ESPN’s Beisbol Life to Honor Impact of Latin American Players

ESPN will celebrate the variety of ways Latin American baseball players contribute to Major League Baseball with Beisbol Life.

It’s been 70 years since Major League Baseball was essentially an all-white sport. In the decades since Jackie Robinson broke the modern color barrier in 1947, the demographics of Major League Baseball have shifted dramatically. For a number of reasons, African-American participation in Major League Baseball rose and fell over the last 70 years. The percentage of the league made up of African-American players grew from zero to a peak of around 18 percent in the mid-1980s and back down to around 8 percent today.

Another demographic had similarly sparse numbers in MLB 70 years ago. For many years, Latin American players lagged behind African-Americans as a percentage of major league players. This changed in the mid-1990s, when the percentage of Latin American players equaled the percentage of African-Americans. Since then, Latin Americans have continued to rise and now make up around 25 percent of the league.

Players from numerous countries are combined together to make up the group labeled Latin Americans. Many of the most well-known of these countries are participating in the World Baseball Classic, including Cuba, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Venezuela. In fact, the Dominican Republic team won the previous World Baseball Classic and is the favorite to win the tournament again this year.

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With Latin American players having such an influence on Major League Baseball, ESPN is launching a season-long look at the many ways Latin Americans contribute to our national pastime with a project called Beisbol Life. Stories highlighting Latin Americans in baseball will be available across the many different platforms ESPN has at its disposal, including ESPN.com, ESPN Deportes, Baseball Tonight, Sportscenter and ESPN The Magazine.

Beisbol Life starts this week, coinciding with the beginning of the World Baseball Classic. One of the upcoming features is a conversation between Robinson Cano and Nelson Cruz, who are teammates on the Seattle Mariners during the major league season and the Dominican Republic team in the WBC. Cruz explained how important baseball is to people in the D.R. when he said, “When a child is born in the Dominican Republic, the first thing his dad wants is for him to be a baseball player.”

Many social and even political aspects of life in the U.S. will be covered by Beisbol Life, with stories about players who have defected from Cuba and those from other countries who are new to the U.S. If you’ve ever lived in a town with a team in the low minor leagues, you may have noticed how many Latin American players are on the roster. At the low levels, these players are not only learning how to compete on the diamond, but also how to navigate through their daily lives. And they are often doing this in cities without a significant Latin American population.

Next: World Baseball Classic Preview

Beisbol Life should be an interesting and informative look at Latin American culture as it pertains to Major League Baseball. Many of the game’s top stars are from Latin American countries. They bring their own backgrounds with them to cities across the U.S. and learn to blend in with their teammates in front of fans who cheer for them because of the team name on the jersey, regardless of where they came from.