MLB's relevancy with the African American community after Jackie Robinson

There is no secret that MLB has lost the connection it once had with the African American community. We know some of the contributing factors. The questions are, what are they doing now, and what can they do to reverse the steady drain of African American players and African American fans? 

It’s not that baseball hasn’t tried. When I reached out to the St. Louis Cardinals and asked them about their feelings about the decline of African Americans in baseball and what they are doing now, their response was this. 

“With regard to your inquiry below about our club’s outreach programs, since 2004 the Cardinals’ charitable foundation—Cardinals Care—has orchestrated the innovative Redbird Rookies program, a free co-ed baseball/softball league for kids who otherwise might not have the opportunity to play. In addition to providing all the uniforms and equipment needed for each team, Redbird Rookies also provides extensive off-field support in the areas of health, education, mentoring and the cultural arts for each of the nearly 2,500 kids who participate in the program each year.” They also suggested I reach out to MLB. 

MLB has been involved in several programs over the years to combat the decline. One of their best-known is the RBI (Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities) program. This is a great program, but John Young started it in 1989. Wanting to make sure the program would continue, he had to convince MLB to take over operations. 

Wanting to understand more, I spoke to Dr. Brandon Brown, who is the Director of The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES). The TIDES Racial and Gender Report Cards have become the definitive authority in this area. 

When asked about his thoughts on where baseball is right now, he brought up noteworthy points.  

“I think that was a time when black baseball players were within pop culture, right? We had Ken Griffey Junior setting the norm for his backwards baseball cap. There were video games revolving around black baseball players. You know, they were involving culture, involving black culture, and I’m not too sure that is the case anymore. I think that’s a larger cultural issue more so than it is with major league baseball, stepping in and doing something.”

In addition to other topics, we spoke about minorities in general. In 1993, the percentage of African American players was 16.9%. The percentage of Latinos was 16.8%. By 2016, the percentages were 6.7% for African Americans, but the Latino percentage had jumped to 27.4%. In 2023, the white players made up about 60%. MLB has done an excellent job of having a more diverse player pool.

MLB is spending a ton of money in Latino countries and doing a much better job of scouting Asian countries. The teams have built baseball academies in foreign countries and that is keeping the pipeline full. They have also found it’s much cheaper to sign a player from Latin America than it is from here. 

As Dr. Brown said, “if they (MLB) go overseas, yeah for sure you can find players at a cost that’s much lower.”

The outreach in this country is a few fields, uniforms, and some instructional camps. That gets kids exposure to baseball, but not much exposure with those that can offer a career in baseball. Most of the players drafted now from the USA have played on at least one travel team. That is where they are getting the best coaching and exposure to better equipment. Most parents can’t afford that. Even if MLB builds a field, creates leagues and pitches in with uniforms, the odds are still stacked against them.

So where does MLB go from here? There is no satisfying answer. 

It becomes even harder to guess the path forward when looking through the prism of our current political climate.

Several of the existing programs are under attack. MLB set up the “MLB Diversity Pipeline Program,” the “Diversity Fellowship Program,” the “Diversity in Ticket Sales Training Program,” and the “Diverse Business Partners Program” to grow the pool of qualified underrepresented candidates for on-field and front-office baseball operations roles.

America First Legal, an organization founded by Stephen Miller, filed a federal civil rights complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against Major League Baseball (MLB) to eliminate these programs for being discriminatory.  

I contacted the EEOC to get an update on this and my response was a non-response. 

We are prohibited by federal law from commenting on charges (complaints/claims) or even confirming or denying the existence of a charge.

I received no response from America First Legal. 

If programs aren’t under attack from organizations like the AFL, then they are being pressured by the federal government. Many companies and organizations are receiving orders to eliminate anything perceived as a DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) program or policy.

I reached out to Carson Shipley of the Cardinals and got a particularly good response on their outreach programs but when asked to comment if he saw any future changes with the team's DEI policies, his answer was, “I would suggest reaching out to Major League Baseball on getting a statement on the other topics, as they would be better suited to answer questions about the league/sport as a whole.”

The MLB Commissioner’s office offered this statement as a reply to the same question. “Our values, particularly our values and diversity, remain unchanged, but another value that is pretty important to us is we always try to comply with what the law is. There seems to be an evolution going on here. We’re following that very carefully. Obviously, when things get a little more settled, we’ll examine each of our programs and make sure that while the values remain the same, that we’re also consistent with what the law requires.” 

I received that reply on February 15th. On May 21st, MLB removed all references to “diversity” from its career home page. 

Dr. Brown said, “I’m not too sure if baseball is doing good enough connecting culturally to young African Americans”. That to me seems to be the number one problem, but also the hardest to overcome. With the attacks on some of their outreach programs, finding other ways to connect culturally may be the only way MLB will reverse this trend.