Baseball blackout?

Jumping to the defense of Major League Baseball is tough. When it comes to dropping the ball and PR blunders, baseball commissioner Bud Selig and team owners have no equal this side of the folks calling the shots at NCAA headquarters.

It's easy to blame the baseball honchos for the decline of African-Americans in their sport. They deserve to be held responsible for the lack of blacks in the front office and dugouts. But not for the dearth of African-Americans on the playing field, as some have suggested.

If we've learned anything, it's that professional athletes aren't selected based on their choirboy attributes or skin tone. Most front office-types would sell their soul to win and are looking for the players who can best help them do that. Any scout worth a damn lives to brag about having signed the next Barry Bonds or Dontrelle Willis . So the issue at play here is far more complicated and deserving of thoughtful scrutiny.

Then again, it doesn't take one of the game's new-breed of statistical wizards to reveal that the pipeline of African-American talent to the majors is as dry as its been since 1960. Black youngsters simply aren't playing the game as much as they used to. A variety of reasons have been tossed about, everything from kids exercising a preference for sports like basketball and football to the deteroriation of organized sandlot programs in urban communities. Thus, the numbers of blacks playing baseball are on decline at the high school level, and college recruiters are finding fewer and fewer players to bring on campus.

According to the latest figures available from the NCAA , African-Americans made up 6.8 percent of the Division I scholarship baseball players. That's compared to 57 percent of basketball and 43 percent of football players.

Still want to blame Uncle Bud and MLB ? Then, what do you say about historically black colleges -- schools like Bethune-Cookman and Texas Southern , just to mention a few -- ushering white and Hispanic players on campus to fill out their baseball rosters? And this phenomenon is playing out at most traditionally black schools, according to the latest NCAA statistics.

Last weekend in Houston , Mississippi Valley State made headlines by finishing runner-up to Texas Southern at the Southwestern Athletic Conference tourney. The Delta Devils posted a school record for wins (36). Fifteen of the 24 players on this year's team are white -- including two of the five MVSU guys on the all-tournament team. And the head coach, Doug Shanks, is white, too.

There just aren't enough African-American baseball players to go around -- high school, college or pros. To fill the rosters of the Delta Devils or the Atlanta Braves .

"It's not a matter of race," offers Wallace Dooley, a SWAC official. "If a coach finds players and they come play for him, then they play for him. We don't have any quotas or anything like that. Coaches evaluate talent and offer scholarships based on talent."

Shanks, a longtime force in Mississippi 's summer-league ball, says his hiring four years ago didn't create much of a ruckus because the MVSU program had long been dormant.