For all the baseball nuts in the Locker Room ? you know who you are ? this interesting piece in the Greenville Daily Reflector discusses how different ethnic groups are choosing to participate in America?s passtime. A middle section especially deserves emphasis:

Ironic, isn’t it, that the first of America’s major sports to break the color barrier ? credit Jackie Robinson in 1947 ? is enticing fewer and fewer black athletes? Some say the slowness of the game pales for black athletes against the flash and dash of the National Basketball Association and National Football League.

Tyron Laughinghouse, for instance, a 16-year-old Rose High School student, digs basketball and football, but baseball bores him. Waiting in the outfield for a fly ball isn’t Laughinghouse’s idea of fun, he says. Getting hit with a baseball doesn’t thrill him, either, though hitting, per se, is high on his list of kicks.

“I like football because you can hit,” he says. “Baseball isn’t fun because it’s a non-contact sport.”

Laughinghouse’s buddy, Lexter Wright, a 15-year-old A.J. Cox Middle School student, plays baseball, but prefers football. His reasons mirror Laughinghouse’s.

“When you hit in football you can take out all the frustration you have with somebody else,” he says. “I don’t like baseball because you’re never touching anybody, just catching and throwing the ball.”

Estes points to what he calls “modern” and “post-modern” sport to help explain the popularity of basketball and football among some athletes. Modern sport ? in which games such as baseball were intended to build character as well as technique ? developed in the 19th century, then gave way in the 1970s to post-modern. From then on, Estes says, athletes began focusing more on themselves and less on team. Baseball, as the consummate team game, soon fell out of favor when free-spirited basketball players such as Vince Carter, Stephon Marbury and Kobe Bryant grabbed the spotlight with their flashy play and me-first attitude.

It is a potentially controversial subject, handled deftly by a local columnist here in North Carolina. A piece like this in the New York Times would probably have been cringe-inducing.

Oh, and I should add that for personal reasons I have decided to get over my previous disinterest and become a baseball fan. Suggestions for keeping me awake are welcome.