Chris Rock Gives Comical Take On Why There Are Not More Black MLB Players, Fans

Comedian Chris Rock appeared on HBO’s “Real Sports” this week to give his take on the low number of African-American players in MLB. Rock began by saying, “I’m an endangered species: A black baseball fan. Why don’t black people like baseball anymore? When I was growing up, we loved baseball … and I could actually have conversations with other black people about baseball. ‘What’s up man, you see the game last night?’ ‘Yeah, it was great.’ Now if I say to a black person, ‘Did you see the Mets game last night?’ they’ll say, ‘What the f--- is a Met?’” Rock noted the Giants won the World Series last year with no African-American players on their roster. He said the “closest thing to a person of color in the stands was their mascot, a bi-racial seal.” More Rock: “Baseball isn’t 20% black anymore, it’s 8% and falling fast. That’s an average of two guys per team, and those two probably listen to Blake Shelton to keep from getting their ass kicked by their teammates." He added, "Some people say it’s money; baseball is too expensive. But hey, Dominicans play it. ... It’s not the money. You can’t tell me black kids can’t afford baseball when everybody is buying Jordans for $300. That’s six gloves right there." However, he did make it known he believes baseball is "old-fashioned and stuck in the past." Rock: "Baseball even knows it's uncool. They've tried every trick in the book to be hip. But they just look so desperate" (“Real Sports,” HBO, 4/22).

CHOICE OF A NEW GENERATION: ESPN’s Keith Olbermann last night praised MLB's new StatCast technology, which includes “numbers, numbers and more numbers and great colorful streaming lines of trajectories and hot spots." Olbermann said, "If you don't like a sports broadcast in which it looks like somebody has gotten hold of a telestrator while on acid, I have one word for you: Tough. You’re saying that looks exactly like a baseball video game? Precisely. That is the idea. This is being billed as being for seamheads and analytics guys, but in fact, it has only one real purpose: To simulate the video game.” He added, "Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, maybe it’s already too late for baseball. But it is exactly the right direction to try. ... This is a video-game world now” (“Olbermann,” ESPN2, 4/22).

TIME IS ON MY SIDE: The Boston Globe’s Bob Ryan talked about MLB's pace-of-play initiative and said, “I’ve been perusing my daily box scores very carefully and noted that on the left-hand side … under ‘Time of Game’ I keep seeing a ‘2’ much more often than we used to." He said MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred's new rules "are actually working." Ryan: "If you go to a game, you’ll see that clock ticking off between innings. It's got people's attention” (“Around The Horn,” ESPN, 4/22).