Jackie Robinson Day

I'm currently watching Sunday Night Baseball on ESPN. (I should be studying or something, but it's fascinating.) Today is Jackie Robinson Day: sixty years ago today, Robinson, a genuinely great ballplayer who would have been a bona fide Hall of Famer even if his only contributions to history had been with his bat, legs and glove, became the first African American to play Major League ball (or any major American professional sport). In celebration, they're interviewing prominent people who knew and were affected by Jackie (the most interesting of which has been Jackie's widow, Rachel Robinson, an engaging and fascinating woman) while the Dodgers-Padres game is carried on in the background.

Earlier, meathead ESPN "analyst" John Kruk said something I think I agree with, which would be an all-time first; the gist was that we're celebrating Jackie because it's the 60th anniversary, and that's great, but it should really be celebrated every year, because it was a momentous occasion not only in baseball, but for all of America. He suggested that it should be a national holiday, and I don't know if I'd go quite that far. But it should be remembered. And at the very least, it probably shouldn't also be tax day. Get on that, feds.

I was going to pick on ESPN's coverage just a little bit, but I'm enjoying it so much that I don't have the energy to do justice to my argument. Here it is in a nutshell: tied in with this celebration, because there always has to be a controversy, is this lurking idea that African American representation in pro baseball is dwindling, going from a high of some 27% in 1975 to just 8.5% today. This seems to me like a bit of a red herring; those percentage points are being taken by Latino and Asian players, and the percentage of white players is decreasing as well (apparently about the same number of percentage points, which admittedly is a much slower relative decline since the starting percentage was much higher). An alternative way to look at it, it seems to me, is that rather than African Americans losing interest in the sport (which may be happening to some extent), a sport that was once heavily dominated by white and black players has become vastly more diverse, with better international relations, more advanced international scouting systems, and just generally better competition for a larger-but-still-very-limited number of roster spots. So I'm not really seeing a problem here (certainly not one foreboding enough that it needs to be juxtaposed with this happy event). Let me know if I'm wrong, and check out some of the recent numbers (and a very favorable diversity report for MLB) here.