Art Chansky’s Sports Notebook is presented by The Casual Pint. YOUR place for delicious pub food paired with local beer. Choose among 35 rotating taps and 200+ beers in the cooler.

Minorities who are in the minority are dominant in professional baseball.

More than 70 percent of the Major League ballplayers are white, and some of them are the best players in the game like Aaron Judge, Mike Trout, Matt Olsen and Gerrit Cole, to name a few.

Minority players represent about 15 percent of MLB rosters. Among the very best of them are Shohei Ohtani, Ronald Acuña Jr., Mookie Betts, and Rafael Devers.

Judge has been compared to Babe Ruth after breaking Roger Maris’ single-season home run record in 2022. Ohtani, the Japanese superstar, is in the conversation for greatest player of all time because he has hit and pitched at an all-star level in his five seasons with the Los Angeles Angels.

Yes, longevity is required to get into those discussions. But Acuña of the Atlanta Braves has set a new record by hitting 20 homers, stealing 40 bases and driving in 50 runs before the all-star break. Never been done before by anyone in the 148-year history of the professional game.

Acuña, the current favorite to win MVP in the National League, is also batting .337 and has an OPS (one-base and slugging percentage) of 1.014, both second in the NL. As a four-time all-star, he is acquiring that longevity.

The Venezuelan is also the fastest man in baseball, at least out of the batter’s box. Recently, he hit a hard ground ball to shortstop, where it was fielded cleanly and fired to first, arriving after Acuña had already crossed the bag. That seems to contradict the geometry of the game, but google the play, and see for yourself.

The race issue in baseball is easily explained.

Most white youngsters grow up in places where the national pastime is one of the most popular games, and Little League, Pony League and semi-pro diamonds are plentiful. Football and basketball are also popular, but whoever wants to play baseball can join a team.

Conversely, American Black youngsters are more likely to grow up where there are more basketball courts than baseball fields, and they idolize NBA players over Major Leaguers.

In Cuba and small Latino and Hispanic countries, baseball has always been the most popular sport, and it is no surprise those kids get discovered at a very young age and get their chance. There is nary an MLB team without one Latinx starter.

Japan has long been a country where baseball is as popular as it is in America, and the best of those players make it to the Major Leagues. Some of them endure and others flame out and return home. Ohtani is the exception and could go down as the best player in the history of the planet.

 

Featured image via Associated Press/Sue Ogrocki

Chapelboro.com does not charge subscription fees, and you can directly support our efforts in local journalism here. Want more of what you see on Chapelboro? Let us bring free local news and community information to you by signing up for our biweekly newsletter.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Related Stories
‹
Chansky's Notebook: Wild Cards
Art Chansky provides his predictions for Major League Baseball's four Wild Card series, which begin Tuesday afternoon.
Chansky's Notebook: Playoff Fireworks
Major League Baseball's 162-game regular season may be a bit too long, but the playoffs always seem to deliver.
Koh's Notebook: Pitch, Please
Art Chansky’s Sports Notebook is presented by The Casual Pint. YOUR place for delicious pub food paired with local beer. Choose among 35 rotating taps and 200+ beers in the cooler. Major League Baseball may have finally gotten something right. Since taking the MLB commissioner job in 2015, it’s safe to say Rob Manfred hasn’t […]
Chansky's Notebook: There Goes the Judge?
Why Aaron Judge may stay in New York, but with the Mets. As we head into a historic Major League Baseball playoff, with six teams from each league contending for World Series spots, the Yankees remain the biggest story of them all. And it’s all about their biggest name and body and what he’ll do […]
Chansky's Notebook: To Vax Or Not To Vax
I guess winning is more important than getting vaxxed. Former Wake Forest and ACC baseball star Whit Merrifield has refused to get vaccinated all season while playing for the lowly Kansas City Royals. He apparently wanted to get into the postseason so badly that he reversed his commitment to family and whatever reasons he refused […]
Chansky's Notebook: The Joy of Losing
It is fun rooting against the Yankees again. Remember those seasons when your team wasn’t good enough to win a championship and the arch rival was favored to do so? My first recollection of that was just out of college when NC State had David Thompson and Tom Burleson on a team that just about […]
Chansky's Notebook: Hope Springs Eternal
Do you realize that six teams from each league make the MLB playoffs this season? Before the Major League Baseball playoffs expanded with divisions and wildcards, there were 10 teams in the American League and 10 in the National League. Only the pennant winners in each league advanced to the World Series. That is two […]
Chansky's Notebook: The One Who Got Away
Mack Brown was a very good football coach. His father was a high school coach in Tennessee, and his older brother Watson preceded him into mid-major positions. The peripatetic Brown held nine assistant jobs and one as a head coach in 15 years before he was 35. That included being the athletic director at Tulane […]
Chansky's Notebook: The Cost of Business
Carolina has released its salary structure for the 2026-27 men’s basketball season, and right now it has to be a game of wait and see. Mike Malone is making $7.5 million in his first college head coaching season and his new top assistant Chuck Martin is making $500,000. Here is where it gets interesting. The […]
Chansky's Notebook: Code of Conduct
When he left Carolina as chancellor in 2024, Kevin Guskiewicz was dogged by policy confrontations with the UNC Board of Trustees. Guskiewicz found himself in the same position after only two years at Michigan State despite strong support from Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and the Spartans’ Hall of Fame basketball coach Tom Izzo. He visited […]
›