I saw the graphic on TV last week that African Americans represented nearly 20% of MLB players in the 80s and that number has dropped down below 9% today. Chris Rock says “Maybe if baseball gets a little hipper, a little cooler, just a little more black, the future can change.” He says baseball is stuck in the past.
He’s not exactly wrong, but baseball has always placed great value on its history. Even in the 80s. People say baseball is expensive. But do you think all these Dominican, Cuban and Venezuelan kids have it better than those in urban America?
I don’t know the numbers, but I bet the percentage of white players in MLB has dropped since the 80s, too. I would guess there are more Hispanic and Asian players now than ever.
Is this a problem? is the solution for baseball to get hipper?
I thought it actually was an interesting argument that brought up things I hadn’t considered before. I mean, I guess it should have been a “duh” moment that celebrating the past and tradition may bring up different sorts of ideas to African-Americans than it would to whites.
The ‘hipper’ comment isn’t that bad either. The idea that admiring a home run or playing with fun as Yasiel Puig does (as referenced in Rock’s message) is deserving of a ball in the ear has always struck me as a bit ridiculous. Let the players have a bit of fun. They aren’t doing it because they are consciously thinking “let me show the pitcher up”.
Actually, I believe it is to show up the pitcher ( maybe subconscious) or at least emphasize that the batter won this round.
Do you really want MLB to go the way of the antics in the NFL?
The No Fun League? No, I want it to actually be fun. When Rock was showing Korean batters making a part-sport of how far they could toss their bats after a HR - that was pretty cool. Remember when Ozzie Smith used to do cartwheels while going to SS? Stuff like that, but that may be considered too “NFL antics”.
And no, I don’t think it has anything to do with showing up the pitcher. They’d actually look at the pitcher if they were doing that.
I haven’t followed baseball in a long time but it appears that, by some metrics, the game is doing pretty well. Attendance is rock-solid, franchises are profitable and players among the highest paid of all professional athletes.
OTOH, the average age of baseball fans is the highest of all the domestic sports. But, like the NFL, there is so much residual surplus, that the game could probably suffer a loss of 50% of its fan base and still be economically comfortable.
After watching that segment I’d say it’s only a problem to Chris Rock. He’s upset that his current set of black friends don’t watch baseball like he does. Oh boo-hoo.
Unless there’s some sort of systematic discrimination, why does it even matter what the racial percentage breakdown of a sport is? Should all non-black races be offended that they’re getting the shaft in representation in the NFL?
Baseball is an old fashioned sport. It’s slow, teams are just an ad hoc collections of players for a particular season, and it costs a fortune to go to a game. Baseball was known as America’s Pastime because people watched and played the game. There’s a lot less of each now. The increasing number of players from other countries show that few Americans are interested becoming an MLB player anymore.
If they want. White people don’t seem to care about consuming entertainment with mostly black/minority participants, otherwise the NFL, NBA, and the hip hop industry would collapse. Then again, the NFL has a lot of white QBs, and they’re often styled as the hero, so that’s something for white people to grab onto. The NBA media is always looking for the next great white hope a la Larry Bird but they usually come up empty (they laughably gave Steve Nash two MVPs).
I rarely watch baseball, so I didn’t know it was like 60% white still. To the extent that a lot of people see white = lame, I can see why baseball gets stigmatized as unhip.
Chris Rock is being racist, but he can get away with it.
Part of the appeal of baseball is that it is old fashioned. Grampa can still take little Billy to a game and have a good time. They are going for Family, not Hip.
Much of what has occurred in recent years to attract fans to the ball parks doesn’t show up on TV when they broadcast the games.
All that said, if they really want to make a big change, how about going co-ed?
My issue with Rock’s complaint is that it’s not like African Americans just never caught on to baseball. There was a good 25 year period where the percentage of African Americans in MLB was much greater than the percentage of African Americans in the US.
As I suspected, the percentage of whites in MLB has also dropped from roughly 70% to now 63%. The influx of talent from Latin America and Asia is actually making baseball more diversified.
The thing about baseball is that it is literally 1 on 1 with 8 other guys waiting to react. It’s your best vs. my best and neither of us can fake it or ride on our teammates’ coattails like we could on a football field or basketball court. So when a guy admires his home run, yes he’s inevitably showing up the pitcher. I don’t hate it, but I understand it pisses off the pitcher.
MY thought on baseball: that it’s BORING and LAME. The only two “sports” I can think of off the top of my head that I dislike more are cricket and auto racing.
CR doesn’t have to know how to play - he’s making an argument based on marketing, not athletics.
That said, I find baseball extremely boring, and I’ve only been to two games in the past decade and a half - one because a friend was having his bachelor party and started at the Braves stadium before heading to a strip club (I declined the latter half), and one because my wife wanted to see the college team play for free. I was bored to tears both times.
the video says that the average age of a baseball fan is 52 and world series viewership has dropped 90%. You can have a profitable game milking old people, but that is a business model that will die off with it’s clientele unless you can be attractive to younger people as well. I dunno if the answer to that is more ‘blackness’, but I can see more of a carnival atmosphere making the game more appealing than “and here’s the pitch… it’s a ball. Now everyone take a 3 minute nap while we wait for the next pitch”.
As far as pitchers getting annoyed by a batter celebrating… yea, I’m sure the QB is annoyed when the cornerback sacks him, but he doesn’t get up and throw a punch. I’m sure the goalie is upset when the forward makes a goal on a power play, but he doesn’t club him with his stick. And I’m sure the guard is mad when a center dunks the ball over him, but he doesn’t start kickboxing. If the pitcher thinks the right thing to do for celebrating is wing the batter with a pitch, that pitcher doesn’t need to be playing. Let the batter celebrate, and kick a pitcher that hits a batter out of the game and add a $100k fine, and I bet you’ll get no more wild pitches.
Some of y’all just aren’t even paying attention to what Rock is saying. Did you even watch the video? Or are you just remarking on what you wish he said?
As he makes clear at the end of it, he doesn’t care about this decline as a black man, but as a baseball fan. The average age of baseball fans is over 50 and is a problem going forward. I don’t think he’s being racist (and I think when people throw this at Rock they have completely forgotten when he’s told jokes at the expense of black folk, a la the famous “Niggas vs. Black People” routine) when he says what young black people are into is considered ‘cool’ by the media and in the zeitgeist - it just is.
Chris Rock doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. There are so many p[roblem with the entirety of his blather I barely know where to start, but:
The reason there are fewer African-Americans (black players from the Caribbean are, incidentally, never counted in this number) is that professional baseball is getting more players from other places, like the Far East, Canada, and the like, and frankly because black kids have more opportunities than ever to play other pro sports.
As to the point about baseball fans getting older, yes, they are. A few more black players isn’t going to change that.
Baseball has been doing more to reach out to black kids in the last ten years than it had in, like, the last thirty.
Anyway, let’s be honest; you cannot be cool by trying to be cool. People either like something or they don’t. If you think baseball is boring, don’t post in baseball threads and don’t watch baseball. Those of us who love the sport will get along fine without you and let’s be perfectly honest; if baseball suddenly lost 25% of its revenue tomorrow it’d still be a multi billion dollar industry and a far bigger deal than it was when Mickey Mantle was around. Major League Baseball will outlive my grandchildren, and they aren’t even born yet.
It is a problem for baseball that their fans are old and white. Rock isn’t “offended” because he is black, he is complaining because he likes baseball.
