Gray Area - A League's Complex Racial Future

BASEBALL’S problems with race are not confined to the stands behind the visitors’ dugout at Fenway Park. No one knows that better than the man who was subjected to racist taunts in Boston on May 1, Orioles outfielder Adam Jones.

- Jack Dickey

On an MLB Network special last month commemorating 70 years since Jackie Robinson broke the color line, Jones, 31, said, “What I see in the media, front office, scouts, [public relations], community relations—they’re white. When you look into the stands—they’re white! You’re uncomfortable now that I’ve said something? I’m uncomfortable every single damn day.”

Baseball is a diverse game, but it is not now, as Jones notes, a black one. According to the Society for American Baseball Research, 36.3% of major leaguers in 2016 were something other than white Americans, but just 6.7% were African-American. The last time fewer players were black was in 1957, when the Tigers and the Red Sox had yet to integrate. There are only two black managers, one GM and no black majority owners.