There's a lot of fanfare today surrounding the courageous career of Jackie Robinson. ESPN has a whole page of coverage, and they should. He did an amazing thing in breaking the color barrier, and I'm glad we take a day to remember that.
Sixty years after Robinson entered the major leagues, I'm hearing a lot about the minimal number of blacks (or African Americans?) in the MLB, and what a shame it is, and how Jackie might feel about the "state of the game" today.
I think of Robinson's legacy as overcoming racial barriers in this country, and being bigger than the hate that lingered some 80 years after the Civil War. But as I think about it, if Robinson were a young man today, there would be a whole new set of barriers that he would have to overcome.
As I said in a recent post about comments made by C.C. Sabathia, the barriers that exist today don't have to do with race. Rather, socioeconomic opportunity, or lack thereof, has become the greatest obstacle to success in many sports.
Robinson broke the color barrier, but the growing socioeconomic gap means that many youngsters -- black, white and hispanic alike -- won't have the opportunities to attend camps, clinics and participate in summer leagues that their rich counterparts think nothing of. As a result, baseball (and to a greater degree other sports like golf, tennis, hockey and soccer) have emerged as rich men's games.
Thanks to Jackie, I believe black players are more than welcome in the MLB these days. I just wonder if many of them have the money it takes to make it there.
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