By David Downey | Contributing Writer
When Major League Baseball celebrates Jackie Robinson’s historic 1947 debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers on Monday, April 15, a small number of players wearing No. 42 in his honor will be African Americans.
Tony Reagins, MLB’s chief baseball development officer and the Angels’ former general manager, said the percentage of Black major leaguers is down again this season. It fell to 6.0% from 6.2% in 2023, based on opening day numbers.
The percentage is one-third of what it was more than three decades ago, according to baseball demographic studies.
One reason for the decline seems to be the enormous popularity of basketball and football.
“Everybody wants to play basketball and football because those are the two big-dog sports,” said Miles Scott, a junior at Servite High School in Anaheim.
Scott plays the outfield and pitches for the Catholic school’s team, and has committed to playing baseball for UC Berkeley after graduation.
“I want to be the next Mookie Betts,” Scott said, referring to the Los Angeles Dodgers’ star player.
Many of his African American friends don’t, he said.
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Their dream is to become the next Lamar Jackson or LeBron James — the NFL and NBA superstars with the Baltimore Ravens and Lakers.
Riverside resident Roderick Cotton, whose 9-year-old son by the same name is playing Little League baseball this spring, said, “Kids want to be like the superstars they see on TV.”
Some kids don’t like baseball because it’s slow.
Grant Price, a senior at Moreno Valley’s Canyon Springs High School who plays first and third base, said most of his friends “gravitate” toward football or basketball because “they like the constant movement.” Like many high school baseball players, Price’s dream is to become a major leaguer.
African American participation in the professional ranks of basketball and football is high. According to Statista, more than 70% of NBA players and 53% of NFL players are Black.
There are far fewer Black players in professional baseball.
“So you have a lot of kids who don’t have that visual that, ‘Hey, I could be a Major League Baseball player,’” said Darious Carter, head baseball coach at Canyon Springs High.
Baseball is an expensive sport
That said, a lot of African American children are introduced to the game at an early age.
“Black kids love baseball and they continue to play it at the youth level all across the U.S.,” said Erikk Aldridge, a former UC San Diego star who mentors inner-city youth and founded the Inglewood Baseball Fund.
“You can be a fan of Kobe Bryant and still love to play baseball,” Aldridge said.
However, the journey from Little League to competitive high school, college and professional baseball has become an expensive one.
While many play in recreational leagues, Carter said, before long there is a push to join travel ball teams to accelerate development.
“Unfortunately, a lot of African American families don’t have the means and the funds to continue that,” Carter said.
Besides the expense of a travel ball team, there’s the cost of cleats, bats, helmets, batting gloves and other equipment, said Ayden Wimsatt, a junior who pitches and plays first base and outfield for Carter at Canyon Springs.
Those expenses run well into the hundreds of dollars, Wimsatt said.
“Then you have to add on trainers if you want to get competitive in baseball,” he said.
While declining to state the exact cost, Wimsatt said, his family’s expense for a trainer is in the thousands.
“On my travel ball team, everybody has a trainer,” he added.
Playing in college can be key
Many promising ballplayers of color won’t get far without those features in their development resumes.
Darvin Hurd, president of the Reid Park Little League in Riverside, said high school coaches tend to emphasize travel ball so much that kids who can’t afford travel ball have little or no chance of making school teams.
“African American kids have been told that baseball ain’t for them,” Hurd said while he flipped burgers and hotdogs on a portable grill to sell from his league’s snack bar last week.
“They’ve basically been told that basketball and football are their sports.”
The path of increasing expense continues as players move on from high school and reach for the pros.
In years past, prospects often were drafted straight out of high school. That is rare today. According to MLB.com, 75% to 80% of new players are drafted from the collegiate ranks.
So one of the biggest challenges, Aldridge said, is to get more Black players into college to have a better chance of being drafted.
It’s a difficult challenge because a university education costs tens of thousands of dollars, something many families can’t afford, Aldridge said. And, unlike in college football and basketball, he said, baseball scholarships cover only part of the cost.
Even the talented Hunter Greene, before he was taken second overall in the 2017 MLB draft, was offered a 75% scholarship to play at UCLA, the Cincinnati Reds pitcher said by phone Thursday, April 11.
“In baseball, there’s no full-ride scholarships,” Greene said.
Greene — who is known for his 100-mph fastball — graduated from Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks.
International players compete for roster spots
Aldridge said the huge number of international players is a factor.
“I don’t know how Black numbers go up when it’s just a more crowded space,” he said.
The Associated Press reported that more than 28% of those who played in the major leagues last year were born outside the 50 states.
“Sports now are global,” Aldridge said. “And, so, it’s exponentially harder for any American kid to become a professional. I don’t think it’s a race-based thing. I think it’s a competition-based thing.”
The share of White players has declined, too. In 1989, 70% of major leaguers were White, according to a study by the Society for American Baseball Research.
Thirty-five years later, Whites account for 60.5% of players on major league rosters, MLB spokesman Steve Arocho said in an email.
Arocho wrote that 29.6% of players this season are Latino, 6.0% are Black, 3.4% are Asian, 0.3% are Hawaiian/Pacific Islander and 0.2% are Native American. The numbers are based on opening-day rosters, when there were 57 Black players, two fewer than in 2023.
Fifteen of the 57 — 26% — are products of MLB player development programs, such as its youth academies, he wrote.
Greene, the Reds’ pitcher, attributes much of his success to the mentoring he received at the Compton Youth Academy from age 7 to 12.
“That was my first opportunity to play with people who looked like me,” Greene said.
Asked if he would have made the majors without that, he replied, “I don’t know. I can’t answer that. But probably not because I wasn’t getting any playing time with the league I was in.”
Training programs seen as a solution
Reagins, the baseball development chief, said the Compton center, which opened in 2006, was the first of nine MLB-operated academies that develop young minority ballplayers in the inner city. MLB is a partner in two other such academies as well.
In another initiative, MLB is partnering with USA Baseball to boost Black representation by covering costs for participating in high-profile showcase events and tournaments, Reagins said. There, players are assured of being seen by scouts.
“Being a young player, it is almost a must,” Reagins said.
Yet, he said, “Black players have in recent years been shut out of those events, primarily because of cost.”
In the past, scouting was more individualized, as scouts would search far and wide for talented prospects, Reagins said.
“Scouts really took pride in finding that diamond in the rough,” he said.
Things have changed. “There is a lot of what I would call herd scouting today,” he said.
Scott, the Servite High School standout, has taken part in MLB-sponsored programs. One involved traveling and playing for seven weeks last summer in Florida, North Carolina, Georgia and Alabama, he said.
“It was a super fun experience,” he said.
His father, Carl Scott, a salesman for a biotech company, said he believes such programs will show results in a few years, despite the downward trend.
“There’s a big resurgence coming because you see more African American kids playing across the country,” Carl Scott said.
After Jackie Robinson shattered the color barrier in 1947, there was an initial surge in the number of Black players in an era that featured greats Willie Mays and Ernie Banks.
According to the Society for American Baseball Research, the proportion of Black players reached 8.9% by 1960, 14.6% by 1970 and 18.5% in 1975.
“He broke barriers for us to play the game,” Miles Scott said of Robinson. “And that made all the difference.”
Greene, the major leaguer with the blazing fastball, called Robinson “a tremendous role model” who paved the way for generations of ballplayers of color.
“I’m just honored to celebrate another year of Jackie Robinson Day in the major leagues,” Greene said. “And I can’t wait to be wearing No. 42 again.”