*Major league baseball is considered to be America’s Pastime sport and is one of the oldest sports in the nation. There is, however, a glaring disconnect in this old ballgame’s participants and the African American community.

Baseball was found to have the smallest percentages of African American players in comparison to three other major sports. The total percentage of African American players was found to fall under 8% and this was compares to the 64% in NFL and the 75% in NBA.

Some of the Greatest Were Black

Even though their percentages were the lowest, some of the greats in this sport, like Ken Griffey Jr, Bob Gibson, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Jackie Robinson were Black. This problem of diversity, however, is probably why there seems to be a lack of interest for the sport in the Black community.

The NBA and NFL in Contrast

While Baltimore’s all-star Adam Jones believes that all the management decisions made in baseball were ‘white’, the NBA has been getting itself involved in quite a number of social justice initiatives. The first and foremost initiative they have been involved in was the Black Lives Matter movement where the players supportive gear and t-shirts sported the logo. This logo reminded all the viewers about the death of black people at the hands of unlawful police shootings.

The NFL had its introduction to the problems of social justice too when Colin Kaepernick had famously decided to kneel during the national anthem. This trend then started making other players follow suit which naturally sparked mass social media discussions along with debates in news platforms.

Even though the NFL had said that they were unsupportive of the act, atleast their players are involved.  Baseball, on the other hand, had pleaded the 5^th when it came to social issues. Baseball has been kept apart like a very traditional sport that wishes to avoid all racial conflicts at all costs. This is why African American players face a lot of problems for voicing their thoughts on social media or sparking any debate regarding their community.

Speaking out as a Black baseball player has somehow been denounced as a disrespectful act for the game.

There Is Still Hope

These glowing errors in baseball are being healed by programs such as the RBI program which stands for ‘Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities’. With such programs on the rise, there is still hope that Black baseball players will still be able to represent their community at the highest echelons of the game while helping bring about the repair of diversity in sports.

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