In your opinion what caused the decline of African Americans in Baseball?

[The Jewnited States]

This is by far the dumbest thing ever.

Dude you can be a shytty athlete all around and but their are specialties within baseball you can focus on and ...You cannot do that with basketball or football (outside of kicker)

Do you realize Steve Nash is 6"4 205lbs yet he looks like a toddler out there on the court surrounded by 6"8 ballerinas. The coordination and grace that has to be involved to play professional basketball is unreal. Lance Stephenson is god awful, Javel Mcgee is an idiot but you put him in any gym across the country and those guys would dominate. No one would be able to guard them. In the MLB you don't have to be physically imposing or particularly athletic. You can be a designated hitter and get fat. You can suck at batting and be a pinch hitter. The worst guy on a D2 team is a damn good basketball player.

Football the same damn thing. Try tackling someone like Bo Jackson coming head on. From someone who loves baseball the reason why I quit is because I got pulled to center field and the highlight of my day was getting orange slices and hi-c's after the games from the Team Moms. Baseball doesn't compare to the other sports in difficulty.

this post ain't making no sense bruh. you could just as easily say that if you took a bench warmer from a triple A team he would beast while playing in college or some old mans open league.

if baseball was so easy you wouldn't see so many cats that go from first team all state in high school to never making it above double A


it's one thing to hit an 80 mph curve, but to also catch up to 97mph or hit a 90 mph slider all in the same at bat? there's a reason michael jordan, bo jackson, and deion never hit above 300.

look at where his release point is, then look at where all the pitches go. that shyt is NOT easy. no you don't have to be the biggest dude to play baseball, but that doesn't make it easier. a 7'1" bball player, no matter how athletic, would not fare well in baseball

 

[MikeBrownsJob]

this post ain't making no sense bruh. you could just as easily say that if you took a bench warmer from a triple A team he would beast while playing in college or some old mans open league.

if baseball was so easy you wouldn't see so many cats that go from first team all state in high school to never making it above double A


it's one thing to hit an 80 mph curve, but to also catch up to 97mph or hit a 90 mph slider all in the same at bat? there's a reason michael jordan, bo jackson, and deion never hit above 300.

look at where his release point is, then look at where all the pitches go. that shyt is NOT easy. no you don't have to be the biggest dude to play baseball, but that doesn't make it easier. a 7'1" bball player, no matter how athletic, would not fare well in baseball

ESPN.com: Page 2 - Sport Skills Difficulty Rankings

/thread. Professionals have studied this and agree that baseball is the easiest to play compared to football and basketball.

and this is coming from and avid baseball fan.

 

[AlbertPullhoez]

shyt knowing what I know now I would've played baseball. I played on a Little League squad when I was 8 and 9 and it was pretty cool. But shyt after a while people in our housing projects where we lived and played at stopped giving a damn about the team and supporting and funding it so we all just wound up quitting and not playing no more

 

[The Jewnited States]

ESPN.com: Page 2 - Sport Skills Difficulty Rankings

/thread. Professionals have studied this and agree that baseball is the easiest to play compared to football and basketball.

and this is coming from and avid baseball fan.

half of those ratings have to do with athleticism, not skills. you really think hockey players are more athletic than football players anyway?

 

[MikeBrownsJob]

half of those ratings have to do with athleticism, not skills. you really think hockey players are more athletic than football players anyway?

Have you ever ice skated? Hell yeh. Ice skating while managing a puck avoiding other people? Ice skating alone trumps any skill a football player has to do.

That list had plenty to do with skills. You aren't going to find a more unbiased analysis done.

 

[Captain Crunch]

This is by far the dumbest thing ever.

Dude you can be a shytty athlete all around and but their are specialties within baseball you can focus on and ...You cannot do that with basketball or football (outside of kicker)

Do you realize Steve Nash is 6"4 205lbs yet he looks like a toddler out there on the court surrounded by 6"8 ballerinas. The coordination and grace that has to be involved to play professional basketball is unreal. Lance Stephenson is god awful, Javel Mcgee is an idiot but you put him in any gym across the country and those guys would dominate. No one would be able to guard them. In the MLB you don't have to be physically imposing or particularly athletic. You can be a designated hitter and get fat. You can suck at batting and be a pinch hitter. The worst guy on a D2 team is a damn good basketball player.

Football the same damn thing. Try tackling someone like Bo Jackson coming head on. From someone who loves baseball the reason why I quit is because I got pulled to center field and the highlight of my day was getting orange slices and hi-c's after the games from the Team Moms. Baseball doesn't compare to the other sports in difficulty.

Do you have the plate discipline to draw walks :barkley:
What's your bat speed like? :barkley:
Do you have the leg strength to hit a ball further than 2 feet? :barkley:
Can you throw a decent fastball as well as an off-speed pitch? :barkley:

 

[The Jewnited States]

Have you ever ice skated? Hell yeh. Ice skating while managing a puck avoiding other people? Ice skating alone trumps any skill a football player has to do.

