Nope.

It's not great. I'd even say it's bad. Baseball can't be the exclusive province of rich people's shitty kids from the Houston/Dallas/Atlanta/Tampa suburbs + Dominicans named "Alfredsson Fernandez"

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What an absolute crock of shit that is.

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

The addition of international players has been great for the NBA and MLB. We have a two way player on the Angels and a phenom on the Mavs that bring new styles of play to pro sports.

I do not lament that the NBA lacks white Americans or MLB black Americans. It just is what it is, and I am happy as long as the best are playing each sport. The skill level is incredible in pro sports.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

Dusty Baker breaks an unwritten rule and airs his grievances during the world series taking the spotlight off the game. He could defer non baseball questions until after the world series. But, that would take the spotlight off of him. If he loses the series or even worse swept he'll get his beloved spotlight.

Pickup baseball games, batting, pitching,
& infield practice, playing catch don't need 18 players.

Kardashians aren't lining up to date Aaron Judge or Tim Anderson or Mookie Betts. #FollowThePussy

Tho I think Judge and Betts both married high school girlfriends; which seems common for MLB players, marry 5 to 7's they met in high school/minors. Anderson married an IG thot shortly after making the majors and then knocked up another IG thot on the side.

Verlander was still dating his high school girlfriend when he threw his first no-hitter in 2007 and I think they were still together for his 2nd no-no in 2011. Verlander either jokingly or sincerely had said he'd marry his HS GF if he tossed an MLB no-hitter. He never did marry her--dumped her ass after 12+ years of no marriage and hooked up with Kate Upton not long after the 2nd no-no.

From a societal standpoint, it's a total non-issue. If black kids are choosing to play sports other than baseball, that's their prerogative. However, MLB should absolutely be concerned about this trend. If they want to put the best product possible on the field, they need to draw from the widest talent pool possible. Also, from a business standpoint, they don't want to become foreign to 12% of the U.S. population.

Starts in the neighborhood. Almost like a social change thing. Someone needs to write up a theory of change thing for fostering interest in baseball between the ages 6-12 in the digital age. Gotta do it. Otherwise it'll just be the moneyed elites who can afford to expose their kids to baseball via yearly travel leagues and other preparatory things like CH said. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But the pool is shrinking. Maybe they can consider marketing the sport as a safe alternative to brain-eating football as a way to persuade parents to steer their kids toward baseball

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Successful calls:

Kyrie Irving will never win anything as a team's alpha: check
T.rubisky is a bust: check
Ben Simmons is a liability: check
The Fields Cult is dumb: double check

2013 CSFMB ROY

If you have been through the tee ball up to high school leagues, it is obvious what happens. Kids get weeded out each year because the kids are bored playing, the kids are terrible, or the parents hate the experience.

By 12, very few kids from tee ball are still playing. Freshman year many of those kids show up to play, and they are too far behind to play credibly.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

Are they terrible because they lack the experiences of playing with others? Everyone loves to hit and that's easy to do even if you're on your own. To really get good you need the experience of fielding ground balls, tracking down fly balls, and throwing people out at second. You need that often. You're not going to get that without having people to play with. Or you can just pay for it, which is not an option for the majority of people. I'm not surprised people from developing countries are on the rise because in less tech sophisticated places you still play outside. Over here kids are online.

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Successful calls:

Kyrie Irving will never win anything as a team's alpha: check
T.rubisky is a bust: check
Ben Simmons is a liability: check
The Fields Cult is dumb: double check

2013 CSFMB ROY

This year's is Rogue's favorite world series since 1950.

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Watching MLB games there are very few black families attending MLB games. Lots of Hispanic families though all across the country. Think there'd be more black families. Even with exorbitant prices working stiff sports fan dads will still bring their kids to at least a couple games a year. Dusty always wants to blame and point the finger for a villain when you can't dictate people's interests.

Baseball is expensive AF and requires a lot of commitment from parents. Kinda hard to get lil Lamanjello to baseball practice when Quanisha is trying to remember who his daddy is so she can hit him up for child support to get the kids some cage time.

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Racist! This is why Black Lives Matter!

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

I’ll try to be better

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I loved it. Getting child support for cage time is A RIGHT!

Terrible comes in several variations.

Most notably, kids do not practice basic skills often enough. I started teaching my kids to hit and catch at three. By the time they played real ball, they were not backing out of the a batters box or turning their head when thrown a hard ball. Parents drop their kids off at tee ball and expect a volunteer coach to teach basic skills in a few practices. Parents have to get kids reps at home.

