Diversity in the hobby

[itjclarke]

Originally Posted by prewarsports

You should be allowed to talk about race and issues surrounding it as much as you want as long as you are not doing it with purposefully nefarious intentions. To not talk about it because you are scared you might offend someone is the reason why we are so uptight in this country.... I have found that talking about it openly is BY FAR the best option for any issues surrounding Race at all).

100% agree. Talking about and trying to truly understand these issues is far more interesting and better than simply staying on the "right side" of that PC fence. Not to come down on PC rules and behavior, which are much better than some ugly alternatives, but I also think this "correctness" can make it really difficult to progress as a society and truly understand others' POV.

Not that I'd expect race to be an everyday conversation on a baseball card forum, but I have no problem Joey's question and think it's relevant.. and to take it a step further, I'd love it if baseball and the collecting community were to become more diverse with time. It would only help the long term health and outlook for both. Baseball really has some work to do. No doubt it's definitely grown internationally but domestically it has almost completely lost entire racial/socio-economical segments. It always bums me out to think of how many of the all time greats were urban kids/immigrants' kids/etc (Dimaggio, Lazerri, Gomez, Williams, Koufax, Greenberg, Heilman, etc)... now, in the days of travel ball, it seems it's becoming far more a sport of whose parents can fly their kids to year round tournaments and afford the best personal batting coaches, etc. Not that I hold a grudge against those who do this, but it doesn't seem like an even playing field. I do hope with better enforcement of PEDs/lower power numbers, coupled with hightening health/safety concerns with football that baseball will begin to attract more elite pure athletes... maybe begin to pull in some people who have otherwise turned away from it.