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With his bat, his glove and his flair, Dave Parker has placed himself in the pantheon of performers of the All-Star Game. He won the first Home Run Derby, in 1985 in Minnesota, six years after his throwing arm won him the Most Valuable All-Star award in Seattle. It was in 1979 when his Pittsburgh Pirates won the World Series.
“We took on the role of being the black team,” Parker, 70, said by phone this week. “We had 12 different combinations of uniforms, we had flamboyant players. If we hit a ball and it passes the first baseman, you better be on defense because someone is going to take second base.
The 1979 Pirates had 10 black players on their World Series roster, even more than the National League all-star team included that season. It was near the peak of African-American participation in major tournaments, which peaked at 19% in 1986. By opening day 2021, according to Major League Baseball, that figure had fallen to 7.6%.
“It saddens me,” said Parker, who highlights the bygone era in his memoir, “Cobra: A Life of Baseball and Brotherhood,” published this year by the University of Nebraska Press.
“They lack speed. They’ve got this 24th or 25th man that isn’t a brother, that was a brother. You have black players who can do several things, not just pinch strokes, but go out and steal a base, make a great game. I just think they ignore the black player.
The absence of the black American player will be glaring during Tuesday’s All-Star Game in Denver. Of the 32 All-Stars named on the original NL roster, only one is black – Mookie Betts of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Betts was also the only black player among the 55 who competed in the World Series last fall between the Dodgers and the Tampa Bay Rays.
“It’s amazing,” said Al Oliver, 74, a seven-time All-Star in the 1970s and 1980s. “I didn’t realize it. There is a. “
Oliver, who played most of his career with the Pirates, was born six months before Jackie Robinson crossed the baseball color barrier in 1947. Growing up in Ohio, Oliver said he was turned to baseball because “you saw someone who looked like you”. In his first All-Star Game in 1972, Oliver had 11 black teammates on the NL roster, including Nate Colbert, Lee May, Hall of Fame Fergie Jenkins and Billy Williams and several more heading to Cooperstown.
“McCovey, Morgan, Stargell, Brock, Mays, Aaron, Gibson,” Oliver said. “It was almost a Hall of Fame team.”
The disappearance of so many black players from the modern game is one of the most critical issues for a sport looking for ways to spur action on the pitch and increase its appeal through crossover stars.
The game is packed with dynamic talents, including those pictured on the banner of MLB Twitter Account: Ronald Acuna Jr., Shohei Ohtani, Fernando Tatis Jr., Jacob deGrom, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. All are magnetic attractions, although none are African-American – and when a sport loses around 60% of its population in 35 years old, being missing.
“Diversity in our game is important – it has been and will continue to be – and athleticism in our sport is important,” said Tony Reagins, director of baseball development for MLB. “I think those two things go hand in hand – also the freshness, the youthfulness, the societal impact that play, in terms of diversity, can have on the culture itself. All of these things lend themselves to the importance of African Americans, in particular, being a significant part of the game. ”
Reagins, who is Black, is the former general manager of the Los Angeles Angels. He joined MLB in 2015, responsible for overseeing the development of youth baseball and softball, with a focus on encouraging black participation. Reagins had hoped to see more progress at the major league level now.
“When I first got to the scene in New York City and we were building this department, I thought five years was a legitimate target,” Reagins said. “And once you start removing the layers of the onion, there’s a lot of work to be done.”
The pipeline is promising enough: From 2012 to 2020, 17.6% of first-round picks (51 of 289) were identified as black or African-American. The league has several diversity initiatives on the pitch, including a summer invite, urban youth academies, a partnership with the Jackie Robinson Foundation and a $ 10 million donation – made with the players’ union – to the Players’ Alliance, a group focused on improving the representation of black Americans in the field and at the front office.
Over time, it seems logical that these efforts will produce more Major Leaguers. But Reagins described some root causes of the decline that are largely beyond baseball’s control.
“The economy is a big part of that as well, in terms of the cost involved in participating in some of the travel or presentation tournaments, and some of the more expensive equipment out there,” Reagins said.
“I think the decline of the black church is part of it. And one of the other real problems is the lack of college scholarships available compared to other sports, football and basketball. “
Basically, baseball presents three major financial barriers: the cost of equipment (bat, glove, helmet, crampons); the cost of the now unavoidable youth circuit and showcase; and the cost of college education, with Division I baseball programs only allowing 11.7 scholarships, most of them partial. Men’s basketball teams have 13 and soccer teams have 85.
“I think a lot of kids would love baseball, but they don’t even get a chance to try it at a young age because of the price,” said Ke’Bryan Hayes, the rookie third baseman. of the Pirates and the son of longtime Major Leaguer Charlie Hayes.
“It all comes down to introducing these kids to play at a very young age,” continued Hayes, 24. “By the time you get to college or high school, it’s too late to try and learn baseball because it’s one of the most difficult sports. Growing up, I played with a bunch of kids who were really, really good, but they couldn’t afford to go to this D-1 college. In some of these schools, even if you get a 40 or 50 percent scholarship, your parents will still have to try to pay $ 20,000 or $ 30,000 a year to continue.
As his career progresses, Hayes said, he hopes to help create opportunities for underprivileged children to play football. He said he was encouraged by some of baseball’s efforts, citing the Players’ Alliance and the Breakthrough Series, a hope camp for players of color funded by MLB and USA Baseball.
But as of now, it’s unclear how much the sport has lost, in on-court excitement and off-court appeal, by losing so many black talent.
“It made it more competitive,” Parker said. “By playing against other black players, we didn’t give them any slack. We went out, we didn’t compromise. I would take Ozzie Smith down left field with a slide, if I could have it. We just enjoyed the competition and we loved each other.
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