Thoughts on Jackie Robinson Day

as far as the "too expensive" argument goes, good point about the travel teams being expensive but I'm seeing a lack of players even at the middle school team level. They are playing basketball and football and the season's overlap or conflict (spring football), so baseball is dropped.

MLB has decided to throw some money at the "problem" so there should be some results from that but I doubt if it'll be major.

They see all the black players in the other two sports and aspire to that.
 
MadduxFanII said:
I remember playing two-man baseball with a friend. One of us would pitch, one of us would hit and we'd set up bases. You hit a single, called "ghost runner" and went back to the plate. Then it became a matter of arguing how far the ghost runner would advance on any hit. Those were very involved discussions.

Of course, we were upper-middle class white kids, so that doesn't really address the larger issue.
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We did that in poor neighborhood.

We actually used baseball bat and tennis ball, would pitch against each other in alternate at-bats, and the ball would hit against the house, and like you we'd argue how far the ghost runner would advance on the hit before the pitcher fielded it. If we hit it over the house, it was certainly a home run.

Those days, we used to pitch 10 feet next to the batter. LOL
 
NYCBrave said:
Then why is baseball thriving in 3rd world latin american countries? Isn't it easier to just play soccer? You just need a ball really.
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I'm sure a lot of major leaguers who made it from Dominican, collect old gloves or donate old gloves to a lot of the kids there.

They can find a broom stick and play, have no idea how they get better especially when most of the fields are worse than sandlots here.

It's as popular as soccer in a lot of Latin American countries. I think the modern day black culture has accepted basketball overall as the go to sport with football and then baseball behind it. Just because public basketball courts are on every other corner in the hood (At least that's how it is in Savannah).

I think a lot of the guys I played ball with did play baseball because it wasn't parallel calendar with football and basketball and it was a fun game to them.
 
KeithLockhart said:
I'm sure a lot of major leaguers who made it from Dominican, collect old gloves or donate old gloves to a lot of the kids there.

They can find a broom stick and play, have no idea how they get better especially when most of the fields are worse than sandlots here.

It's as popular as soccer in a lot of Latin American countries. I think the modern day black culture has accepted basketball overall as the go to sport with football and then baseball behind it. Just because public basketball courts are on every other corner in the hood (At least that's how it is in Savannah).

I think a lot of the guys I played ball with did play baseball because it wasn't parallel calendar with football and basketball and it was a fun game to them.
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Actually the success of baseball recruitment in poor latin countries like the DR etc. has to do with baseball camps.

As far things go with soccer, in huge soccer countries there isn't a big baseball draw. Only one I can think of is Venezuela that's a big soccer and baseball draw.

When you look at the top ranked FIFA CONMEBOL countries you have Columbia, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, none of them are big baseball draws. Venezuela and Panama are the 2 biggest I can think of.
 
I personally would rather see the 42 jersey worn by one player on each team each year. Have it decided inside each clubhouse who the player is.
 
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