If he were alive today, Robinson might be anguishing over this statistic: African Americans account for only 8.5 percent of the players on Major League Baseball rosters. Thirty years ago, that figure stood at 27 percent.
People with African ancestors are certainly not scarce in baseball, but, more and more, they come from South and Central America (29 percent of all MLB players are Latin American) or the Caribbean. The American of African ancestry is becoming harder and harder to find.
C.C. Sabathia anguishes. Sabathia, the ace pitcher of the Cleveland Indians and the only African American on his team, considers the dwindling number of African Americans in baseball to be a crisis. He is doing something about it. Sabathia sponsors a Little League in the San Francisco Bay Area, providing equipment and serving as a role model to 175 urban children. Jimmy Rollins of the Phillies and Dontrelle Willis of the Florida Marlins are also involved.
So what happened over the last three decades? Where did all the African American players go?
If they were athletic, they increasingly chose basketball and football. Why? Packaging, money, marketing; the culture of urban America; and the character of the games themselves.
Packaging. Basketball and football package themselves as new-age games; baseball, in many minds, is still Old World, and, in many minds, "a white man's sport."
Money. In basketball, an athlete can become richer quicker; in baseball, he most likely will first spend four or five years in the minors cashing small paychecks.
