Why Are Minorities Hard to Recruit for College Baseball and Softball?
Why is recruiting minorities for baseball programs becoming more and more of a daunthing task for college coaches? Doug Newhoff, a respected sports reporter in Iowa, has a great article that tries to address that question, and looks ahead to what the sport needs to do to increase minority participation. David Price was the No. 1 pick in the Major League baseball’s amateur draft in June. Two years ago, Justin Upton was taken first overall. Both are African-American, and they serve to illustrate an issue that’s affecting college baseball dugouts across the country. Despite the obvious opportunities that baseball offers minority athletes, the numbers of African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians are declining quicker than Randy Johnson’s fastball. In fact, minority participation in both college baseball and fastpitch softball is nearly non-existent. The numbers paint a black and white picture: – Based on information collected from the Web sites and media guides of the respective conference i
