Internal and External Factors: Connecting the Participation Trends of African Americans and Latin Americans in Major League Baseball

The ethnic profile of Major League Baseball has become diverse since its integration in 1947. The globalization and outsourcing of the sport has resulted in varying participation trends among different ethnicities. This study focuses on the drastically different participation trends of African Americans and Latin Americans in Major League Baseball, providing an analysis of the factors that are producing each. While historians have focused on one or the other, there has been little attempt to connect these two trends with one another. The opening chapter will provide a historical overview of African American and Latin American participation in Major League Baseball. Chapter two will examine the external factors shaping each trend, citing youth participation as the basis of major league participation rates. Chapter three will then look at the internal factors effecting each trend, focusing on big business in Major League Baseball and the profitability of recruiting. By examining the factors that are producing the decline in African American and increase in Latin American participation, this study argues that the two trends are closely related with one another through the internal and external factors causing each trend. The internal factors occurring within Major League Baseball and external factors produced outside of Major League baseball are intertwined producing an evolving cycle of African American decline and Latin American incline in participation