May 11, 2009

Adam Zagoria
Rivals High

PATERSON, N.J. ? When Matt Hill was growing up here in the 1970s, all of his friends in the neighborhood played baseball.

Hill and his friends are black, and their high school baseball team reflected the neighborhood's demographic.

"I graduated from Eastside High School in 1979 and 95 percent of the team was black," recalled Hill, now an assistant baseball coach at Paterson (N.J.) Catholic. "I think we had one white ballplayer and he came because he got kicked out of another school."

Paterson produced Larry Doby, who crossed the color line three months after Jackie Robinson in 1947 to become the first black player in the American League. Yet when Hill surveys the city's current high school baseball teams, he is hard-pressed to find any blacks playing baseball.

Of the 42 players on the varsity baseball teams at Paterson Catholic, Paterson Kennedy and Paterson Eastside, none are entirely African American. Several players are biracial, half-black and half-Latino, according to the three coaches involved. The rest of the players are overwhelmingly Latino. Paterson is 50 percent Latino and 33 percent black, according to the latest U.S. Census figures.

"The [black] kids mainly go out for basketball and football," said Cornil Whatley, who is black and whose son, Demetrice, is half-black and half-Nicaraguan and plays in the outfield for Paterson Catholic. "Even in the summertime, they all want to play basketball. Just the young kids play baseball. When they get out of Pony League and go to high school, they just want to play basketball."

Some statistics tend to bear that out. Jersey City features a pilot Junior RBI program ? "Reviving Baseball in the Inner-City" ? through the Jackie Robinson Little League for players 6 to 12 years old. Among those players, 87 percent are black, 10 percent are Latino and 3 percent are Caucasian, according to figures submitted by the Jackie Robinson program.

For the older players (13 to 18) in that same program, the numbers change dramatically: 63 percent are Latino, 25 percent are African American and 12 percent are Caucasian.

Youth and high school baseball are a reflection of a growing trend at all levels, including Major League Baseball.

On the 62nd anniversary of Robinson's debut with the Dodgers last month, it was reported that the percentage of black players in the majors increased to 10.2 percent last season, the first increase since the 1995 season.

Thirty-five years ago, 27 percent of the players in the majors were black.

According to Richard Lapchick, director of the University of Central Florida's Institute of Diversity and Ethics in Sports, baseball reached an all-time low of 8.2 percent in 2007.

"I feel encouraged. It's not a huge leap, but it's a step forward," Rachel Robinson, Jackie's widow, told The Associated Press. "I think we have to feel encouraged, not only feel encouraged but feel inspired by progress so that we can not only sustain what we have but work harder to see that we get that number up in future reports."

At the same time, the number of Latino players at all levels has steadily increased. At the MLB level, 27 percent of players are Latino, the Lapchick study reported. Of the 42 high school players on the three Paterson teams, all of them are at least part Latino.

"In their countries it's the most popular sport," said Marquan Barksdale, who is the only black player on the Passaic (N.J.) High baseball team.

While the total number of black players in baseball has declined over time, the numbers have gone up in football and basketball. About 30 percent of NFL players were black in the 1970s. Today, the NFL is 66 percent black. The NBA is 76 percent black.

As college football and basketball opened up to blacks in the 1970s, many young people saw this as the best opportunity to earn a college scholarship and potentially make money down the road. After all, there are no minor leagues for football and basketball like there are in baseball. One baseball coach recently told ESPN's "Outside the Lines" that he thought baseball ranked fourth in popularity in the black community behind football, basketball and video games.

Today, the situation is compounded by the fact that the two- and three-sport athlete is increasingly being replaced by the kid who focuses on one sport all year long.

"Coaches in general want their kids to specialize in one sport," Passaic High baseball coach Sam Ferretti said. "I disagree. I think if you're an athlete you should play everything. People get these ideas that you've got to focus on one sport. What are the chances of you getting a full scholarship and making the major leagues?"

Some Paterson athletes who played multiple sports as kids gave up baseball to focus on hoops.

"That was my first love, baseball," said Marquis Webb, who played four years of basketball at Rutgers. "I started playing AAU basketball and I really didn't have that much time [for baseball] because we were always going on the road and things of that nature.

"I felt like I still could've played baseball in high school, but I definitely saw a future in basketball."

Benjie Wimberly, the Paterson Catholic football coach and city's recreation director, also points to the lack of black coaches at the lowest levels in Paterson.

"We probably need more African American coaches," Wimberly said. "During the period of time that I was coaching [baseball in the 1990s], there were more black coaches."

Eastside baseball coach Peter Diaz said economics is also a factor. The costs associated with bats, gloves, catcher's equipment and fields make baseball an expensive sport, which, in turn, can impact those in the inner-cities.

"You want a good glove, you spend $150," Diaz said. "You can get a decent glove for $75. You are not getting any decent aluminum bat for under $150."

To cultivate a new generation of black baseball players and fans, MLB has invested millions of dollars into RBI, a national youth baseball and softball program for 125,000 youngsters in just more than 200 leagues between the ages 13 and 18.

MLB has also launched a Junior RBI program aimed at younger kids, including the Jackie Robinson league in Jersey City, N.J.

"A push needs to be made to the adults in these communities, specifically the males, taking the time to play catch and introduce the game and become a mentor," said David James, director of the RBI program. "If they have a positive experience playing baseball in their local community playing with an African American male, that may tend to keep them in the game for a longer time."

Hill is one of those role models, and he just wants to spread the game to whoever loves it.

"I enjoy coaching baseball," he said. "I would love to see more African Americans playing baseball. ? For me, it's all about the love of the game, coaching and teaching kids the right way of playing baseball."

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