Money To Blame For Lack of Black Baseball Players

As the MLB gets set to honor Jackie Robinson tomorrow, the lack of African-American players in baseball is even more conspicuous than usual. A game that pioneered racial integration in professional sports has lost almost all of its black participants to more popular games like football and basketball, and black players are harder to find in the MLB than any time since Robinson broke the color barrier.

Besides dwindling popularity, why is this happening? According to Chris Isidore of CNNMoney.com, economic efficiency, or inefficiency, is the biggest factor black athletes are no longer catching the eye of MLB front offices.

"The international market is more economically efficient," said Vince Gennaro, a consultant to numerous major league teams and the author of "Diamonds and Dollars," a book about the economics of baseball. "This is the place where the high revenue teams can leverage their economic advantage."

Another factor is the tendency for domestic talent to make its way through college before the draft, both because front offices lean toward proven college players when drafting and because there are financial advantages for players to improve their skills in college.

The players who are drafted out of high school have only two options -- accept the top salary and signing bonus offered by the team, or go to college and hope they will be picked in a higher draft position a year or two down the road. With baseball salaries rising steadily, more see an advantage to try the college path.

These reasons -- coupled with the higher amount of scholarships available in football and the popularity of basketball -- have more and more black athletes, especially low-income black athletes, spurning baseball. With all of those factors in mind, it's going to be a long, arduous climb before baseball can regain the legacy Jackie Robinson stands for. It may never happen.

(HT: Baseball Primer Newsblog)

Previously at FanHouse:
Are Too Many Players Wearing Jackie Robinson's Number?
Before Civil Rights Game, Preston Wilson Looks at MLB's Race Issue
C.C. Sabathia Wants to See More Black People in the Locker Room