Pirates’ McCutchen says baseball leaves low income kids in the dust

Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Andrew McCutchen says that baseball has increasingly been leaving lower income kids in the dust.

Pirates outfielder Andrew McCutchen is one of several pro athletes taking part in former MLB shortstop Derek Jeter’s The Player’s Tribune, which gives professional athletes a media platform of their own. In McCutchen’s case, he serves as a senior editor of the platform. On Friday, he published a thought-provoking article about how lower income kids are increasingly being left behind in the sport of baseball.

McCutchen uses the recent Jackie Robinson West incident to highlight his point on how lower income kids are being “frozen” out of the sport because their families are unable to support traveling the baseball circuit. In the article, the Pirates outfielder goes over a list of costs that parents have to foot in order to support their kids playing baseball. There’s equipment, cost of gas and lodging when traveling and then on top of that, tournament fees. He then adds that it never really ends when kids are trying to climb into the big leagues. High school, college and the minor leagues are the same way, with minor leaguers being paid less than minimum wage.

“The fact is, no matter how good you are, you’re not getting a full ride in baseball,” he says.

McCutchen revealed that if he had not torn his ACL at 15 years-old, he would have gone into playing football in college versus baseball. The reason for this is that he would have gotten a full ride to play football, whereas he could only expect 70 percent from baseball.

In talking about how many kids quit baseball due to not having funds, McCutchen reveals that he was lucky enough to have financial backing from people other than his immediate family, since they weren’t rich. He talked about what might help.

“When I was a kid, I looked at baseball players growing up in Latin America with a lot of envy. If you’re a talented kid in the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico, a team can come along and say, “We’re going to sign you for $50,000 and take you into our organization and develop you, feed you, take care of your travel. To me, as a 14-year-old kid whose family was struggling, that would have meant everything to me. I would have taken that deal in a second. That kind of system would make the game a lot more attractive to kids from low-income families.”

What McCutchen is saying is that baseball is essentially boxing out a large section of the population due to its lack of support through the ranks. With minor leaguers being paid peanuts and most players having to stay there awhile before getting to the majors, it effectively keeps a lot of people out of the sport, and that can’t be good for the future.

H/T Hard Ball Talk

Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Andrew McCutchen says that baseball has increasingly been leaving lower income kids in the dust.

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