Robinson Plus 50 Adds Up to Discontent

Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier 50 years ago today, but some of the game’s leading African American players--past and present--contend that to be black in the major leagues is still a struggle against racism.

It is no coincidence, they say, that major league baseball has a lower percentage of African American players than in 1959. Or that half the teams began this season with three or fewer American-born blacks--including the Dodgers, who have none in their starting lineup or pitching staff for the first time since Robinson’s debut.

While baseball officials say that waning interest among urban youths and a rise in foreign-born players are factors in the decline, the feeling is widespread even among African American superstars that teams pay blacks less and fill the bench first with whites and Latin Americans.

“I can honestly say racism is worse today than it’s ever been in the years I’ve played,” said Florida Marlins’ slugger Gary Sheffield, an eight-year veteran who recently signed the biggest contract in baseball history--$61 million over six years. “It’s bad. I mean, it’s real bad.

“You have to hear it, and live it, every single minute of every single day. This is why this whole tribute to Jackie Robinson is a joke. If you want to pay tribute to someone, do more than put a patch on your sleeve. As soon as the patch comes off at the end of the year, it’ll all be forgotten. It tears you up, just tears you up.”

Acting Commissioner Bud Selig, the game’s highest official, denies that racism pervades the sport or that there is any effort to weed out African Americans. But he acknowledged that baseball no longer occupies as prominent a niche in urban areas and should make a stronger effort to reconnect with African Americans.

“There may have been racism in the ‘40s and earlier, but I’d bet my last nickel that’s not the case today,” Selig said. “I can say confidently that the clubs’ strongest wish is that there were more African American players.”

Added Leonard Coleman, the African American president of baseball’s National League:

“If you’re one of the 700 best players in the world, you’re going to be in the major leagues. We have players from 17 different countries now. There isn’t any question but that baseball is all-inclusive and ethnically diverse.”

Turning to Foreign Players

The rise in players from other countries, especially from Latin America, has made up for the drop in African Americans--and white Americans as well.

In 1959, the first year that every team was integrated, 17.25% of major league players were African American. In 1980, the figure had risen to 23%. On opening day this month, the 108 African Americans on active rosters or disabled by injury represented 15.4% of the total.

The share of roster spots going to white players also has slipped--from 68% in 1991 to 62% last season--while foreign-born players have risen to 19%.

Dave Stewart, a former Dodger who became a pitching star for the Oakland A’s in the 1980s, is now an assistant to General Manager Kevin Towers of the San Diego Padres. This makes him one of the few African Americans to work in a baseball front office, and he agrees something is up.

“The word throughout the game that has filtered down is that they are trying to weed blacks out,” Stewart said. “I’m not just talking about the Dodgers but everyone. Whether that’s a fact or not, we’ll have to wait and see.”

Don Newcombe, a pitcher and teammate of Robinson’s with the Brooklyn Dodgers, now works in the Los Angeles Dodgers’ community relations department but does not pull his punches.

“We’re reverting right back to where we were 50 years ago,” Newcombe said. “Unless the American black player is outstanding, and cannot be turned down, they are going to be passed over for foreign players who come a lot cheaper.”

In the year of the Robinson celebration, the Dodgers--whose legacy of African American stars also includes Roy Campanella and Maury Wills--have become a focal point. On opening day, the team’s only African Americans were utility players Wayne Kirby and Chad Fonville. Last week Fonville was demoted to the minor leagues.

“It should be embarrassing, not only to the Dodgers, but all of baseball,” Newcombe said of the declining numbers of African Americans. “I don’t know if it’s a concerted effort, but I know some of the black players in the past are talking about it. It’s a very disturbing trend.”

Dodgers owner Peter O’Malley, asked why the team has only one African American player, said “I can’t explain it. But I know our search for talent is thorough. We search 360 degrees around the world, that I’m convinced of.”

