MLB Notebook: Baseball's on-field diversity problem more apparent this week than ever; Groome bides his time

This past week has seen upheaval in the country and plenty of introspection in the game of baseball.

As baseball preaches about the importance of diversity, it must also question why just 7.7 percent of its rosters are African-American players, down substantially from the 1980s, when participation by African-American players was more than three times that number.

The Red Sox are rightly vilified for their past sins on the matter of race -- from their sad ignominy of being the last team to integrate, after the Bruins employed a black player to their history of dismissing tryouts from talented black players who surely would have made a difference in their on-field trajectory, to their stubborn insistence on hiring managers in the early 1960s who did little to hide their racial bias.

But it should also be pointed out that, thanks to work of GM Dick O'Connell, a criminally underrated figure in team history, who saw to it that the 1967 roster was full of black players. In fact, there were nights in the Impossible Dream season in which the Red Sox started three black players (Joe Foy, George Scott and Reggie Smith), all of them homegrown prospects. And when veteran catcher Elston Howard was obtained for the final two months, there were nights when the same franchise which had not a single black player only nine years earlier suddenly had nearly half its lineup occupied by players of color.

Fifty-three years later, the Red Sox have exactly one (1) African-American player, Jackie Bradley Jr., on their 28-man roster. Sadly, this is hardly out of the norm. As Alex Speier of the Boston Glove recently noted, 14 of the 30 MLB teams have no more than one African-American player on their rosters.

In terms of optics, that meant that the past week represented a particularly bad week for the Red Sox. When the team grappled with the issue of whether to play Thursday night in Buffalo, the debate uncomfortably shifted to Bradley specifically -- as if he were the entire reason this issue had been brought to the forefront.

How sad that Bradley was made to appear like some token, some representative for his entire race. But the sad fact was, given his status as the team's lone African-American player, that was the default.

How did we get here? Some reasons are obvious.



First, increasingly, African-American athletes have chosen either football or basketball over baseball. Both of those sports offer the lure of a college education. Meanwhile, because baseball is not a revenue sport, scholarships are divided up like small slivers of the pie. Under NCAA rules, a Division 1 baseball team received 11.7  scholarships, which can be divided up by a maximum of 27 players on a standard 35-player roster.

Imagine being a top multi-sport athlete presented with a choice: a full ride at a Division 1 football power....or the opportunity to have one-quarter of your tuition and room and board covered. Not much of a decision, is it?

Then there's the different structure of the two sports, best illustrated by current Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray.

Drafted in the first round by both the Oakland A's and the Cardinals, Murray had a choice to make -- an immediate ticket to pro football and a multi-million dollar salary or a smaller signing bonus, and the promise of several years in the minors, with the hope of one day reaching the major leagues.

But as stark as those contrasts are, the root of the problems can actually be traced to a much earlier age and they revolve around opportunity and resources.

"We have to provide,'' said manager Ron Roenicke, who has helped out with numerous programs in his native Los Angeles. "And I know there's an expense there, but we have to provide the equipment to do this. It's a lot easier to just have a basketball and go down to the park and play basketball. But to play baseball, it has to be organized, you have to get enough people together, you have to bats, balls and gloves. These things aren't cheap. But we have to keep doing it and bring equipment where they can play and get them involved in the game.''

Roenicke laments that, for young boys -- black or white -- the allure of baseball is no longer at the forefront.

"Thinking about it,'' he said, "when I was young, everybody talked baseball and wanting to go to the World Series. That was every kid's dream. I'm not sure if those conversations are the same now. It's more the NBA playoffs, the Super Bowl, and I'm not sure where those conversations are. But it has to start with the youth. Whatever we can do to provide things for them to be interested in the game is the only way we can continue to develop this game and still have the love of this game.''

To their credit, the Red Sox have contributed financially to The Base, the Boston-based youth organization run by Robert Lewis, as well as having developed their own RBI (Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities) program.

"We need to support those programs, (ensuring) that every single kid in Boston and New England that wants to play baseball needs to have the ability to play baseball at whatever level they choose,'' said Red Sox president and CEO Sam Kennedy, "and if we can multiply that times 30 (franchises), we'll be in a better place. We have to do better, we have to grow our game in communities of color. It's really important.''

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When baseball was put on pause and it became apparent that the shutdown was going to take a while, Jay Groome could have been excused for feeling sorry for himself.

Already, the Red Sox No. 1 pick in the 2016 draft had seen his pro career derailed by injury. He underwent Tommy John surgery in 2018 and missed all of that season before coming back to throw a grand total of four innings in 2019. He spent nearly two full years in Fort Myers at the Red Sox' spring training complex, progressing through his recovery and starting the long, slow road back to games.

The start of 2020 saw him finally healthy and medically cleared, eager to reclaim some of his lost development time. He was expecting to be sent to Single A Greenville but the eventual cancellation of the minor league season nixed that bid.

"That's when I was really feeling bad for myself,'' admitted Groome recently. "I was like, man, what the heck? I did all of this (rehabbing) just to get shut down?''

Instead, Groome has spent the last few weeks at the team's alternate training site, trying to salvage something from a seemingly lost 2020 season.

He's not competing in minor league games, because they don't exist anywhere. Instead, Groome takes part in simulated games, facing some hitters who have big league experience and trying to absorb whatever he can from pitchers who have been in the majors.

"It's great being around the older guys just to see how they go about their business and watch how they go about their routines,'' said Groome. "Most of the guys here have big league time, so I like to respect that and see what they do well that got them there. If I can implement that in my mechanics, my routine, whatever I can do every day to get better. It's a lot better than watching a (Gulf Coast League) game that I was doing for the past two years, rehabbing.''

Groome has been working to improve his fastball command. His curveball, which he describes as his "go-to'' pitch, needs little work. To successfully compete as a starter, he'll need a third pitch, a changeup.

"It's still a work in progress,'' conceded Groome, "but I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. But it's finally starting to get toward that third plus offering I've been working for.''

The simulated games are no substitute for the Carolina League or Eastern League, but Groome is trying to treat it as such.

"This is not really affiliated baseball, but it is for me,'' he said. "I'm coming up here, getting my work in and showing these guys what I've got. I have a lot to prove. I'm here, so I have to perform. I didn't look it at any other way than that. The way I look at it is, I know I'm going against my teammates and everything but if guys are looking at it the same way I am, everybody's competing for a spot. It's real.

"I know (as someone who needs a lot more development) I'm up here for different purposes. But it's real for some of these guys. They've got to go out and show what they've got. So I'm not going to be that young guy just going through the motions.  No, I want to be that young dude who goes out there and just lights it up, lets his pitching do the talking.''

Last weekend, with the major league team on the road, Groome was part of a busload of prospects who came to an empty Fenway and he pitched four innings and 75 pitches in an intrasquad game.

"It was my third time being at Fenway,'' he said, "but my first time actually pitching. It was not the first time that I had hoped, but it was still awesome envisioning what it would be like with a full crowd.''