As an African American with a young son I think it's 3 major factors that have lead to this.

1. The lack of availability & opportunity to play in the inner city. Most inner city kids don't play baseball because it's expensive & it's not readily available. There are courts & basketball goals everywhere but very few baseball fields.

2. To most kids baseball is the least exciting of the Big 3 sports. Me & my son have watched all 3 & attended all 3 & baseball is the hardest to keep him focused on for an extended period of time. The action is non stop in football & basketball not so much in baseball. Even soccer is constant motion. Like someone mentioned kids in todays society get turned off extremely quick & it's hard to keep their attention.

3. There just aren't many African American superstars for African American kids to look up to. When I was growing up you had Ken Griffey Jr, Barry Bonds, Barry Larkin, Tony Gwynn, Andre Dawson, Cecil Fielder, Dwight Gooden, & so on. There were guys of all different physical abilities & appearances that pretty much every kid could relate to somebody. Ask any African American kid in America I guarantee they know Lebron James or Cam Newton but I bet you close to 50% wouldn't be able to tell you who Andrew McCutchen is.

I hope this changes & I'm going to push my son more towards baseball & basketball because of the safety of it but it's a definite uphill battle for baseball.