African American Participation In Baseball

Record Low

The MLB, had a record low of 7.7% of African-Americans on opening-day rosters for this season. For the last 20 years, it seems the participation of African Americans have only declined and the MLB hopes to change this percentage as soon as possible. This is also the lowest participation of African Americans in the sport since 1959.

One reason why this may be is the amount of scholarships provided for the athletes in baseball. Athletes are offered only 11.7 scholarships for baseball programs, where there are 83 in football and 13 in basketball. With this small amount of scholarships offered, there isn't a big chance that the best athletes will have a chance to be brought into the sport in college because of economic issues such as single-parent homes. One stat that is a good sign, there were seven African Americans drafted in the 2012 MLB Draft which is the most since 1992. There is also four teams in MLB that does not have a single African American on their roster.

Attempt To Change Participation

Commissioner Bug Selig most recent attempt to reverse the downward participation in baseball was to launch an on-field diversity task force, which addresses the talent pipeline that impacts the representation and development of diverse players and on-field personnel in MLB, mainly Africans Americans.


http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2013/04/10/mlb-bud-selig-creates-diversity-task-force/2071305/

Steroids Affect On Baseball Hall Of Fame

Denied Induction

For athletes to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame need to be mentioned on 75% of the ballots. Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens weren't even close. Roger Clemens was only mentioned on 37.6% of ballots and Barry Bonds was only mentioned on 36.2% of the ballots. These two athletes historically is two of the best baseball players at their position but with the strong allegations that these players used performance-enhancing drugs is the reason to why the Hall of Fame voters did not feel they belonged in the Hall of Fame. For someone like Barry Bonds that very well may be true. If you compare Bond's statistics pre-allegations as oppose to his statistics after the allegations, it has steroid user all over it and here are Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens stats before and after they "supposedly" used performance enhancing drugs:

The reasons for why these athletes take drugs is because they feel they are not performing at a high level which would be physiological reasons or even psychological reasons. They either want to get stronger and better, or want to increase aggression and motivation. There are also reasons why athletes shouldn't take drugs and those are it gives an unfair advantage to other athletes, it's against the law and taking drugs sets a bad example for the youth.

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jan/09/sports/la-sp-sn-baseball-hall-fame-steroids-20130109

http://www.athlonsports.com/mlb/should-steroids-forever-keep-barry-bonds-and-roger-clemens-out-baseballs-hall-fame

 

Race And Ethnicity In Sports

Willie O'Ree

As we know the NHL is not known for African Americans to be the dominant race in the sport. Just like the other professional sports there was that one athlete who broke the color barrier for African Americans and for the NHL it happened to be Willie O'Ree. On January 18, 1958 O'Ree became the first African American to play in the NHL as he played for the Boston Bruins. O'Ree experienced the same treatment as other athletes such as Jackie Robinson for baseball. He is also known to be the "Jackie Robinson of Hockey". Willie and Jackie was being threatened to not participate in the games and to not even be in their respective leagues. Willie was able to score four goals in 45 games in two NHL seasons. Even though Willie was treated in such a way, he works for the NHL today as the league's diversity task force to help promote hockey to black youngsters or players from other ethnic backgrounds. O'Ree still received threats a few years back while he was working for the NHL, this being said it shows that he really wants to help the kids who are trying to be apart of the sport. A lot of people might say that his role in the league is bigger today than it was more than 50 years ago. With the short number of black players in the league today and how it seems that other sports have inherited the fact African Americans play the sport, will the dominant race in whites in the NHL ever be satisfied with the blacks playing the sport?


http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/hockey/nhl/2008-01-14-cover-oree_N.htm

Olympic Athletes And Drugs

Legal drug?

Athletes who take drugs are focused on certain sports such as baseball and football. These athletes are even being denied to being inducted into the Hall of Fame. But how much do we know about Olympic Athletes and their actions of taking recreational drugs? In a published ESPN story, three athletes spoke about how they took doses of drugs or were encouraged to. Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte spoke about how he left the Olympic Village to be in a drug taking experience with the London soccer fans. Alicia Ferguson, an Australia soccer player also stated how the Olympic organizers encouraged drug use by athletes in the Closing Ceremonies.

