Former NL MVP Jimmy Rollins reflects on decline of Black players in Major League Baseball
PHILADELPHIA (AP) â When Jimmy Rollins made his first All-Star team as a rookie with the Philadelphia Phillies 20 years ago, the percentage of Black players in the majors was 13.
Itâs down to 7.6% this year.
As the Phillies celebrated Jackie Robinson Day along with the rest of baseball on Thursday and Friday, Rollins reflected on the decline.
âItâs more than just one thing,â Rollins told The Associated Press. âMarketing. The NBA and the NFL, those guysâ faces are plastered all over the screen. Baseball, there isnât really a great deal of marketing. Obviously, everyone knows about Mike Trout and rightfully so, but there are some young Black players that deserves some light, too.â
Rollins pointed to Ken Griffey Jr. and Barry Bonds as popular players who were marketed well when he was growing up.
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âBut when you start going outside of that select few, the sport itself isnât marketing anyone else in a major way where kids from the inner cities are attracted to it," he said.
Rollins and teammate Ryan Howard won consecutive NL Most Valuable Player awards with the Phillies in 2006 and 2007. Rollins was the leadoff hitter and Howard batted cleanup for a team that won five straight NL East titles, two NL pennants and the 2008 World Series. The possibilities for marketing two superstars on the same dominant team shouldâve been endless.
âI remember we, a lot of Black players, had a phone call with Spike Lee years ago,â Rollins said. âWe flew out to Chicago. We were with MLB and the union and Spike Lee. We talked about doing commercials. Nothing ever came of that. It was like a one-time thing. Not to knock MLB, but theyâre going to do things that, at face value, look great. But the impact is minimal because thereâs generally never any true follow-through. Thatâs not just baseball. A lot of organizations do that.â
Rollins also attributed the decline of Black players in baseball to socioeconomic factors.
âYou need space to play baseball,â he said. âYou donât have that in a lot of places. In the country, you can find a field. In the city, kids arenât playing stickball. A basketball, you could pick up and dribble. Itâs easier to find a court. You donât have to field nine guys to play basketball. You can play one-on-one. The expense, you need the tools, youâve got to pay for travel teams. In other sports, we know itâs been well documented. They get sponsored and those things donât happen in baseball.
âAlso, you look at how baseballâs traditionally passed down from the dad to son. If your father isnât around, the chances of you being exposed to baseball because itâs more of a team sport, itâs probably less likely to happen.â
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Rollins recently hosted a special series for Bleacher Report about being Black in major league baseball. The first part debuted Thursday in honor of Jackie Robinson Day and featured Rollins chatting with Howard, Dwight Gooden and 2020 Rookie of the Year Award winners Kyle Lewis of the Seattle Mariners and Devin Williams of the Milwaukee Brewers.
Lewis and Williams were the first Black ballplayers to sweep the rookie honors since Gooden and Alvin Davis in 1984, three years before the BBWAA renamed the award in honor of the man who broke baseballâs color barrier.
âJackie was the man to go through all the fire, face all the criticism, hear all the nasty words and things that were coming his way and still go out there and perform and perform well enough to win rookie of the year,â Rollins said. âBut outside of baseball, it was just a reflection of what America needed to do, and that was become more inclusive.
"We know about baseball but his activism and his fight for civil rights, it didnât just start on the field, it was already happening. We got to see it in uniform. Then he continued to press forward off the field and fight for the rights to basically be a human being, to be a man, to be respected, to be seen. I think people need to realize that he isnât just Jackie Robinson the baseball player, there was more to his life as a man.â