Some kids do not have the hand eye coordination or arm strength to truly compete against other kids. In that way, it is like most sports. Baseball players do not need to be athletic, but obviously speed and strength make a huge difference.

And then there is the mental aspect of what is a slow game and frustrating game. Does the child stay engaged? Do they recover from repeated failure? Are they motivated to work on weaknesses?

Parents would come up to me and ask to help with their kids because they could see the polish of my son. What they did not see is that we played catch every possible day and I threw buckets of balls several times per week. He had pitching and hitting lessons in the offseason. My daughter was decent player as well.

There is an incredible bond between a father and a son with baseball. I love the sport for that. I took him to game 3 of the Cubs World Series run. Amazing stuff.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

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I think we're seeing and saying the same thing: get reps. I don't see that happening the more the culture moves online. That shift has taken a number of potential players off the field so to speak. The remaining pool you can divide into haves and have nots, and money may or may not always be a factor:

Haves: those who have the time and resources to get their kids reps in the basics

Have nots: those who don't have the time or knowhow or resources, even if they have the inclination

_________________
Successful calls:

Kyrie Irving will never win anything as a team's alpha: check
T.rubisky is a bust: check
Ben Simmons is a liability: check
The Fields Cult is dumb: double check

2013 CSFMB ROY

Well, I think there is something wrong in that it narrows down the talent pool significantly. It's even happening in basketball. The road to the NBA is becoming very similar to the road to the NHL: have a dad who played in the league, get on the track at like age 5, and go to elite private schools where you can just concentrate on sports. It's bad enough that merely attending professional sporting events has gone from a populist activity to something for the elite, but now to play in them, too?

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There's always been favoritism in high school (and before) for players whose parents sent them to summer camps and otherwise laid out for the sport (whatever sport). We had a kid in high school who was by far the best shooter on our team, maybe in the conference. He had a self-taught, slow windup, Jamaal Wilkes style shot that ended with one arm sorta running parallel to the ground and his shooting hand firing from sorta over his right shoulder instead of a straight overhead shot everyone else had. But it was fine for our level of high school competition, quick shooting wasn't necessarily required.

But he would hardly ever get on the court in games, even tho we'd see him practicing his shot by himself on the outdoor courts non-stop he was sort of a weirdo outsider + his parents never sent him to any summer camps or whatever. His parents had moved into the district to take over a local business and needed him to help run it during the summers. but he was never going to get the playing time he should have because he wasn't in with the summer hoops camps kids. If you went to summer basketball camp, you pretty much got playing time. Seems stupid. The coaches would still put in this shooter kid in for a few minutes when we'd get behind in a game and he'd knock down 3 threes in a row and catch us up and then back to the bench.

I’m sure favoritism impacts kids at all levels, BUT…

Dusty is talking about pros. Those kids reveal themselves probably by 3rd grade. Potential future pros aren’t stymied by local politics. This specific issue (if it is an issue), is that the race of kids people want to grow up playing baseball don’t want to grow up playing baseball.

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Last on the list of things I give a fuck about is “How many entitled blacks are playing baseball.”

This

It is an issue, or part of a larger issue, which is that of baseball alienating people.

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3rd grade's a little early. Maybe 5th or 6th grade, yeah, maybe you know who has potential and who is just filling out the roster. Lebron didn't really hit his growth spurt until junior high and I imagine Gloria hasn't had to pay her own grocery bill or rent since.

But even with baseball I think it's going to be closer to then before you weed out the truly good from those who were a bit ahead of the other kids on the growth timeline and thus able to appear better than they actually were. You have to have everyone kind of on the same page in terms of potential physical attributes achieved before you can know who's who. Baseball doesn't require obscene height but you still generally need to be in the top quartile of height (5'11"+) to make it at the next next level.

Baseball is maybe the most egalitarian sport. Half the MLB grew up in actual poverty, not American poverty. The other half probably grew up in families with three car garages, decked out F150s and bi-annual trips to Disney.

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On height, I went to a futures game at Wrigley (year Addison Russel played in it funny enough), and the shortest player was 5’11’. In terms of states, it was mostly CA, TX, GA, and FL. No shock because warm weather allows so much more outdoor practice.

We played in Louisville one spring to get ready for the season, and the two local teams destroyed us like they were in mid season form. We went south to get early games in.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

Looks like the Astros are back. Astros in 6.

Another deep run for a starter. Hopefully, this is the start of a trend. The game is more interesting when the starters go deep.

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