Congratulations to Philly for winning the World Series! I am not a huge sports fan but I worked with a black woman who was! She knew every baseball player's stats & everything. But one thing really saddened her about the sport. The fact that there are fewer & fewer black baseball players! This was such a huge concern to her that she was trying to devise a way to get black youths involved in baseball. There are many theories as to why this has happened. They are discussed in the first video.The second video is a nice little history of the negro league.
Given the history of baseball, it is particularly disturbing to some african-americans.Some feel that blacks not wanting to play baseball is akin to them not wanting to vote. They feel that strongly about it because baseball is directly linked to the civil rights movement.It was one of the many things that we had to fight for the right to participate in.Everyone knows that Jackie Robinson was the first black to integrate major league baseball.They know the racism that he confronted. But what about those who came after him? The book pictured above discusses what happened after baseball was integrated. Here's the description that's on Google:
"The real and painful struggles of the black players who followed Jackie Robinson into major and minor league baseball from 1947 through 1968 are chronicled in this compelling volume. Players share their personal and often heart-wrenching stories of intense racism, both on and off the field, mixed with a sometimes begrudged appreciation for their tremendous talents. Stories include incidents of white players who gave up promising careers in baseball because they wouldn’t play with a black teammate, the Georgia law that forbade a black player from dressing in the same clubhouse as the white players, the quotas for the number of blacks on a team, and how salary negotiations without agents or free agency were akin to a plantation system for both black and white players. The 20 players profiled include Ernie Banks, Alvin Jackson, Charlie Murray, Chuck Harmon, Frank Robinson, Bob Gibson, Hank Aaron, Curt Flood, Lou Brock, and Bob Watson." (Description Taken from:
http://books.google.com/books?id=l6zL-Nw-sbUC&dq=BASEBALL+INTEGRATED&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=mRY-cuJCev&sig=7eM3dpcp09K2QNTw2isVur5KOJE&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result
