Academic Break Pt. 4: MLB & Conclusion

The sport with one of the most publicized losses in African-American athletes is Major League Baseball. Before blacks were allowed to play in the major leagues they played in the Negro Leagues. Owned and operated by blacks, the Negro Leagues is still the most successful sports business venture for blacks in terms of ownership and control.

Once Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947, the Negro Leagues began to fall apart. Less than 100 years after the collapse of the Negro Leagues the black baseball player is becoming extinct.

A lot of people say the decline is due to things like baseball being perceived as a “white” sport, lack of resources and places to play for inner-city kids, etc. However, the economic problems are more of a result of MLB and NCAA policy than inner-city poverty.

This article by Chris Isidore hit two of the reasons why black players are on the decline right on the head. First, foreign players aren’t subject to the draft. This has caused teams to open up camps in Latin American where they develop players whom they can sign at ages of 15 or 16.

Second, baseball isn’t a revenue sport in college. A lot of baseball players have to pay to go to school, especially those players who go to football schools where more of the scholarships go to football players. For some schools, like Drexel, it’s not even worth it for the school to field a team.

However, I think all of these problems go back to what Rhoden discussed in his book, which is the lack of blacks in ownership and decision making positions. Without people in the room that care, the policies that are keeping blacks out of the game will continue to go on. Imagine how many black athletes would be in baseball if each team had an academy in their hometown.

Yes, Jimmie Lee Solomon is the Executive VP of the MLB, but he’s probably the only black person in the room during a lot of meetings. To make MLB more accessible for blacks, it will take a large public outrage to influence owners to make a change.

Right now, they are probably more than content with having a white, Hispanic, and Asian league. The Latin players are cheap to develop, the Japanese players are usually the best of the best from Japan and the white players are easy to sell to the fans. They don’t have to worry about fans being uncomfortable with tattoos, long hair or reports of one of their players making it rain.

Its ironic that the players who were eager to leave the Negro Leagues to the brighter lights of Major League Baseball might have indirectly killed the black baseball player. It’s definitely good that Jackie Robinson broke the American sports color barrier for several reasons. However, it’s definitely come at a cost.

Conclusion

It’s funny that Whitlock wrote an article that talked about some of the things I talked about in the NBA piece, namely the effects of the appearance of the players and their perception. (I swear I wrote mines before I read his or even knew it existed)

That said, what is the future of the black American athlete in the U.S.? Is the “globalization” of American sports a bad thing? Considering everything else in the country, is it a natural step inline with our countries economic policies?

For starters, these trends will probably continue until blacks either gain more power in these leagues or leverage their power as athletes to get some changes made.

Second, I think the black athlete needs to become more professional and more cognizant of their situation here. Their appearance and behavior is under a lot of scrutiny, perhaps more so than their white counterparts.

I’m definitely not saying tattoos are bad or that it’s not ok to go to the club. Hell, I was in the club last night. It’s the little things that go along way.

Maybe think twice about getting that neck tattoo of your name in Mandarin Chinese. LeBron James needs to know better than to take a picture like this. If you make $6 million a year, perhaps you should call a cab or hire a driver instead of driving home drunk. If you make $6 million a year, you might want to consider hiring a bodyguard or two instead of packing heat. With the nature of celebrity worship and hate in our country, for some it might be time to leave a lot of the nightlife alone, or go to more upscale places.

A lot of young blacks in general struggle with this. They don’t understand why they are judged by appearance and think that someone who classifies them as a thug because their pants are hanging off their butt is a racist. I say that professionalism knows no race. That’s why the NBA’s dress code was one of David Stern’s best moves.

I also think that its naïve to ignore the reality of perception. People make judgments on perception all the time. You can sit and say it’s wrong and shouldn’t happen or you can acknowledge its presence and adjust accordingly.

I think that if black athletes changed the perception of them by looking more professional and staying out of trouble, it will go a long way. It sucks that a black athlete and a white athlete doing the same thing gets covered differently, but it is what it is. Blacks don’t own the leagues and we don’t own the media that covers the leagues.

In general, I don’t think the globalization of sports is a bad thing. It’s good that these leagues that give out “World Champion” titles are truly becoming home to the world’s best players. The problem I have is when a team takes a foreign player over a black player when they have equal or lesser talent. That’s when you have to wonder about the motives of the decision makers.

This piece was fun for me to work on, although it’s hard to talk about race in this country. When a player or coach says that something is racist, they are often scrutinized for “playing the race card.” Willie Randolph is on the hot seat for suggesting some of the criticism he receives is racial. However, race is everywhere in sports. For the economic and bureaucratic structure of sports to how players are scouted and even how the media covers the sport. Announcers even describe white and black players differently.

The more uncomfortable it becomes to talk about race, the harder it becomes to fix some of the race related problems in sports. Sometimes I wonder if that’s the point.

Special thanks to Professor E with her help on this project.

