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/