthening both his arm and hand-eye coordination at bat, the American middle-class kid is surfing away on a computer or video game. If he’s African-American and playing sports, he’s likely shooting hoops, whether it’s the dead of winter or amid tropical rain-forest humidity outside in July.
Baseball did great at the development youth levels when it had no competition, when kids had to get out of stifling hot flats to play all day at the corner sandlot. The sport prospered when men had good-paying jobs, did not flee their homes via divorce or abandonment, and helmed youth programs in the inner city. How did Detroit Tigers hitting coach Lloyd McClendon become a Little League World Series hero with five homers in 1971? McClendon grew up in inner-city Gary, Ind. when men had decent gigs in the steel mills and coached a thriving Little League program in their spare time. That’s all gone now, and who remains to develop inner-city talent? Kids can go out and shoot at a basket all day or with a couple of friends, but you need 1o to 18 kids under adult supervision to get a real baseball game going.
If a kid does go through Little League and then has success in high school, how can he further hone his talents in college in the same manner as the basketball and football player? The NCAA limits baseball team scholarships to 11 for each school. Cubs GM Jim Hendry, a former College World Series coach at Creighton, recalled how the scholarship limit was cut starting in 1979 to accommodate Title IX’s gender equity. We’ll let the girls play now in college, but something had to give as a result. Baseball, not a revenue-producing sport like football and basketball except in a handful of schools, took the brunt. So if you don’t get a ride in college, you’re not likely to continue playing baseball as a mere after-class activity.
Playing baseball at the highest level requires a lifelong dedication starting early in elementary school, with easy access to teams and coaches and equipment all along the way. It requires a stick-to-itiveness that only self-motivation and mentors can provide.
Those Latin players aren’t “impostors” at all. They are us, the way we used to be. That system wasn’t so bad at all. That system provided baseball a history that basketball craves.
The clock can’t be rewound to a bygone time. But Hunter provided a ton of food for thought, about how baseball can somehow meld the best of the past with the high-tech, high-stress present to get American kids of all colors to have the same desire to play as those from south of the border.
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Hunter’s point was actually that Latin American players are being passed off as African American because they’re cheaper and are less willing to make waves with management. Gary Sheffield has said the same thing in the past, and there’s probably some truth to it.
They are “imposters” (terrible choice of words) because fans might think the Latin Americans are really black. The problem with the argument is it assumes baseball management cares about showing African American faces on their teams. I’ve never seen any evidence of that. Presumably having more black players would bring in more black fans. But how much do baseball teams work to attract a black audience? As has been pointed out many times, teams will have Irish-American Night, Italian-American Night, Polish-American Night, but never African-American Night.
Actually, Jim Finn, ex-Pirates lefty Bob Veale said the reason his old team aggressively integrated the organization in the early 1960’s was that GM Joe Brown could get plenty of African-American talent at cheaper rates than white players in those pre-amateur draft days.
Baseball’s biggest promotion to attract fans of color was to sign African-American players. That was one of Branch Rickey’s main motivations for breaking the color line with Jackie Robinson — to boost the Ebbets Field gate.
Interestingly, African-American fans have largely stayed away from attending games in recent decades — another longtime story that puzzles Major League Baseball. At the same time, I’ve talked to or heard of black fans who root for a favorite team. Why that does not translate into attendance is beyond me.
In response to another comment. See in context »I think that both Torii Hunter anf Gary Sheffield are off-base (so to speak..) in thinking that MLB aggressively scouts the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, for purposes of recruiting docile Black ball players.
Caribbean recruitment is attractive because teams can find low-cost, incredibly passionate talent that plays the game year-round. End of story.
It also goes to your point that the baseball industry is not concerned (and should not be concerned with…) with having Black ball players on teams just for the sake of it.
In response to another comment. See in context »Believe me, Bill, MLB is very concerned that only 8 percent of the player ranks is African-American, compared to a peak 27 percent in the 1970’s. That’s below the percentage of the African-American population as a whole. The lords of the game simply cannot solve the problem due to cultural shifts. At least that’s a far cry from the 1950’s and 1960’s, when many teams had a quota on the number of players of color they’d carry, or even would swiftly trade a black player who had an interracial relationship. The latter is part of the Cubs’ sorry past under the Wrigleys.
