OPINION: Lack of diversity in MLB is more than meets the eye
Patrick Brown, Associate Writer
In the news nowadays, you constantly hear about race and how there is a lack of diversity everywhere. So far, these conversations have involved things like entertainment, politics, etc. But could the conversation be spreading to the sports world? I went to one of my favorite sports, baseball, to see if that was the case.
Baseball has a reputation of being ‘America’s Pastime.’ This is one of my favorite sports to watch and it got me thinking about all of the things that baseball has to offer. When I watch a baseball game, I usually see a lot of white athletes on the field. There are a few foreign players, but not a lot of African American players on the field. So I had to do a little research on the subject.
The graph shown is from the 2014 season.
I found some numbers from www.pewresearch.org about the subject and the numbers don’t lie. In 2014, over 63 percent of players playing Major League Baseball (MLB) were white. Only 7 percent of players were African American. But before you call MLB complaining about this, there is one factor that you need to consider. First, yes the number of African American players have gone down since the 1980s, but he crazy thing is that the number of white players have also gone down since the 1980s.
Mark Armour, in an interview with mlb.com in 2013, talks about this change in great detail.
“Some of it is that the number of white players has also dropped,” he said. “There are so many people who are non-Americans who are playing. That’s a big part of it. But that doesn’t explain all of it. The drop is too large to account for that.”
So, while there may be a decreasing number of African Americans playing Major League Baseball, there is still diversity within the league, and it is increasing.
The MLB shouldn’t be blamed for anything. It is looking for the best players from around the world to play, regardless of race, and the only thing players have to prove is that they are good enough to join.
