Black players walking away from baseball – The News Journal
Brad Myers, The News Journal 
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Delaware players, parents and coaches talk about the appeal of the game or lack thereof.
As a ferocious, 6-foot-4, 240-pound defensive end, William Penn High School junior Frank Burton III is being recruited by major colleges and likely will sign a football scholarship next year.
But baseball is his favorite sport.
“It’s my first love, but football is starting to become that,” Burton III said. “I’m starting to have a passion for that sport, but baseball was my first love. I started with that.”
Burton III hit a three-run homer and earned his fourth pitching victory of the season on Wednesday as William Penn downed Glasgow 7-2.
But the fact that baseball is losing its grip on him is a growing trend among African-Americans. According to Major League Baseball, 8.3 percent of the players on opening day rosters in 2014 identified themselves as African-American. That is down from a peak of 19 percent in 1986, according to research by Mark Armour of the Society of American Baseball Research.
As the popularity of the NFL and NBA continue to rise – and the amount of college scholarship money available in baseball pales in comparison to football and basketball – many aspiring African-American athletes are taking a pass on America’s pastime.
One factor in this shift is the growing demand among all athletes for college scholarships.
In Division I, FBS football programs are allowed to award 85 scholarships. Basketball teams are allowed 13 scholarships, for a roster of no more than 15 players. The maximum number of baseball scholarships is 11.7, for rosters of more than 30 players.
And because of budget constraints, many Division I baseball programs aren’t even able to offer 11.7 scholarships. So no college baseball player receives a “full ride.”
“I can go play football and get a full scholarship,” Delaware State University baseball coach J.P. Blandin said. “In baseball, a good scholarship offer is 50 percent. A lot of the big schools give 25 percent or 33 percent.”
The University of Delaware has three African-American players on its current baseball roster – junior outfielder Jordan Glover, who is sitting out this season following knee surgery; freshman outfielder Calvin Scott from St. Mark’s and junior outfielder Gary Jones from Caesar Rodney.
“In the Mid-Atlantic region, you just don’t see as many African-American baseball players,” UD coach Jim Sherman said. “Most of those individuals are playing football or basketball. You see it much more on rosters as you go farther south, Virginia down to Florida, and out through Texas. That’s been my observation.”
Losing ground
But it may be more than a regional issue. The NFL passed Major League Baseball as America’s most popular sport long ago and is consistently the highest-rated TV programming in any category.
Many NBA playoff games were aired on tape delay until 1986, but now every game is live. Last year’s NBA Finals averaged a 9.3 television rating. The World Series averaged an 8.2 rating – its second-lowest ever.
“They don’t see superstars like Derrick Rose, Kobe Bryant [in the NBA], Marshawn Lynch in football,” Burton III said of his friends. “They don’t see that in baseball. They look up to other people in those other two sports.”
“The kids in the inner city, they play basketball,” Caravel Academy baseball coach Paul Niggebrugge said. “It’s easy; it’s free. If you don’t play baseball early on, you’re not going to be able to pick it up later. I don’t care how good of an athlete you are, it’s going to be difficult.”
Many of the players on the Howard High baseball team are discovering that this season. The Wildcats were 0-15 going into Thursday’s game at William Penn.
“We have two or three kids at any time who have never played baseball starting for us on the varsity level,” Howard coach Bryan Boyer said. “Other teams have three levels – varsity, JV, freshman – with cuts. They’ve been playing since they were 5, going to camps, different teams, showcases, all kinds of stuff.
“Our kids are coming out and giving it a shot. It doesn’t help us from an experience standpoint. However, give these kids a lot of credit for coming out and trying something they haven’t tried, and sticking with it when everybody else would have just bailed.”
Boyer has to stress fundamentals that come automatically to experienced players.
“From March 1 to March 23 for the first game, that’s three weeks to teach them the start and stop of baseball,” the coach said. “We’re talking rules, fielding, hitting. We don’t even know if they’re outfielders or infielders.”
