African Americans in Baseball

OK it is once again time for my pet peeve - the Boston Globe's penchant for talking about the lack of African Americans in baseball. Today the subject made up a large portion of Nick Carfardo's "Notes" column under the guise of "The diversity count".

The University of Central Florida's Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports will likely release its annual racial and gender report later this month, telling us how Major League Baseball graded in diversity issues in 2008. The institute's report last year showed that African-Americans constituted 8.2 percent of major league rosters in 2007 - a 20-year low and a growing concern for MLB.

Carfardo then goes on to list by team the number of African Americans on the team rosters for this season. The punch line of course is that the Red Sox have none. African American's make up roughly 12 percent of the population - so on the surface the difference between 8 percent and 12 percent would seem to indicate a problem but the numbers are completely skewered.

The census numbers would count both Manny Ramirez (a US citizen) and Coco Crisp (a natural born citizen) the same and classify both as African Americans. People who do these baseball surveys though would count them differently - Crisp as an African American and Manny as a Dominican. That's the real reason there is a difference between the 12 percent population number and the 8 percent "diversity" number.

The Red Sox are a very diverse team - 32% of the team would be classified as other than white by the census. The "white" population of the US is 74%. See how numbers can be skewered?

Hey - gay and lesbians make up 4 percent of the population but I can't think of any openly gay baseball players. Maybe that Globe can make that their next crusade. I mean the study Carfardo used was a racial and gender report. Does the Globe not count gays as people? Why does the Globe hate gay people?

Just kidding - a report on gays in baseball would be just as asinine. Teams like the Red Sox put the roster together with the eye toward which players give them the best chance to win. Not based upon the color of their skin. No wonder the Globe is going out of business.