What's the point of articles like this?

FOX Sports - MLB - Only 8.4 percent of MLBers were black in '06

Like most articles, I think the point is probably to shock the reader and then provide 5 minutes of provocative fluff.

Why not write it about hockey?

Or lacrosse.

Baseball seems pretty diverse to me, when you consider all the Asians and Latinos.

I'm curious what % of MLB players were born in America. 50% maybe?

Here are my guesses for the other sports:
Football- 95%
Hockey- 35%
NBA- 65%
PGA Tour- 66% (this one I looked up).

Anyone have those stats at their finger tips?

What's more relevant is "how many MLB are left handed"..........

Hockey would be around 10% American. The majority of professional hockey players are Canadian or European.

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This is a bit outdated, it's for the 2000-2001 NHL season, but it's the best I could find.

Canada - 53%
US - 15%
Czech. - 8.8%
Russia - 7.7%
Sweden - 5.6%

I'm sure that the Canada # has gone down a bit, while the rest have gone up. There are quite a few Finnish players in the NHL as well, but the list wasn't exhaustive.

This is a really thorough study on NFL diveristy. Page 15 has the Player diversity as of 2005.

http://www.ncasports.org/images/2005_NFL_RGRC.pdf

Here is the NBA. Page 19 has players.

http://www.ncasports.org/images/Final_NBA_2005_PR.pdf

Ah heck, why don't I just post this link. It has all of the sports.

National Consortium for Academics and Sports

Thanks for the links jammer....For the NBA, I am curious as to how and where the international players were categorized prior to 2003? Even last year the percentages for all players exceeded 100% so who was the actuary on this chart? (appendix I)

Does anyone know how many Japanese ballplayers are in the Dominican Rookie baseball league?

I would guess none, but could someone verify that.

P.S. The Tigers had a heck of team there last year.

Does anyone know how many of the Iditarod racers are from Uruguay?

Does anybody care?

The point of it is to show that African Americans are more likely to gravitate to fewer sports, such as football, track and basketball, rather than a wide variety of sports, as whites do. The point of it, and the larger picture of it, is African Americans have fewer perceived choices in this country because U.S. society has told them there are certain places they can go and certain places they can't. The influx of Hispanics in MLB can be compared to the influx of African Americans in the NBA. A lot of little African American kids and a lot of little Hispanic kids think they are going to make it to the pros when, in reality, few will make it. But instead of striving for other goals, like pursuing a non-sport career, many feel like their only shot is to pursue something in sports and in a narrow variety of sports at that.

So, yes, that article has a point. It shows that African Americans don't really consider baseball to be as viable an option as other sports. Cross another sport off the list. It isn't good news at all.

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