Imagine sports without color.
The green grass. The blue sky. The white ice. The uniforms.
The men and women in them.
It's hard to believe there was a time when pro baseball was a white country club where minorities were welcome to watch and serve, but not play. To put it into a perspective I could understand, blacks were in the game just ten years...ten years...when I was born in 1957.
Unbelievable.
As we remember Jackie Robinson on this, the 60th anniversary of his entrance into the majors, the debate isn't about opportunities for blacks and other minorities in pro baseball. The question now: why aren't more African-Americans playing it?
People with larger brains than me have a variety of takes--one of the best of which is in this morning's Washington Post. Columnist Michael Wilbon talks to an MLB exec who says it might have alot to do with...ready for this? Nike.
Here's a quote that leaps from Wilbon's page: "It's a generational sport," Jimmie Lee Solomon, MLB's executive vice president of baseball operations, said. "Your dad or your granddad or uncle explained all the nuances to you, the game within a game, how to fill out a scorecard. . . . The game was passed down. Well, we've lost a generation of teachers because of all the new interests."
New interests, yes, and I venture to say the collapse of the traditional family. How many African American kids are growing up in homes with no fathers, no male influences? How many have no one to play catch with...hit fly balls to...watch a game on t.v. with?
Jackie Robinson could only open the door--he can't shove people through it. As the 60th anniversary of his breaking of the color barrier arrives, I choose to celebrate the fact that Major League Baseball is now more colorful than ever, with people of all colors and from many nations playing the game at it's highest level. And, that the opportunity to join them remains for all.
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