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Dodgers’ Mookie Betts dons ‘We Need more Black People at the Stadium’
Dodgers’ Mookie Betts dons ‘We Need more Black People at the Stadium’ shirt at All-Star Game
Just 7.2% of players on Opening Day rosters were Black, according to a study released in May. That number is a 0.4% dropoff from 2021 and far below the 18% mark of 1981.
Mookie Betts will be at his home ballpark for Tuesday’s MLB All-Star Game, and he has a message in regard to the people filling up the seats.
The All-Star outfielder wore a shirt that said “We need more Black people at the stadium” when warming up for the Midsummer Classic at Dodger Stadium.
Just 7.2% of players on Opening Day rosters were Black, according to a study from The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) released in May. That number is a 0.4% dropoff from 2021 and the lowest number since TIDES began assessing the league in 1991.
Earlier this season, Major League Baseball commemorated the 75th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the sport’s color barrier. As part of the celebration, members of the Players Alliance donated their gameday salaries on April 15 to help create new programs.
Betts also has a history of activism. He provided trays of food to Boston’s homeless community outside of the city’s public library during the 2018 World Series. In 2020, he took a knee during the national anthem on Opening Day. Later that season, he told his Dodgers teammates he would not play in a game against the San Francisco Giants in the wake of the shooting by police of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis. His teammates followed suit and the game was one of several MLB contests to be postponed.
After sporting the shirt he did at Dodger Stadium on Tuesday, Betts and the rest of the baseball world can hope to see him play in front of a more diverse crowd in the future.
Take one of the most diverse counties in America and announce that it needs more of one group of people … not so unifying.
Dodgers All-Star Mookie Betts did just that: overlooking the sprawling diversity among Los Angeles’ 3.9 million residents, and for the sake of posturing that fell flat.
Feeling the publicity flowing at Chavez Ravine before the start of this year’s Midsummer Classic, Betts flaunted a custom-made shirt that read “We Need More Black People at the Stadium” knowing the sports media would remain mum. Or celebrate it.
Had the shirt read “We need more White people,” “We need more Brown people,” or “We need more Asians,” perhaps the message would not have been as openly received as the privileged statement that the multi-millionaire Betts promulgated.
Way to make it a race thing…
Here’s a breakdown of the diversity in LA.
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