Sophomore Darin Matthews started playing baseball when he was 8, making him one of Howard’s most experienced players. He tries to lead the others.
“When they make errors, they kind of keep their head down,” Matthews said. “You’ve got to encourage them to keep their head up and just keep playing.”
Matthews also plays football and basketball for the Wildcats. But most of his teammates in those sports don’t follow him to baseball.
“They say it’s kind of boring, and it just doesn’t interest them,” Matthews said. “It’s hard to hit the ball and field, and there’s a lot of thinking.”
Diverse Colonials
William Penn has a more competitive baseball team, 9-7 going into Thursday’s game. The Colonials are having success with a diverse lineup of multisport athletes.
“I think it helps that I’m the football coach here, too. A lot of kids played for me in football, and they come out for baseball,” Colonials coach Marvin Dooley said. “We’ve got about four or five black kids on our varsity, and about four or five on our JV, which really helps.
“I think at our school, in our culture, we need to have the black athlete out here. If not, then we’re shorting ourselves.”
The Burton brothers – Frank III and sophomore Zach – are two of William Penn’s best players. They were schooled from an early age by their father, Frank Jr., who played football and baseball at Delaware State from 1981-85.
“Parental involvement is key,” Frank Jr. said. “… Baseball is a slower game than football and basketball. You have to encourage them that it’s a mental game, and if they can think, combined with their athleticism, then they can be successful.”
Frank Jr. coached his sons in the Bear Babe Ruth League, with one of their teams earning a spot in the 2010 Cal Ripken World Series in Aberdeen, Maryland. The brothers also played in other summer leagues and traveled regionally.
But Frank III said he saw some of his baseball teammates quit the sport in favor of football or basketball as they reached high school. And Frank Jr. is fighting that battle with Zach right now.
The speedy center fielder has all of the tools to build a bright future in baseball, maybe even a professional career. But he also plays football and basketball for the Colonials, and he said football has become his favorite sport.
“I’m just out here to kind of keep my avenues open,” said Zach, a sophomore. “I just want to have any opportunity I can get so I can go to college for free or even get drafted.”
He wanted to run track this spring, but his father insisted he continue to play baseball.
“I know what’s ahead of him, and I know what he’s capable of,” Frank Jr. said. “Just think when he came to me this year and said, ‘Dad, I’m not going to play baseball,’ if I had said, ‘OK.’ He wouldn’t have been having the success that he’s having right now.”
So Zach continues to play, but his enthusiasm appears to be waning.
“Right now, I’m leaning more toward other sports,” he said. “But I’m just going to keep my opportunities open. Baseball, I don’t have as much passion as I used to. But I’m still out here, still performing. I’m going to always give it my all, no matter what. I just want to make a name for myself.”
Decline at DSU
Frank Burton Jr. said when he played baseball at Delaware State in the early 1980s, the roster was almost all African-American. This spring, the Hornets have eight black players.
“It varies from year to year, depending on what we see when we’re out recruiting, which kids accepted our offers,” Blandin said. “We’re just trying to find the best kids, the best fits for Delaware State.”
Sophomore infielder Kwestin Smith came to the Hornets from Teaneck, New Jersey. His father, Kenyon, played college baseball at Howard and started hitting ground balls to Kwestin when he was 2 years old.
“The first one hit me in the chest, and I cried,” Smith said with a laugh. “But from there, I just fell in love with it.”
Smith also saw many of his friends quit the game before high school.
“I have a lot of friends that go to big schools and play football and basketball,” he said. “They used to play baseball along with me. But they feel that baseball took too much of their time and was too boring for them. It wasn’t a fast-paced game, not as much contact.”
Senior second baseman David Kimbrough, one of the Hornets’ top players with a .317 batting average, said baseball is the perfect sport for him. His 5-foot-11, 190-pound frame may have been small for college football or basketball, but he could thrive in baseball.
“I like that the game is mostly mental,” Kimbrough said. “It’s not based on your physical appearance or your athleticism, but it’s based on how well you can handle adversity. … If you’ve got the drive and the mental capacity to handle making an error and coming back and making the next play, this game is for you.”
