Why Baseball Players Aren't Taking the Knee Like NFL Players Are

It's been over a year since former San Francisco 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick knelt during "The Star-Spangled Banner," sparking a conversation about the role of political protest in sports. Yet the political storm keeps brewing.

Earlier this week, Vice President Mike Pence walked out of a Colts-49ers game, saying the players were disrespecting the flag. Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones threatened to bench any player who didn't stand for the national anthem. And ESPN suspended Sports Center host Jemele Hill for tweeting a suggestion that people unhappy with Jones's stance should boycott the team's advertisers.

This all comes against the backdrop of several World Series playoff games. But the baseball diamond has remained largely free of this type of political protest. (Oakland A's catcher Bruce Maxwell became the first major league player to take the knee on Sept. 23.)

The reason, according to sociology professor Harry Edwards, is simple: There are too few African-American players in Major League Baseball.

Edwards, a professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, has written extensively about sports and civil rights. He told WNYC's Jami Floyd that major league teams never had a pipeline for African-American players, and it's getting worse.

The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports found that African-Americans made up about 18 percent of major league baseball players in 1991, but that number has dropped to less than 8 percent today.

Teams tend to recruit from Latin America instead, where players aren't connected to the U.S.'s history of anti-black racism, Edwards said.

"You don't have that sense of urgency that has traditionally been part of the dynamic that drove, and in some instances, precipitated black athlete activism," he said.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated no major league players had taken the knee during the national anthem. The post was corrected Oct. 20, 2017.