FanNation - The Republic of Sport

Not so much I would say.  I've noticed this has been a hotly debated topic in the Throwdown section for some time, and decided I would discuss the topic here, as I have far more room to make my points here.

 For the last few years we've been hearing about the crisis in major league baseball about the lack of American born black players on major league rosters, compared to team rosters in the NFL and NBA.  There is more then one reason for the lack of American born black players in the MLB(none of which is discrimination, as some may suggest), in my opinion, they are both social, and genetic. Currently the number of american born black players in the MLB sits at around 8-9%, whereas the numbers for the NBA and NFL are hovering around 80% and 70% respectively.  This seems to be a huge difference, but when you look at the physical skill sets for each sport, the numbers make sense:

In the NFL, the main physical asset that a player requires at a large number of positions is speed.  For the NBA, it's speed and jumping ability. Now, it's not much of a stretch to say that blacks of west African descent hold an advantage over other races when it comes to these particular physical abilitys, seeing as blacks of west African descent tend to dominate high jump and short distance track events(Only once out of the 270+ times that someone has run a sub-10 second 100m, has the person been of anything but west african descent.), thus it would only make sense that American born blacks, the very large majority of which are of west African descent, would dominate these particular sports.  When it comes to baseball though, the main physical abilitys that assist a player are hand eye coordination, and arm strentgh(in regards to thier throwing power), both of which we have no evidence at this time to believe that blacks of west African descent are at any particular advantage or disadvantage compared to other races.  Jumping ability has little if any use in baseball, and while speed helps when running the bases and playing outfield, it's not something that is going to make or break a player(not coincidently, the large majority of American born black players in the MLB today are outfielders), like it would in other sports. 

 Now, given the fact that American born blacks hold no particular physical advantage over any other races, you would assume that the number of American born blacks in the MLB would be right around the percentage of black males in the American population, which is currently about 12% of the population, which is slightly higher then the 8-9% of American born black players in the MLB, which brings me to my next point:

 The large majority of blacks in the United States don't particularly care for baseball, at least not when compared with basketball and football.  The main reason for this that I believe is that humans, by nature, tend to like to hang out with people who are much like themselves, thus when given a choice between playing baseball with a bunch of white guys, or basketball with a bunch of black guys, a large majority of the time, he's going to choose basketball, to be with people who are, or at least look, like him.  Now when you take into consideration that the NBA and NFL are snatching up alot of the top black athletes in the United States, the fact that the percentage of American born blacks in the MLB is lower then the percentage of black males in the population makes perfect sense.

 Now when you factor in both the social, and genetic aspects of what you've just read, you can see that the number of American born black players in the MLB is in fact, right around where you would expect it to be.  It is far from a crisis, so lets stop refering to it as such.

Cheers