Jackie Robinson Day a Time for Celebration, Concern
By Ken Reed
On April 15, 1947, The Brooklyn Dodgers’ Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier. It was a huge moment in baseball history and a landmark civil rights event for the United States.
Today, Major League Baseball (MLB) celebrates the momentous occasion every April 15th. All MLB players wear the number 42, Robinson’s number, on the 15th to remember and honor the courageous actions of both Rickey and Robinson.
However, as we celebrate Jackie Robinson Day this year, we’re faced with a sobering reality: Only 7.8% of MLB players (67 total) are African-American. The high was 18.7% in 1981 and between 1972 and 1996, the percentage of African-American players in the big leagues never dropped below 16%, according to the Society of American Baseball Research (SABR).
MLB has long been aware of the trend. It began a Reviving Baseball in the Inner Cities (RBI) program in 1989 to encourage more African-Americans to play the sport. Today, MLB has six urban academies operating around the country and there are 220,000 kids playing baseball in RBI programs across the land. Until the last couple years, when there was 13 African-Americans selected in the first round of baseball’s draft, the RBI program has had little impact at the professional level.
The downward trend can’t be blamed solely on Major League Baseball. There are numerous socio-cultural factors involved in this trend. However, baseball, as a whole, needs to be doing a better job selling the virtues, values and benefits of playing baseball to young African-American children and their parents.
Baseball may no longer be the national pastime but it should remain a game for all Americans.
— Ken Reed, Sports Policy Director, League of Fans
Sports Forum Podcast
Episode #28 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: A Chat With Mano Watsa, a Leading Basketball and Life Educator – Watsa is President of PGC Basketball, the largest education basketball camp in the world, with over 150 camps in 30+ U.S. states and Canada. We discuss problems in youth sports today, including single sport specialization, the growing gap between the “haves” and “have-nots,” the high drop-out rate in competitive sports, and the growing mental health challenges young athletes are dealing with today.
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Episode #27 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: Kids’ Sports: How We Can Take Back the Game and Restore Quality Family Time In the Process – Linda Flanagan is author of “Take Back the Game: How Money and Mania Are Ruining Kids’ Sports and Why It Matters.” We discuss how commercialized and professionalized youth sports are hurting kids and their families.
Episode #26 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: How Can We Fix Youth Sports? – John O’Sullivan is Founder and CEO of Changing the Game Project and author of “Changing the Game: The Parents Guide to Raising Happy, High Performing Athletes and Giving Youth Sports Back to Our Kids.”
Episode #25 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: Physical Education Should Be a Critical Component of K-12 School Design – Michael Horn is co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation.
Episode #24 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: Mental Health and Athletes: Ending the Stigma – Nathan Braaten and Taylor Ricci are the founders of Dam Worth It, a non-profit created to end the stigma around mental health at colleges and universities through sport, storytelling, and community creation.
Episode #23 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: Olympian Benita Fitzgerald Mosley Talks Title IX, Youth Sports and the Olympics.
Media
"How We Can Save Sports" author Ken Reed appears on Fox & Friends to explain how there's "too much adult in youth sports."
Ken Reed appears on Mornings with Gail from KFKA Radio in Colorado to discuss bad parenting in youth athletics.
“Should College Athletes Be Paid?” Ken Reed on The Morning Show from Wisconsin Public Radio
Ken Reed appears on KGNU Community Radio in Colorado (at 02:30) to discuss equality in sports and Title IX.
Ken Reed appears on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour (at 38:35) to discuss his book The Sports Reformers: Working to Make the World of Sports a Better Place, and to talk about some current sports issues.
- League of Fans Sports Policy Director Ken Reed quoted in Washington Post column titled "What happened to P.E.? It’s losing ground in our push for academic improvement," by Jay Mathews
League of Fans is a sports reform project founded by Ralph Nader to fight for the higher principles of justice, fair play, equal opportunity and civil rights in sports; and to encourage safety and civic responsibility in sports industry and culture.
Vanderbilt Sport & Society - On The Ball with Andrew Maraniss with guest Ken Reed, Sports Policy Director for League of Fans and author of How We Can Save Sports: A Game Plan
Sports & Torts – Ken Reed, Sports Policy Director, League of Fans – at the American Museum of Tort Law
Books