Academic Break pt. 3: The NBA

A league that is slowly becoming less black is the NBA. This is also a league with an interesting situation. Most of the best basketball players in the U.S. are young black males. Many of them are firmly entrenched into the hip-hop culture that Jason Whitlock hates and many in the mainstream are afraid of.

The Pacers/Pistons/Fans brawl a few years ago seemed to legitimize the fears of those on the outside of the league. It also helped people paint a picture of the NBA as a league full of thugs. (Funny how a fight between white players and fans was barely talked about by the media.)

On top of that, the players are perhaps the most visible in the NBA, on and off the court. On the court, we can see almost all of their tattoos, of the court their wardrobes and jewelry are under scrutiny. When an NBA player gets in trouble, or says something silly (i.e. Josh Howard), it becomes big news. And now the NBA has an image problem.

They have gone through great lengths to change their image from the dress code, to the NBA Cares program, to tougher penalties for things like fighting, but the whispers are still out there. People still say they don’t watch the NBA because it’s not good anymore, the players are lazy and selfish, it’s a league of thugs, etc. Meanwhile, the NBA is finishing up the best season since Jordan was in Chicago.

A lot of the league’s image problem is the players’ fault, but in a lot of ways they are the product of the system around basketball. Camps, AAU leagues, sneaker companies and traveling teams have more influence in basketball than in any other sport. If they’re good, players are coddled throughout their grade school years and into college. At the camps, they are under intense pressure to standout among hundreds of kids, so in a way they’re bred to be selfish.

Even though David Stern is doing his best to change the image of his black players, he’s not stupid. Larry Bird said it best; more white people would watch the game if they could root for white players. It’s not a racist thing, it’s an identification thing. The NBA is immensely popular in the hip-hop circle and among young blacks because they can relate to the game’s stars. More than any other sport, the NBA’s true fans are priced out.

The non-PR response to the criticism has been to replace American-born black athletes with foreigners. Only a few teams (Boston, Charlotte, Indiana, LA Clippers, Miami) don’t have foreign players. The Toronto Raptors have six foreign players and another, Anthony Parker, who was the Euroleague MVP before coming to the NBA.

These foreign players aren’t necessarily better than black or white Americans. We get the cream of the crop from other countries, whose abilities range from poor to MVP caliber. For NBA teams, they are three benefits to having European players.

First, they are usually inexpensive. It costs an NBA nothing to draft a foreign player in the 2nd round and let him develop in overseas, compared to drafting an American and having to pay them to sit on the bench and develop.

Second, it adds some diversity to the league. The NBA became mostly black because basketball is the most popular sport among African-American youths, especially in the inner cities. Basketball is cheap; all you really need is a ball. If your friend has a ball then you’re set. While other kids spend time and money playing other sports throughout the year, inner city kids just play ball. A player that plays basketball everyday will probably be better than a kid that just plays during basketball season, if they are comparable athletes.

By bringing in European players, you can give the fans white players to watch. Rooting for Dirk Nowitzki is not the same as rooting for John Smith, but it might make fans more comfortable than rooting for a cornrowed, tattooed LaAnthony Jenkins.

Third, teams don’t have to deal with the baggage that comes with inner-city kids. The off the court struggles of some athletes receive a lot of play in the media, giving all of them a bad image and in a lot of ways making them less desirable.

Without the power to make executive decisions, all the players can do is continue to play. In the coming years, watch the NBA become more and more international as black Americans are replaced by Europeans, South Americans, Africans and Asians, kind of like baseball.

Once again, to get a better perspective, read $40 Million Slaves.

Academic Break Pt. 2: The Black Athlete in the NFL

For the second part of the series, I’ll look at the NFL. This is a league that doesn’t seem to have a problem with a shortage of black athletes. In fact, this Jason Whitlock article is one of the few articles I’ve been able to find about this topic in relation to the NFL.

Jason Whitlock is a writer who frequently talks about race and is someone people either love or hate. He is especially critical of young black athletes and the hip-hop culture. However, his article does show that black athletes can even be replaced in the NFL and it also touches on some of the reasons why this might happen.

A lot of black athletes come with baggage. Some of this may be related to hip-hop, but a lot of it probably just comes from their background. The Michael Vick’s and Pac Man Jones’ of the world can’t seem to shake their past. Even though they are millionaires, a lot of players still behave with a street mentality.

This isn’t something confined to the NFL, it happens with a lot of black athletes. It’s not even confined to being poor. Larry Johnson, who is frequently criticized by Whitlock and others for his attitude, comes from a pretty well off family as his father is one of Joe Paterno’s top assistants at Penn State.

In the case of Johnson and people like him, what’s usually blamed in place of poverty is hip-hop. While the messages in mainstream hip-hop can have a negative influence on some, it’s difficult to judge any of these athletes without knowing them.