In response to another comment. See in context »George,
Annually (pretty much like Groundhog Day…), we can tell that Spring is around the corner, because the “no Blacks in baseball” conversation emerges.
I think that MLB shows concern on this issue because they’ve been heavily criticized racially, for the steep decline of “Black-ball-players-who-speak-English-as-native-language-and-whose-forebearers-were-once-slaves-in-the-South.”
However, I think we’re talking ethnicity here, not race. Black Latino ball players couldn’t play in the MLB prior to Jackie Robinson, either.
Its not a racial issue because, to the extent that our society has always defined being “Black” as anyone with even a trace of African lineage (assuming use of that ridiculous historic standard…), MLB is FILLED with Black ball players — who just happen to speak Spanish.
Roberto Clemente was quoted as saying that he felt double discrimination in the U.S. as a “Black man” and as Spanish-speaking foreigner.
In response to another comment. See in context »George:
I think baseball may be evolving in two directions. One segment, as you suggest, includes those from Latin America armed “with an abiding desire to play and succeed at baseball, and willing to literally use sticks and stones to hone their skills playing morning, noon and night.”
But I also believe the other development lies in the upper-middle classes: The kids who may not play “morning, noon and night,” but each have two pitching coaches, three batting instructors and four different scholastic/traveling teams. They’re pricing out the other kids via equipment and superior training.
This bipolar tendency leaves out the lower-to-working classes in the States … which, yes, includes a large segment of African-Americans that Hunter and others worry may vanish from the game.
I’m kinda spitballin’ here, but could you foresee a MLB full of hardworking, rags-to-riches Latin players and entitled baseball machines from the ‘burbs in 2030? Or am I overgeneralizing here?
No, you’re not overgeneralizing, Kevin. I do think you see a future that’s logical. However, I think Latin and other foreign players will become predominant over a minority of those suburban (and Sunbelt) ballplayers. Not unless everyone domestically catches baseball fever, which is not going to happen with all the diversions available.
In response to another comment. See in context »“The sport prospered when men had good-paying jobs, did not flee their homes via divorce or abandonment, and helmed youth programs in the inner city. How did Detroit Tigers hitting coach Lloyd McClendon become a Little League World Series hero with five homers in 1971? McClendon grew up in inner-city Gary, Ind. when men had decent gigs in the steel mills and coached a thriving Little League program in their spare time. That’s all gone now, and who remains to develop inner-city talent? Kids can go out and shoot at a basket all day or with a couple of friends, but you need 1o to 18 kids under adult supervision to get a real baseball game going.”
Baseball appreciation and participation disappeared from African-American communities (or “inner-cities”…), as the concept of meaningful, African-American fatherhood was wiped away from the late 60s, moving forward to today.
Bad public policy and wrongheaded social analysis essentially promoted the “heroic Black single mother and her children” during the 60s, 70s and 80s as the PREFERRED Black family structure in the ‘hood. Black men, at the time, were viewed as socially irrelevant to their families and communities.
Baseball is a “dad” sport. Playing catch with your father is a male rite of passage.
My grandfather and father would join tens of thousands of other Black folks in the 1940s, to enjoy Negro League baseball games in Yankee Stadium.
I loved Willie Mays when he came to the Mets in 1972, because my father was a Mays fan and would see him play in the Polo Grounds with the Giants. My eleven year-old son watches my VHS’s of the Mets winning the ‘86 championship today, with the same vigor I had as a fan of the actual season. Makes me smile.
It’s an issue far bigger than baseball, Bill. No one can reverse the irrelevant black-father issue? I cannot believe any social policy would encourage single parenthood, particularly at the lower end of the economic ladder.
Absolutely agree on the rite-of-passage angle from father to son on baseball. You hear of so many star minority athletes in football and basketball who had that “heroic” single mother, but that doesn’t seem to translate to baseball.
In response to another comment. See in context »One year after passage of the Civil Rights Act, federal welfare policy was amended to give unmarried mothers financial/housing/food support as long as they weren’t living with an able-bodied male.
