NCAA Baseball Championship--2006

Just a “Whiter Shade of Pale”

Gary Norris Gray

An interesting but troubling disclosure was revealed when the University of North Carolina Tar Heels at Chapel Hill played the Oregon State University Beavers for the 2006 College Baseball Championship.

The light blue and white clad Tar Heels entered the tournament from the winners bracket. Then won the first game of the 2006 baseball championship battle. The black, orange, and white clad Beavers entered the tournament in the loser’s bracket. The Beavers staved off elimination three times in the lower qualification rounds before meeting the baby blue Atlantic Coast Conference Champions, the Tar Heels from the southeast. Both teams played well and had to finish the series with a third and final game. The Oregon State Beavers won their first national title with a throwing miscue of the Tar Heels' second baseman who threw the ball out of reach, pass the first baseman’s mitt, allowing an OSU base runner on third base to score the winning run.

Last week was unlike this past spring NCAA basketball championship games, known as March Madness, when many players from many different lands with different languages participated.  Sixty-four baseball teams played including two of my favorite schools, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, and the University of California at Berkeley. Both lost in the first round.

On Monday, June 26, 2006, the college championship tournament finished with the final two outstanding teams vying for this year’s college baseball title: Oregon State University and the University of North Carolina. There were thirty-eight North Carolina players and twenty-eight Oregon State University players and the field was white as snow.

NOT A single African American player donned a college World Series championship uniform. There was one glaring difference between baseball and basketball that the NCAA can no longer hide. Baseball has become a "whiter shade of pale."  Not only that, but there was not a single black coach or even an African American ball boy or ball person of color found on the field last weekend at Oklahoma’s Rosenblatt Stadium.

This is just an extension of what Major League Baseball currently is entertaining in their national ballparks. Could it be because African Americans no longer seem interested in America’s past time? Are they not welcome into the sport of baseball unless they have super talent?

America’s mainstream news seldom mentions the fact that there are not many players of darker hue on the high school, college, and professional baseball diamonds. None of the astute ESPN or American Broadcasting company's reporters voice an opinion about the absence of African American players; it is interesting that one announcer for ESPN-ABC is Black, Harold Reynolds.  Baseball will have its hands full and must be instrumental to bring about positive change to this "whiter shade of pale."

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