“One Man’s Opinion” by Gordon Curvey

As I type this today is Jackie Robinson Day in Major League Baseball. In my opinion it is a flat out joke that MLB is celebrating Mr. Robinson and a slap in his face. It is just terrible how the league is treating his special day.

On Robinson Day all players wore his #42. O.K. that is great. But let’s keep it real readers. Let’s bring out some shocking stats. In the NFL their are 68% African American players. In the NBA it has 79% African American players. In MLB their are ONLY 67 African American players out of 750 and I will say to you this is a huge problem in my opinion.

It seems MLB does not care about reaching young inner city youth about playing baseball. It seems they care about getting players from South America and Cuba etc. Since about 1997 the amount of African Americans playing in the Majors have went down and down from about 29% to the current 7%, Something is very wrong in the sport of baseball. But does management care about this? It seems not.

When young inner city kids turn on TV they see D-Wade and Blake Griffin and CP3 and Barkley and LeBron and Russell Wilson and they do not see Torii Hunter or CeCe Sabathia or Ryan Howard or Prince Fielder or former guest on my TV program “Music Inner City TV” Andrew McCutchen doing commercials. The question is why?

When I go to conduct a interview at batting practice at Safeco Field here in Seattle I see very few African Americans on their way to the game. Then when I go home and turn on the game I have to search to find a African American face in the crowd besides a few ushers. It is like I am watching the Republican National Convention event in Utah. Truly sad. Not only are African Americans not really playing baseball but African Americans are not going to games.

It is sad here in Seattle that we have a African American sports jock on sportsradio KJR who did not even discuss Jackie Robinson Day and the problems of the lack of African American players. BUT two white sports jocks did and even took calls on the topic. It seems this African American sports jock who is also a writer for the Seattle Times is afraid to discuss race issues over the air like say Stephen A. Smith or Mike Wilborn do on ESPN. It is AMAZING that he did not discuss Jackie Robinson Day and others did. I do not understand.

So again it is a joke that MLB celebrates Jackie Robinson. If he was alive he would not be happy that only 67 African Americans are in the big leagues out of 750 players. The RBI League ain’t working and it is token just like Jackie Robinson Day. MLB needs to TRULY show that they care about reaching African American youth and our community.