Look At The Root Cause

The true home run king, Hank Aaron lamented the fact that blacks comprise only 9% of the players on major league rosters. He blames the lack of baseball scholarships:

"Football has such a lucrative scholarship that when parents talk to their kids about going to school, they talk about one thing, and that's playing football," Aaron said. "You had kids like Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders, who could've been excellent baseball players, but they had to go to school on football scholarships and play two sports. In the long run, it's not going to work, especially for baseball."

Hammerin' Hank swings and misses at the major cause of the decline.

Baseball is the ultimate father & son sport. Playing catch with your father is how millions of American kids have been introduced to baseball.

And it has been that way for generations.

But the sad fact of the matter is this: 74% of black children are born out of wedlock.

And that leads to a lot of fathers not playing catch with their sons.

Which results in not nearly as many black children develop a bond with baseball like when Aaron was growing up.

And if you don't develop an interest in baseball early, it is very hard to pick it up later.

Admittedly, out of all the problems that can be traced to the inexcusably high out of wedlock child birth rate, this is a minor one.

But they are related.

How sad and shameful it is, that so many kids don't know their fathers in America.