The starting catcher for the National League All-Star team tonight is my new favorite baseball player, Russell Martin of the Dodgers. He's an example of a phenomenon I've been noticing. As African-American culture becomes more narrowly focused on a few areas, such as football and basketball but not baseball, that leaves big openings for part-black people raised in white culture. Martin's father was an African-American and his mother a white Quebecois. He spent a few years of his childhood living in
Catching is a highly technical skill, unlike playing the outfield where sheer footspeed matters most. So, as African Americans have lost interest in baseball, the number of African Americans catchers has dropped particularly sharply. In Bill James' second version of his Baseball Historical Abstract covering 1875-2000, there are only four African American catchers among the top 100 catchers, and those from fairly early after integration (Ray Campanella, who had an Italian father, Elston Howard, John Roseboro, and Earl Battey). In contrast there are 27 African American centerfielders (the position demanding the most speed) among the top 100.
So, it's not surprising that a star catcher with some black descent will have grown up in a largely white cultural milieu.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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Martin seems to be notably lighter than most racially mixed people. I suspect that his father was racially mixed himself, so Russell Martin is no more than one-quarter black, maybe even les.
Steve, I don't think you've commented yet on the new Chicago Bulls player -- Joakim Noah. His tennis-champion father is French-African, his mother was Miss Sweden and runner-up for Miss Universe.
How do you think he'll do in terms of popularity?
I think you meant *Roy* Campanella.
Since this is easier than emailing Steve...
http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSEIC04599320070710?feedType=RSS&rpc=22&sp=true
Shocking!
Women drawn to men with muscles
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Muscular young men are likely to have more sex partners than their less-chiseled peers...
Integration - shepherding blacks into a "white milieu" and hoping it rubs off on them - must be good, if we get such great baseball players out of it. Of course, what rubs off on white people is a subject a little more serious than a baseball game.
dude, one mulatto person winning american idol is not a trend. that's some bad statistics for a statistics crazy blogger.
i already used the soundscan numbers on this one. there are very few mulatto people selling records in the US. go to billboard.com and check it out.
all evidence and data point in exactly the opposite direction. this is like the idea that "Payton Manning plays no worse under pressure than other quarterbacks". any data you could find on the subject directly contradict the basic premise.
probably the only interesting effect here is that black americans don't want to play catcher.
in football, they don't want to kick. no matter what, most of them refuse to learn how to do kickoffs, field goals, or punts. in many black towns where all the players on the high school team are black, it's practically as if they pick straws, and the loser gets to kick that day.
they'd rather miss every single extra point and give away 30 yards on every kickoff and punt, than "get stuck" learning how to kick.
Blacks are massively over-represented in sport in proportion to their ability for social reasons (see caste football.org for details), but the preference for coffee coloured stars - whom the elite can easier sell to whites is becoming quite something.
Has Formula 1 world championship leader Lewis Hamilton not appeared on Steve's radar yet? Middle-class home counties accent, presumably white father (it must have been some white relative got him into motors), nice and light even for a half-caste.
English soccer is most interesting. I'd reckon a decent proportion of UK "blacks" in the 18-30 age range are now of African descent, but they are definitely bottom of the pecking order.
Top are mixed race offspring of white/carribean descent. No matter how hopeless (Keiran Richardson) or untried (Theo Walcott) they are they can get picked for England. Anyone who actually has talent (Rio Ferdinand, Ashley Cole) is hyped beyond belief.
Next come proper Carribean blacks. All have normal first names but can be identified on a team sheet by the double-barrelled surname (as illegitimate offspring seem to take surname of both parents). Typified by Sean Wright-Phillips, their lot
Third come Africans with african names. Lower league football only please.
The 2006 England world cup squad had six white acting mulattoes and only one black (the aging Sol Campbell).
The question is, do mixed race players actually have physical advantage at football? Other than France, overwhelmingly black teams have not had great success. On the other hand, Brazil's overwhelmingly mixed race team is the best in the world.
I remember Manny Sanguillen, but he was born in Panama.
eh
Re "Shocking! Women drawn To Men With Muscles"...Note to self:buy weights!
Interesting that Afro-Americans appear to be losing interest in baseball at the same time Caribbean Blacks are losing interest in cricket. The West Indies were the world's best cricket team in the 1980s, now they are one the world's worst.
steve,
here is a trend that i have noticed in a large public univ.. lots of biracial african-eastasian kids (you can tell by the feature mix. they must be vastly overrepresented in the college and professional work populations.
Couldn't it just be that there are more mulattos these days.
In response to "Anonymous" wrting on Lewis Hamilton and UK football.
Your entry is laced with inaccuracies and speculative material. Lewis Hamilton's father is black. His paternal grandparents are from the Caribbean island of Grenada. His father is the one who introduced him to go - kart racing and has guided him ever since.
Your comment regarding illegitemate children taking both parents' names :This has been a custom in the Caribbean for a long time and has nothing to do with illegitemacy.
Kenneth
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