For poor Black women just coming out Jim Crow and only 100 years removed from slavery, welfare became almost like a valued form of reparations for past wrongs. That same year, 1965, the Department Of Labor issues a report titled “The Crisis of the Negro Family: A Case For National Action.” The report warned of the growing epidemic of fatherlessness at that time in the Black community.
In 1965, 22% of Black children were born to unmarried mothers (and it was considered a “crisis”..). In 2008, that number was 71%.
How do we raise boys in neighborhoods where there are no fathers or men? We don’t.
The Black community that I was born in to in Harlem (b. 1962) is structurally, far different today than it was back then. We had fathers and grandfathers…men…in the community and in households.
You’re right: baseball has become a relatively small casualty of these developments, when compared to, let’s say, the fatherless environments that foster incidents like the horrific murder of Derrion Alpert.
In response to another comment. See in context »Imagine, Bill, that an early 1966 edition of Look Magazine projected we could eradicate poverty in the near future. Such was the optimism of the Great Society, till Vietnam and awry policies torpedoed that dream. I’m sure the best minds did not envision wiping out poverty via welfare. They probably projected full employment (everything was made in America then, your Chevys and RCA color TV sets) with no discrimination to do so.
Here’s a question that begs an answer. If African-American fans turned out in large numbers for Jackie Robinson and other early players of color, where did they go in recent decades? They’re not at baseball games and in reality don’t patronize pro football and pro basketball games in great numbers. They ARE fans — but from afar.
In response to another comment. See in context »Probably, many African-American sports fans have been priced out of attending pro events. I had decent Knicks season tickets for 15 years (while the Knicks themselves were still decent…), and the seats became cost-prohibitive to renew.
Plus, sports attendance tends to be related to being immersed in the culture of the game: stats, player’s numbers, salaries, stadium dimensions– all committed to memory as a kid. Quite frankly, in today’s Black community, mommy or grandma most likely won’t be reminiscing about Willie Mays’ catch off of Vic Wertz, Mookie hitting the grounder through Buckner’s legs, or Matsui helping the Yanks win the trophy.
You will find young Black men at home playing Madden or NBA2K10, on the game console, though. And of course, many are still participating in community-based basketball programs, as well as some football, and even Little League programs.
In response to another comment. See in context »Bill. I agree with you about the plight of youth baseball in the inner cities. I helped run the North Long Beach little league from 1997 till 2001. Our biggest challenge was finding fathers who knew the game of baseball and could make time to coach a team. I left North Long Beach in 2001 because I was tired of crime and moved my family to a safer community. Waht you say is true about baseball in the USA. But I don’t believe that the dads in the Dominican are the ones teaching their boys to play baseball. Major League baseball has built baseball schools there and they’re staffing them with paid coaches. They are rolling the game out to a poor country on a red carpet. They are taking advantage of the fact that those boys have little else to do than to flow to those academies like a pied piper. They are taking advantage of the fact the the MLB draft has no jurisdiction over the Dominican Republic. They can sign top talent there for a few thousand. Here, a 4th round draft choice can cost two hundred thousand. It’s our (USA) game. Why doesn’t MLB a stronger commitment to our (USA) own boys who are less financially able to afford to play?
In response to another comment. See in context »[...] Angels’ Torii Hunter іѕ baseball’s canary іח tһе coal mine… [...]
It appears that Torii Hunter’s point slipped past almost everyone. The American fan pays for major league baseball. We pay for stadiums, we buy tickets, we support sponsors by purchasing their product. What do the MLB franchises do with some of that money? Every MLB has built an academy in the Dominican. They invest millions of dollars in the Dominican Republic. They build academies and staff them with paid coaches to teach young dominican boys the game of baseball. I believe what Torrii is really asking is “Where is the commitment to do the same for our own boys in our own inner cities?” Where? Yeah, they built an academy in Compton California, but youth besaball leagues within a stones throw of that are folding around it and the four high schools in the area are a joke in baseball. It takes more than bricks, mortar, nice grass and clay to build a baseball academy. Why not make the same commitment in the USA? Why not make baseball free to inner city kids. Why doesn’t MLB pay the same number coaches in the US? Because, MLB does not want to have to pay those kids millions in bonus money after they trained them. So the comment using Scott Boras as an example was right on.