Jackie Robinson Day: Could be Much More

[drc]

Baseball has a very large minority population, it's just it includes Hispanics and Asians. The percentage of American blacks amongst Americans MLB players is larger than the percentage of blacks in the US population (Obviously, the Venezuelan, Mexican, Japanese etc population in MLB will by definition have and always have 0% black Americans, so it's silly to use them in the race-national percentage calculation. Of course it would be silly to say "How come there are no African-American players amongst the Japanese population?!?" but this is what some critics in essence are doing. MLB has a much much larger percentage of foreigners than the NBA, so it's impossible for the MLB to have a larger percentage of black Americans amongst the total playing population. Comparing the number of black Americans to the total playing population in the MLB versus NBA is thus comparing comparing apples to oranges.)

What bugs me when they compare blacks in MLB versus NBA is they never say "Why are there so few Hispanics in NBA? Is this lack of Hispanics a sign of race problems in the NBA?"

The total population in a sport can be no higher than 100%. If there are 50% Hispanic in the MLB (made up number), it's impossible to have 75 percent black like the the NBA. And I am assuming none of these critics are suggesting the MLB should be purged of Hispanics or that there be a quota on how many Hispanics or Asians be allowed to play baseball.