To me this is big for the fact that all the drugs that athletes take gives them an advantage on the competitive level and how they perform. With this being in the Olympics is even more big since the Olympics is the biggest sport's event of the year. Why are these drugs they take legal? USA soccer player Hope Solo admitted to taking these recreational drugs on NBC's today show while she was still under the influence. Should these athletes be talked about more with them taking these drugs? If you ask me they should, I feel as though playing sports should be fair and taking these recreational drugs eliminates that.

http://www.alternet.org/drugs/olympic-athletes-were-using-plenty-drugs-london-why-dont-we-let-them-use-safe-ones

Deviance In Sport

NHL's Role As Deviant Behavior

In class on April 9, 2013 we discussed different aspects of deviance in sport. One sport I want to focus on is the NHL and their on ice amount of fights. In the 2011-2012 season their was a total of 768 fights; 141 fights during the preseason, 601 during the regular season and 26 during the playoffs. Fighting in sport is part of the deviant behavior such as bounty hunting, academic cheating, performance enhancing drugs, gambling and illegal recruiting practices. The NHL is known for fighting, when thinking of hockey I see it as a violent sport and whenever there is a game there is a high chance that you will see a fight. When kids watch something such as a T.V. show or a game of hockey there is a lot of violence portrayed and for a sport like hockey, a sport in which a lot of kids grow up to play, I don't see how all the fighting in the sport brings in people to play.

This deviance behavior in hockey gives the fans a way to act in a deviant behavior as well. In a article I read it specifically said that "identifying single disruptions and finding ways to curb individual disruptions help prevent collective violence before it becomes widespread at the sporting event". The purpose of this statement identifying individual problems would not solve the collective nature of deviance as it is shared in the culture of athletes. It really only take one person in the crowd for everyone to follow their behavior.


Here is a short video of the hits and fights that was in the 2011-2012 season:
 http://youtu.be/BqQvB6jkWIY

http://dropyourgloves.com/fights/LeagueSeason.aspx?League=1&Season=2012

Social Media And Sports

 New Twitter Jerseys



Forward Brendan Mundorf jersey with his
twitter handle for the Philadelphia Wings.

An article that I read that relates to the social media and sports deals with the Philadelphia Wings of the National Lacrosse League made history February 2, 2012 by becoming the first professional sports team in North America to have jerseys with their twitter handles on the back instead of their last name. By this team doing this, does this mean more teams will try to do the same to be more interactive with their fans? You could only hope that more teams want to have their fans more interactive with the players. I feel as this is a great way to do so, especially since twitter is taking over as that main focus of social media when you think of fans and sports. This move to replace the athletes last name with their twitter handles is being viewed as a marketing plan for their team and players.

Twitter's Role

In class on April 2, 2013 when we talked about new media and sports, a team doing this with their jerseys does make sense since twitter has 500,000,000 users and 150,000 sign ups per day. This gives Twitter, the players and the team a lot of visibility to the fans and also shows how much they want to interactive with their fans. This gives the fans to see what the players are talking about and gives them the chance to be a part of any fan contests that the players may do.



http://www.forbes.com/sites/marketshare/2012/02/13/the-lines-between-social-media-and-sports-continue-to-blur/

Relationship Between Politics And Sports

The point of involving politics in sport is to influence diplomatic, social, and political relations. This may transcend cultural differences and bring variety of people together. The combination of politics and sports over history has had positive and negative implications. The biggest example of how politics is involved in sport is the Olympic games.

 To go as far ago to the 1936 Olympics games is one of the most sport democracy structured Olympic games, when Adolf Hitler was in power. Hitler wanted to demonstrate how the Nazi power was more dominant than any race, but when Jesse Owens won four gold medals that proved Hitler's myth was wrong. Jesse Owens winning would be the positive part for the African American race forward but after he won Hitler refused to shake hands with Owens which gave the gave a negative outlook.

Politics and sport is much different now since there is not somebody like Adolf Hitler who demands on changing everyone and everything. Politics now does want to still enforce their power and have certain sets and rules to abide by.