The Dodgers’ stars include pitchers Ramon Martinez of the Dominican Republic, Hideo Nomo of Japan and Ismael Valdes of Mexico, and their star right fielder Raul Mondesi is also from the Dominican Republic.

Fred Claire, the Dodgers’ executive vice president, said the club’s international composition had “more to do with the cycles of time.” The team also recruits heavily in the Dominican Republic.

Claire said the team added Los Angeles-born star outfielders Darryl Strawberry and Eric Davis after the riots that followed the not guilty verdicts in the trial of police officers charged with beating Rodney King. Neither slugger worked out.

“If Darryl Strawberry and Eric Davis were stars in L.A., can you imagine the impact they would have had? The upside could have been incredible. But we can’t create talent. We can only find the talent that’s available.”

Chris Gwynn, who spent parts of seven seasons with the Dodgers, takes exception to that. He was the only African American drafted by the Dodgers since 1985 who had a significant role with the team, mostly as a pinch hitter.

Gwynn, whose contract with the Padres expired after last season, said: “I mean, it’s not hard to tell there’s no blacks there. But who can you talk to about it? If you speak out, you’re a militant and you’re out of baseball.

“I still remember when we had a lot of minorities on the team, either Dominican or black, and Shawon Dunston [of the Chicago Cubs] came over to talk to me and Eddie Murray. He said, ‘Damn, ya’ll better take a picture together. Ya’ll won’t be around here much longer. There’s too many of you here.’

“Within a year, there were a lot of guys gone. And they haven’t been back.”

Most Latin American and other foreign players can be signed by teams more cheaply than American players, who are subject to the annual draft of amateur players. But longtime player agent Tony Attanasio said the economics cut deeper than that.

“You look around baseball, and if you’re not a superstar, the black player will invariably make less money than the other guy,” Attanasio said. “I can remember with the Dodgers when [African American players] like Reggie [Smith], Davey [Lopes] and [Dusty] Baker were playing. They would always make less than [Bill] Russell and [Steve] Garvey and [the white] guys.”

No one questions that African American superstars are well rewarded. In addition to Sheffield, Albert Belle of the Chicago White Sox makes $11 million a year and Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants recently received a two-year, $29-million contract extension. Ken Griffey Jr., Frank Thomas, Cecil Fielder, Mo Vaughn are others among baseball’s highest-paid players.

The falloff, however, is dramatic, some critics claim.

Thomas Howard of the Houston Astros, one of the few African American bench players, said, “It’s almost like if you don’t have at least twice as much talent as the white player or Latin player, you’re not going to make it.

“Is it frustrating? Yes. Is it fair? No. Is the system right? No. Can you change it? No.”

To the blacks who feel baseball remains racist, the story is more than players. On the 28 major league teams, there are only three African American managers, three third-base coaches, one general manager and one assistant general manager at the higher levels of teams. There are no black trainers, assistant trainers or lead team physicians. There have been 23 managerial changes since the start of the 1995 season and each has gone to a white former player.

Hall of Fame member Frank Robinson, baseball’s first African American manager but out of work since being fired in 1996 as assistant general manager of the Orioles, said it goes back to inherent racism.

“It’s just covered up a little better now,” said Robinson, who played one season with the Dodgers and two with the Angels. “It’s not as open as it was years ago. I don’t know any other reason for why there aren’t minorities in those positions.”

Sheffield insists that racism is prevalent “every minute of every day,” and that “these white players don’t know what we’re going through. I always wonder how the white player would perform and withstand all of the criticism if they took abuse from black fans.

“Imagine how they would feel if there were 50,000 blacks in the stands booing them? They couldn’t handle it. They have trouble enough handling white on white.

“People talk about blacks not coming to games, [but] why should they? . . . That’s why you see so many black players never make it. They can’t deal with it.”

Scouts, team officials and others say that complex changes in sport and society have made it harder for baseball to lure young black players. The growth of professional football and basketball is competition for the multisport athlete, both African American and white.