In the minors
The Wilmington Blue Rocks are an Advanced Class A team – three steps from the major leagues – with players supplied by the Kansas City Royals. The roster can change every day, but recently the Rocks had no African-American players. They had seven Latin American players, a trend that continues to grow in professional baseball.
But the Myrtle Beach Pelicans, a Chicago Cubs affiliate, had two African-American players during a recent series against the Rocks at Frawley Stadium. Duane Underwood Jr. is one of the top prospects in the Cubs’ organization. The right-handed pitcher was a second-round draft pick out of Pope High in Marietta, Georgia, in 2012. He is 3-0 with a 1.29 ERA through five starts with Myrtle Beach this season.
Underwood stopped playing football when he was 13, when he really began to show promise in baseball.
“I didn’t really play sports other than baseball,” Underwood said. “I tried football a couple of times, but my dad and my high school baseball coach said baseball was my sport, so I stuck with it.”
Underwood is willing to withstand years of low pay (less than $2,000 per month) and long bus rides to reach the major leagues, because the potential payoff is huge. The minimum salary in Major League Baseball this season is $507,500, and Cliff Lee and Ryan Howard will each be paid $25 million by the Phillies this season.
Getting started
Leon Tucker, director of communications at Habitat for Humanity of New Castle County, isn’t expecting any huge payouts down the road. But he is happy that his 4-year-old son, Ethan, started playing T-ball in Canal Little League this season.
“He loves it. He really does,” Tucker said. “… His first word, literally, was ‘ball.’ He is very, very athletic and loves sports. He selected, on his own, baseball and basketball as his two favorite sports. He’s into it, so we’re trying to nurture that.”
Tucker never played baseball, choosing to play football and run track in high school. But when Tucker and his wife, Josette, took Ethan and his younger brother, Aaron, 3, to Phillies and Blue Rocks games, Ethan was hooked immediately.
“We went in the backyard, and we had some bats and I tossed him a ball and he hit it,” Tucker said. “He enjoys it. Watching the players on TV from time to time, he’ll try to emulate all of their moves.”
He even wanted something that most baseball players don’t start to use until they’re older.
“He insisted on getting batter’s gloves,” Tucker said. “We got them, and he religiously puts these gloves on when he goes up to bat. And after he goes back to the dugout, he takes them off like a pro.”
Tucker said Aaron isn’t as interested in sports as Ethan at this point, so he may not have a second son starting the game next year. But Ethan’s first season hasn’t been cheap. Tucker estimates the family has spent about $250 in fees, plus about $100 for equipment.
Expense is an issue, but baseball also has to compete with several new high school sports added over the past 25 years. And almost all sports have turned into never-ending pursuits for those who want to specialize.
“There are so many other things,” said Tom Beddow, baseball coach at St. Elizabeth since 1987. “Lacrosse is big. Soccer is going all year-round. Basketball is going all year-round. Baseball used to be the summer pastime, and now it seems like there are a lot of other things going on at that time.”
That’s why Blandin, the DSU coach, would like to see college baseball move from a spring sport to a summer sport. Most of the baseball fields at colleges in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic aren’t lighted, and with the season running from February through May, it’s too cold to play at night anyway.
That forces local college teams to start many games at 2 or 3 p.m., when students may still be in class and parents and other fans are still at work. Blandin believes allowing colleges to play baseball games at night through the summer would increase interest and make the sport more attractive for athletes from all backgrounds.
“It’s just starting to warm up now,” Blandin said. “It would be great to play some night games in warm weather. You can go to a 7:30 tipoff, Caesar Rodney and Dover playing basketball in front of thousands of people. You can do the same in football, Middletown playing Sallies in front of a big crowd.
“There’s some glamour in that. Those sports are more glamorous than baseball around here.”
Contact Brad Myers at bmyers@delawareonline.com. Follow on Twitter: @BradMyersTNJ.
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