Interesting observation.

I went to the finals of world baseball claissic last night. It was an excellent sporting experience. The intesity of the teams and crowd was very high. The quality of play was excellent.

It was also interesting watching the contrasting teams - cuba and japan - including the styles, size and speed.

As you may know japan won 10-6. There were a smaller sized team. They did have an excellent starting pitcher who could through in the mid 90's, but the rest of the staff through junk, including one submarine pitcher. The closer throws four kinds of sliders.

The point is that I doubt the japanese players would have been given the opportunity to play baseball at a high level if they lived in the states. Most of them were average size by american standards.

Yet, when given the chance to develop at their own pace and using their own styles, they are world class.

It is worth noting that the american team didn't even make it to the final round. We are also seeing a similar decline in American basketball.

Sorry for all the typos. I really should check it before i submit, but I just don't.

First, on basketball, I had less of a problem with the "white boys can't play" attitude for two reasons. One, I grew up in NM, where there simply aren't that many black kids around and I went to a majority white school where I would play basketball most of the time. In my case, I couldn't fault anyone else for my lack of aggressiveness on the court. What usually discouraged me and finally led me to leave the basketball program and go over entirely to cross country and track was the sense I had that the JV coach had literally no interest in playing me. I attributed this to not being as good, and maybe that was true, but I have been told since then that this wasn't really the case and that I was a better post player (at 6'4" by this time, there was no question of being anything other than playing on the inside).

But Wilbon has not discovered something we haven't known for several years, which is that white kids are fleeing basketball like the plague. When American white kids don't see anybody like a John Stockton or Larry Byrd out there anymore, they can either see themselves in Steve Nash (Canada's answer to John Stockton) or someone from Europe or they can write it off. Alas, Dirk Nowitzki is a great model to imitate, but in an obvious important way he does not represent American white kids. This is a threat to the future of professional basketball inasmuch as many white people will stop attending the games and paying the sorts of ticket prices at the levels they are now if they continue to see fewer and fewer people like them playing. That's a normal reaction (think of all the chatter to the same effect when Tiger Woods "opened up" golf to all those minorities who had allegedly never heard of it before). Of course, if this were a strict rule hockey would be the most popular sport to watch, and it assuredly is not for a number of reasons.

In fairness to our American baseball team this year, which on paper probably could have ripped all the others to pieces, everyone who was pitching was throwing spring training warm-up pitches and the pitchers were apparently on a very low pitch limit as well. To take one example, Clemens joined the team, rather than going into Astros spring training camp, because he had agreed with the Astros to opt out of spring training because he is, well, really old for a pitcher and they need him to be able to go through the entire season (of course, that wasn't the Astros' problem this last year). He wasn't going to wear himself out for a championship that, I'm sorry to say, doesn't matter to the major league guys here because he had no intention of pitching much at all this spring. Oswalt, who would have been a great boon to the team with his fastball, simply did not join for the same reason.

I am surprised the Japanese made it as far as they did, because they were operating under the same constraints for their own league. But the failure of our team this year had more to do with the players' obligations to their clubs and less to do with a decline in the quality of American baseball. This past year, the snoozer of a World Series aside (a snoozer because one team was so incredibly better than the other), we saw better baseball with better fundamentals of play than we have seen in many a year since the age of steroids made "small ball" a synonym for obsolescence and boredom. Now that the age of fake baseball giants has ended, we are seeing a real revival of quality pitching and fielding. Joe Crede, though his name will live as a curse among Astros' fans for years to come, has to be one of the best infielders of the last 30 years, and he was not alone on the White Sox for being a phenomenal player. The Astros, for their part, have some fairly impressive players you've never heard of.

I guess my point is that by smashing different people together essentially at the point of a gun, as we try to do here in the US, we lose something. Different communities will come to different solutions that are often better suited for their members.

Sure, we need to mix together as well. I am not proposing a return to the negro leagues. We just don't have to have to integrate with such mesianic zeal?

The artcile in the NYT a few days about the state of the black male certainly doesn't make a good case for "smash-mouth" integration being so good for blacks either.