That list had plenty to do with skills. You aren't going to find a more unbiased analysis done.

what does endurance, speed, power, flexibility, durability, and agility have to do with skills? seems more like athletic measures to me

and in that case why is soccer not considered harder than football? they have to dribble a ball while avoiding other people

 

[NV-ME]

been thinking about this for some time. and though ive never been as big a baseball fan as basketball & football, I used to atleast flip back and forth between mets games on the old wwor (shout out to Richard bey) and my conclusion is...


the internet w/ a side of gentrification.


it didn't kill it, but it struck the death blow. the game fell off during that mid 90s strike, but gained back the casual fan during the "magical summer of 98." the hunt for steroid users snatched those casual fans, especially kids right back because they didn't care about drug tests and integrity, they just cared about seeing homeruns which stopped

now you couple that with the rise of the machines and how attentions spans became shorter as instant gratification rose (*see any study on the average time a person clicks off an internet site if they don't get what they want right away...multiply that times the attention span of a 10-year-old) and it was a perfect recipe for the average kid not wanting to do all the things it takes to coordinate a baseball outing. you need a certain amount of kids, gloves, a baseball, bat and a large enough place to play (ill get back to that in a sec) and its just too much. kids now cant even coordinate hanging out because theyre all on the net or texting. at the very least if two youngins wanna play basketball or football all they need is a ball.

lastly, in the inner city and even the outskirt burbs nowadays, its so much gentrification going on, you cant even find a lot to throw together an impromptu baseball game any more. they just build, build, build.

I could go on...

 

[Versa]

Surprised more people didn't mention how expensive it is to pick the sport up compared to basketball. In basketball all you need is.....a basketball.

In baseball you need a bat, a glove, a baseball, protective helmets, and even more if you're a catcher. Makes it a little financially cumbersome to play as a hobby outside of school, and even if YOU can afford it, how many other blacks in the hood can?

By the time school rolls around after the summer, these kids want to play some BASKETBALL after working on their skills with the boys.

Also, baseball is seen as a very boring and slow paced sport compared to the other 2 big ones.

 

[MikeBrownsJob]

what does endurance, speed, power, flexibility, durability, and agility have to do with skills? seems more like athletic measures to me

and in that case why is soccer not considered harder than football? they have to dribble a ball while avoiding other people

They also measure nerve and hand eye breh and analytic aptitude. Hand Eye baseball scores off the charts but "nerve" i.e. overcoming fear?

That's also why football ranks above soccer. Nerve. You got to have some nerve to want to tackle a Bo Jackson running head speed towards you. Soccer players don't have to deal with that.

@Captain crunch

I didn't read anything you wrote.

 

[The Jewnited States]

They also measure nerve and hand eye breh and analytic aptitude. Hand Eye baseball scores off the charts but "nerve" i.e. overcoming fear?

That's also why football ranks above soccer. Nerve. You got to have some nerve to want to tackle a Bo Jackson running head speed towards you. Soccer players don't have to deal with that.

@Captain crunch

I didn't read anything you wrote.

you don't need any nerve to be pitching in the bottom of the 9th with the bases loaded?

to be the last guy to bat for your team while down 1 in the world series?

 

[Mic-Nificent]

Michael Jordan....

 

[concise]

You actually hit the nail on the head, here. As someone who works part time for municipal government as a consultant. Baseball field upkeep is egregious. In order to fix and landscape a baseball field to proper playing specifications, it would have cost the city close to 50k to do it properly. I work in a poor city eith a median income of around 32k. They can't afford it. Also from an individual standpoint baseball is an expensive sport to play because the kids have to essentially buy their own equipment where as football and basketball have hand me down equipment and just an orange ball and hopps needed to play respectively. Also I would say culturally baseball has not tried to appeal to African Americans in recent years, especially because of them appealling to the 'good ol' boys' and hispanics.

This is garbage.
You need a pristine field now for kids to play sports?

They have hand me down shoulder pads, other pads, cleats, helmets, uniforms all available for kids to play football. Why is it so impossible for baseball.

When you say it's more "expensive" what you really mean is that the costs don't match the interest levels. If the interest was high enough, the costs would not matter, like they don't matter for football - otherwise basketball would be the only popular sport amonv AAs.

 

[MikeBrownsJob]

you don't need any nerve to be pitching in the bottom of the 9th with the bases loaded?

to be the last guy to bat for your team while down 1 in the world series?

Dude how you can conflate the feeling of giving up a home-run to the feeling of trying to tackle a 6"1 230lbs running back coming full speed towards is ..It isn't saying it's an easy sport. It's just easier in comparison. There are no physical repercussions in giving of a home run. There are plenty of physical repercussions in getting ran over.



*pitcher gives up home-run. Goes on about his business collects his paycheck and lives his life*



*cornerback gets destroyed and has to pay medical bills for his entire life*

Apples and oranges.

 

[BlackFeet]

I'm not sure if it's already been brought up, but 1 element that plays into this is that Black people see that there's no Blacks in baseball, so it turns them away, sorta like a catch-22. Not sayin' this has everything to do with it, but the fact the Black percentage in baseball's droppin' every year doesn't help