You didn't address the issue. Young black boys are for the most part uninterested in baseball. Y'all seem to imply they're interested but unable to play. I disagree.
They're just not interested. Anecdotal but I say this as the only negro on my little league team and a handful in the entire Grenwich Village Little League at the time.
Black (non Hispanic) representation in baseball at all levels is down.
None of the kids in my immediate neighborhood wanted to play the shyt except me. Again. If young black boys actually watched and were big fans of baseball at a young age, they'd be more inclined to play it and develop the necessary skills. They're not interested. Why would you want to play something you don't watch.
It was all pop Warner and basketball.
I live in Atlanta and have 2 boys playing baseball here. Pretty much every park we go to has black kids playing baseball.
Every black high school here is full of black boys on the baseball teams.
The kids are there at those levels.
What you are ignoring is baseball is not the same type of sport as football. Similar to how you are not going to make the premier league by coming up and exclusively playing rec soccer at your local park it’s going to be extremely difficult now to do the same with baseball. If you aren’t on an all year travel baseball team with former pros coaching and supplementing that time with private lessons in the cage and field you are going to be left behind, period. Hell it’s reached the point you won’t even make the good public high school teams if you aren’t on a travel squad because they have set up direct pipelines.
I’m 40 years old and even back once I hit 11-12 our coach took us out the local park league and we became a travel squad because the local kids just weren’t good competition. It was a waste of time to play them. My dad personally foot the bill for 2 other kids to keep playing with us because their parents couldn’t afford it otherwise. Once you leave the local parks and go travel you see what kids can become with legit full time instruction. I had never seen a curveball before then and it scared me half to death. Took a while to get used to it.
Basketball has left the local high school level and moved to AAU and academies as well but the difference is sponsors foot the bill to develop talent. In baseball and soccer it’s the families who pay and unfortunately a lot of black families can’t afford to go that route.
