Where Have You Gone, Mr. Robinson?

Yesterday was the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in major league baseball. While I'm not one of those people who looks at sports as a microcosm of our society, this was clearly a watershed event. This was before the army was integrated, before Brown vs. Board of Education and before Rosa Parks. Baseball was truly the national pastime then and there were so many good "Negro" players that they had a separate league filled with ballplayers who should have been in the majors.

I was watching a game on TV with my f-i-l when baseball celebrated the 50th anniversary. I asked him what it was like when Robinson played his first game. He said it made the papers for a day or so, but wasn't the biggest story. I thought that was weird given how big of a deal is made of it now, so I asked my dad (who was a huge baseball fan in Philly when he was a kid). He gave me pretty much the same response, though I can see why it wasn't a big deal in a racist town like Philly, where Robinson got some of the worst treatment.

Now, of course, the people who some how get paid to worry about such things are concerned that there aren't nearly as many African-Americans playing baseball as there used to be. Why? We'll, here are three guesses as to why basketball is more popular:

1) Baseball is slow and boring compared to basketball.

2) Basketball allows for more individual expression and that's what our society LOVES.

3) Basketball has always been the game of those lower on socio-economic scale (it was primarily an inner-city Jewish game in the 30s and 40s) because it is inexpensive to play compared to baseball.

It's got nothing to do with anything nefarious--the sports heroes of black youth have changed. And baseball's steroid scandals probably haven't helped.