Ironically, it may the stereotypes that are prevalent in the NFL that keeps black athletes prevalent in the sport. In the NFL, blacks are perceived to be less cerebral than white players, but in a lot of cases bigger, faster and stronger.

While a lot of these stereotypes are dated and no one likes to talk about it (or race really), they clearly still have an impact. Look at the NFL’s rosters. Check the running backs, wide receivers and corner backs. They’re almost all black. Those are also positions where the perception is athleticism is more important than intelligence. Quarterback is the position most associated with thinking in the NFL. Coincidentally, it’s a mostly white position in a sport with a majority of African-American players.

Some of these stereotypes are currently being broken down in college football, where you see things like black quarterbacks, white running backs and receivers, etc. at a much higher rate than in the NFL. We’ll see if these changes have any true impact in the league.

Another thing that has prevented the black athlete in the NFL from becoming undesirable is the way the NFL is marketed to the consumers. We get to “know” very few of the players off the field. Those we do see in commercials and feature stories are usually the cleaner cut players, the Peyton Mannings, Tom Brady’s and LaDanian Tomlinsons.

Part of the reason we don’t really get to know the players is the way the game is played. Players are covered in equipment from head to toe. A few years ago, the NFL even banned players from taking off their helmet when scoring a touchdown.

We don’t see their tattoos or earrings, and during this past offseason the league considered banning long hair so we couldn’t see players’ dreadlocks either. This prevents the players from being judged on their appearance, like the NBA.

More NFL players probably get in trouble than NBA players, but which league has an image problem? Which league is full of “thugs?”

Without saying so, the NFL has been able to essentially hide most of its black athletes from the mostly white fans that fill its arenas. With the race of the players covered up, it becomes something you don’t think about as much as you would watching an NBA game.

So, interestingly enough, stereotypes and marketing tactics might be what keeps black athletes flourishing in the NFL.

The Decline of the American-born Black Athlete????? (Sportsology Academic Break) Pt. 1

I am 15 days away from graduating from Drexel University. My emotions are mix of excitement and anxiety over the uncertainty of my future. That said, I’ll be finished with classes this time next week.

For my Sociology 380 Media Sociology class, I was given the assignment to come up with a piece of media and present it to class. Since I already had the blog, I figured I’d use it to come up with some food for thought. That food will be the decline of the American born-black athlete in American sports.

In four parts, I’ll look at this phenomenon from a historical standpoint and see how it’s affecting the three major sports leagues in the U.S.; the NBA, NFL, and MLB.

There are two inspirations for this work. One is this Jason Whitlock article, which I’ll discuss more in the NFL section, where he notes that many of the more successful teams in the NFL are the ones with mostly white players.

The other is one of my favorite books, Forty Million Dollar Slaves, written by the New York Times’ Bill Rhoden. If you haven’t read this book, please do so immediately.

It’s an excellent historical view of the rise and fall of the black athlete and some of the contributing factors.

The name of the book comes from a fan’s response to Larry Johnson referring to the Knicks as rebel slaves.

The book is centered on the situation of black athletes in America, which is still the same today. On one hand, many black athletes have dominated their sports. On the other hand, the success on the field hasn’t translated into success off the field. By this I mean blacks have no ownership in the sports they dominate, which puts them in a vulnerable position.

There is only one black owner in American professional sports, Bob Johnson, who is already under fire for some of his tactics with his Charlotte Bobcats, a franchise not even ten years old.

In his book, Rhoden showed how the vulnerability has often left black athletes in an exploitable position. Before, in sports like boxing, horse racing (most of the best jockey’s were black in the mid-1800s before racism excluded them from participating), cycling, etc., black’s lack of ownership put them in positions to be excluded from participation.

Now, their lack of ownership has them in a subservient position, where they are mostly confined to worker positions (playing and coaching) and have limited executive power. I’m not going to make this a book review, just go read the book.

Here’s how it relates to the situation of black athletes today. When blacks had their own leagues, like the Negro Leagues, and the best black athletes went to HBCU’s, they would protect each other.

Now, they are simply money making objects. In the MLB section, I’ll talk about how the absence of the Negro Leagues pretty much destroyed baseball in the black community (if I remember).

Back to the point, the lack of ownership and black executives in these leagues puts black athletes in a position where they can become extinct at any moment. Blacks have been replaced by Latin and now Japanese players in baseball; European and Asian players are becoming more prevalent in the NBA; white and African-born players are replacing the black American athlete in the NFL.

I use Whitlock’s article for balance, its not just the man’s fault. Black athletes were very eager to move on to the big money sports leagues in the mid-1900s. This was a very profitable relationship for black athletes and white owners at first. Now, with the baggage that comes with many black athletes and the behavior of the Pac Man Jones’ of the world, owners are starting to look elsewhere.

Maybe I’m looking into this too deeply. Maybe these leagues are becoming more diverse and are recruiting international talent to expand their fan base globally. I’ll do my best to present the facts during the next three days and give you something to think about. Enjoy.