Baseball is no longer cool in the black community.
- Five teams — the Boston Red Sox, Baltimore Orioles, Houston Astros, Atlanta Braves and Colorado Rockies — had no African-American players on their active rosters as of Monday, while several other teams had just one or two.
When Florida's Dontrelle Willis faced the Los Angeles Dodgers' Edwin Jackson last week, it was a notable occurrence, an extremely rare matchup of African-American starting pitchers — rare because only five are in major-league rotations. And there is not one African-American catcher since Charles Johnson was waived by the Devil Rays in June.
The stark fact is that 58 years after Jackie Robinson integrated baseball, considered by many to be the single most significant event in the history of professional sports, the American-born black baseball player is slowly disappearing from the game.
Some of this is really startling. The percentage of black players in the Major Leagues has declined from 27 percent in 1975 to 9 percent this year. Only one black college player was among the first 100 picks selected in the 2004 college draft. Black colleges are having to recruit white players for their baseball teams.
I guess Jackie Robinson would be a point guard if he were around today.