Benefits Of Sport

There are a lot of benefits of sport, for instance people who tend to play sport are the ones who body image would be more positive than those who do not play sports. More benefits of sport are:

• Help develop leadership qualities.
• Exposes children to both aspects of winning and losing
• Builds spormanship
• More sporting, more positive and stronger

These benefits all contribute to the preperation for adulthood. Establishing a good tradition for adulthood is important to the parents that raise their kids by involving them in sports. Being involved in sport also enhances interactive skills for a social benefit. Being able to speak to someone respectively and productively, helps with future jobs that may come about and also when having to present whether that be in school or a big event such as graduation. Sport teaches a lot, it can be a variety of things depending on if the team you are on is winning or if they are losing. Being on a winning team can benefit somebodies competitive readiness, but losing can make somebody lose their passion for the game and I have seen it happen before. To go deeper than all the personal venue, sport is a great way to expand international relationships and nationalism. Being part of a sport and being idolized for doing such a thing, gives someone the confidence that what they are doing is great for the nation and other people's patriotism. Sport also gives the expansion of creating relationships with people from other cultures and give the name "sport" to be more of a diversity meaning more than organizations put together.

Overall, sport improves many developments that helps with a variety of aspects in life. For some that is why they partake in sport but to also improve their skills for the sport they play and to create a future with what ever that may be.

Agents Of Sport Socialization

As I am sure we all know what socialization means but when socialization is involved with sport there are different agents that defines sport socialization. The agents of sport socialization all consists of:

• Parents
• Siblings
• Schools
• Community
• Peers
• Media

It starts with the family because the parents are the primary source of why the youth may paticipate in a sport. That could be because the parents played a sport before but it could also be because the parents want their kids to be active and fit at a young age so when they get older they will have that same motivation to put in for the future. Siblings would play the same part as the parents but would be a better fit to involve themselves in the sport with them. School is just as important as parents and siblings. Playing a sport in school is a great way to gain friends and develop more of a competitive spirit. Community is less-important than the other agents but still has a significant role in sport socialization. When someone plays a sport they tend to enjoy it more when they have people from the community going to the games and supporting them. Also community is other programs that they may partake in such as intramurals in middle school and other after school programs. The last two agents of sport socialization consist of peers and mass media. Peer groups such as tee groups can be a positive influence because teens tend to be attractive to themselves and have the same interests rather than at a younger age. Teen groups also enjoy having a companion along with them to do sports. Mass media is all about athletes as role models and how they influence kids or teens play a certain sport because that's what they admire in an athlete. Media can also change the aspect on how the youth views an athlete due to what the athletes may have done wrong such athletes like Michael Vick, and Lance Armstrong.

All these agents are the aspects of sport socialization and what it really means. Nothing seems to be changing for the agents in sport.

Most Known Youth Sports

Youth Sports has a variety of sports for young kids to get involved in, but the most known sports for the youth are Little League Baseball, Pop Warner Football, AYSO Soccer and USA Junior Hockey. Little League Baseball was created in 1939 by Carl Stotz of Williamsport, PA. Stotz main goal was to teach players about the game, teamwork and how to play fair. Pop Warner Football was created in 1929 in Philadelphia, PA by Joseph J. Tomlin. This league got its name in honor of a legendary coach at Temple University, Glenn "Pop" Warner. This league teaches the youth organized football in safe conditions. AYSO Soccer is the sport that attracts the parents more than basketball, football, and hockey. Many parents find soccer to be less violent as the other sports. AYSO was founded in Los Angeles in 1964 in Hans Stierle. For the players who never kicked a ball was taught how to play. USA Junior Hockey was organized in 1999, much later than the others. This league is open to players of age 20 or younger. The goal for this league was to provide players with an opportunity to play the game and learn how to play. It was also helpful for the coaches and referees to improve.

For each league in youth sports, they have one goal and that is to develop the skills of that sport for each player. To also enhance the knowledge for what ever the sport may be. Overall, youth sports give the best opportunity for players at a young and to develop good sportsmanship for the sport they play, to prepare them for the next level if that is what the case may be.