“Fifty years ago, baseball was the only kid on the block, but there’s clearly more competition from football, basketball and other things now,” said Selig. “We’ve done a very poor job of national marketing and reaching the inner cities, and that has to change and will.

“I’ve said many times that Jackie Robinson represents the proudest moment in baseball history, but I feel a real sadness [in regard to baseball’s efforts since]. We need a real effort to reconnect.”

The effect is most pronounced in the inner city, where there has been a deterioration in high school and youth baseball programs while the perception has grown that football and basketball offer a greater opportunity and faster track.

“Go into the inner cities, and the best athletes are no longer playing baseball,” said Kevin Malone, assistant general manager of the Baltimore Orioles.

“It’s a shame, but then we’re not attracting the best athletes generally--white, black or otherwise. There doesn’t seem to be the passion for baseball that there once was, and that should be a real concern.”

‘A Troubling Situation’

Baseball is also turning increasingly to colleges for talented players who do not need as much costly time developing in the minor leagues. But, said Gary Hughes, vice president of player personnel for the Florida Marlins, “to an alarming degree, the college game has become a white game.

“I spoke at a high school coaches’ convention in Anaheim two years ago and there wasn’t one black coach. I said, ‘The first thing you should each do is hire a black assistant and get these kids out playing again.”’

In last June’s draft of high school and college players, only three African Americans were among the 30 players selected in the first round, and none among the 17 pitchers picked in that round. USC’s Jacques Jones was the only African American on the U.S. baseball team at the Atlanta Olympics, and a recent survey by the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. showed that only 7.2% of all student athletes on baseball scholarships at Division I schools in 1994-95 were African American.

“It’s a troubling situation,” USC baseball Coach Mike Gillespie said. “The African American players are just not out there in numbers commensurate with the population, and it’s not a matter of prejudice. I don’t know of one college coach who wouldn’t take a qualified black player. We all need to win.”

The Los Angeles area offers a microcosm of the national condition.

Simon Peters, now an assistant coach at Compton College, won the national Connie Mack World Series in 1972 with an inner-city youth team that included future major league players Ozzie Smith, Hubie Brooks, Ken Landreaux and Gary Ward. The Compton and South Los Angeles areas were a hotbed of talent, spawning major-league stars such as Strawberry, Davis, Murray, Bobby Tolan, George Hendrick and others, but the stream has turned dry.

Not because the talent isn’t still there, Peters said. But there is no longer a Connie Mack youth program at Jackie Robinson Stadium in Gonzalez Park, where Peters’ 1972 team played its home games.

“You used to be able to go to eight fields in Compton and see two or three games every afternoon, but not anymore,” Peters said. “There’s still a lot of good people who would like to help, but . . . nobody seems to have the time or money.”

Baseball is attempting to respond through a program called Reviving Baseball in the Inner City. Started by former Chicago Cubs scout John Young in Los Angeles in 1989, there are now leagues in 69 cities, providing more than 300,000 youths from 13 to 18 with a chance to play baseball and softball. The program is supervised by the Boys and Girls Club of America through a $1.5-million annual grant from organized baseball.

In addition, said Richard Lapchick, director of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University in Boston, the Robinson anniversary seems to be creating a new awareness. “I think it’s calling a lot of attention to the problems in baseball and seems to be doing so in a more positive way,” Lapchick said.

Perhaps, but second baseman Delino DeShields, now with the St. Louis Cardinals after being the Dodgers’ only African American regular last year, said the situation is still bad. At some point, he said, “We may have to go get our own different league again, [and] maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.”

And Chris Gwynn, the former Dodger, expressed ongoing concern for the sport’s appeal to blacks.

“How do you explain to a son that it’s harder for an African American player to play and ever go beyond that [into management] in baseball?” he said.

“I mean, what can you tell them? If you tell them the truth, they might give up their desire and dreams. I don’t know what to say anymore.”

* ALL OUT: Dodger broadcaster Vin Scully remembers the way Jackie Robinson did all things: with every bit of his speed, strength and being. C1