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Discussion Question: Money, Class, and Amateur Baseball

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This question has been on my mind lately, and I'd like to get your thoughts. I have reached no conclusions about this, and don't know if I will, but I think it is something worth discussing.

Two suppositions to consider

A) At the amateur level (high school, college, etc.), baseball is primarily a game for the children of wealth and the upper middle class. Do you think that is true or false?

B) If you accept that A is true, is that good for the sport and what, if anything, should be done about it?

One of the things I like to do is look at the census demographics of where players come from, and it strikes me that a fairly large number of players, more than you would expect, come from wealthy or relatively wealthy suburbs. However, that is just an impression, and I haven't studied it in enough detail to know if it is really true, plus just looking at where the guy is from doesn't tell you the specific circumstances of the player's family background. Obviously, any specific player could come from a wealthy family in a poor area, or from a poor family in a wealthy area.

Anyway, what do you guys think about this? There has been occasional comment in the press the last few years about the declining number of African Americans in the game, but I'm thinking of economic class here, not race.

                                                                                                                                                                                                               

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