In a less charged world, it would have been interesting to have a "euro heritage" team and a "african heritage" team play in the WBC as well. I would just like to see how an all white team and an all black team would play. Maybe they would suck, but it would be interesting to find out.

Woul the black team be able to field a catcher?

Would I want it like that all the time? No. But it would be a refeshing change once every three years to see teams based on something other than uniforms. That is what made the WBC different and interesting.

Although i found the Wilbon article intresting(he makes arguing about topical sports for a 1/2 hour intresting), I was surprised that it was worth devoting an entire article to that subject. I feel little sympathy for the white basketball player who has no real direct role model in the NBA, when if the situation were reversed and a black role model was needed for the black youth in society in general its harder to find sucessful, Black Hockey Players, Black Presidents, Black Big Bass Fishers and whatever other fringe group left to cry about the lack of role models for black youth or _____ youth. Positive Native American role model anything is quite unfortunate and rare but i see no ink on it. Who cares about the white kids not being able to do better on their own without a poster of Brian Cardnial or Wally Szerbiak encouring them to become better? Love of the game is what drives most people and if love isn't enough for anyone then join lacrosse or something else.

That came off harsher than intended.

I don't know if any of us are crying about the lack of white role models in basketball but just observing that a lack of white players in basketball and a few other trends will lead to less and less whites playing basketball seriously.

If we were crying about a lack of diversity it would be no better than Bryant Gumbel's rant about the Winter Olympic games.

<i>If we were crying about a lack of diversity it would be no better than Bryant Gumbel's rant about the Winter Olympic games. </i>

Is is really the same?

Are there not all sorts of "inner city" programs deticated to introducing people of color to traditionally white sports? Maybe not bass fising, but most of the other white sports have such programs.

Also, as the only racial group that may be mocked in the MSM, white people are constantly told how "slow" they are, and how they can't "jump", etc.

No other group has to take this kind of abuse.

Finally, if you were to start a developmental league in order to encourage "white" people to stay in basketball imagine the outcry!

So, I don't think we are talking apples-to-apples here.

If there is real bias against white people in basketball, then smart teams will try to apply "money ball" principles to hoops and gain a stratigic advantage. To some degree this is what teams are doing when the draft the euro players, who have had a reasonable impact on the game.

The strong presence of Euro players in the NBA in some ways proves my point about the lack of developmental leagues for other races hurting their ability to develop.

You dont need five fast guys on a hoop team. you need about two, plus a great passer, great shooter and a great rebouder/hustle guy.

But, in many cases, including the high shool and college level, it is a "short cut" of sorts to put three, four or five fast athletic guys on the court to achieve some degree of success guickly.

This is kind of like the black quaterback in football. In some cases it pays off, like this year at the college, but look at the reaction from the NFL. Overall it has been a bust.

Fact is, Quarterbacks have not been athletic for more than 40 years in the NFL, if at all. Not even the most athletic white players play the position - just look at Dan Fouts who played the position with a beer gut for the chargers.

Leagues like the Euro basketball league allows the players who are not the quick fix type to develop into players that can fill a role in a pro team better than the beter all around player at the lower level.

The NBA has other issues, incuding refing (sp?) that borders on pro wrestling, strongly favoring the "star" player, the home team, and the large television market.

The result is that when the NBA faces a real test, such as international play, it does not compete very well. It is exposed for the fraud that it is.

Also, rating have been dropping for the NBA in the US, although they are now picking up viewers internationally to make up for it.

Daniel's comment is similar to what I've been thinking. I haven't seen any hard numbers, but I wonder if the NBA is going to decline in popularity with whites because of the ever-increasing prevalence of ghetto culture on the court.

Tattoos everywhere (even the white guys!), hip-hop blaring out of every corner, etc. Even the advertising for the League seems to be falling into this somewhat.

On a side note, the quality of play has deterioriated since the 80's, the pinnacle of pro basketball. Shooting %s have gone down sharply as the obsession with highlights, crazy dunks and (particularly) the three-point shot have turned it into a sloppy, clunky, flow-less game. Scores look more like what we used to think of as 'college' totals, 80-78 and such...