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Every player in the major leagues will wear No. 42 on Monday as baseball pays
its annual tribute to Jackie Robinson, who integrated the game in 1947 and
whose life story will play out in movie theaters nationwide this weekend.
Yet few of the players wearing Robinson’s number will be African-American,
a trend that has grown increasingly troubling to major league officials.
下星期一是一年一度的Jackie Robinson日，大聯盟的球員們會穿上背號42號的球衣來
紀念他對棒球界的貢獻，講述Jackie Robinson一生的電影"42"本週末也將在美國上映，
然而，穿著他背號的非裔美國人(美國本土黑人)卻不多，這個問題也讓大聯盟官員越來越
頭痛。
Bud Selig, the baseball commissioner, on Wednesday held the first meeting of
a 17-member diversity task force that will study and address the issue of
on-field participation by African-Americans in Major League Baseball.
大聯盟主席Bub Selig在星期三主持第一次17人小組的會議，將研究探討非裔美國人參
與大聯盟棒球的議題。
I don’t want to miss any opportunity here,” Selig said in a telephone
interview Tuesday from his office in Milwaukee. “We want to find out if
we’re not doing well, why not, and what we need to do better.
We’ll meet as many times as we need to to come to meaningful decisions.”
Selig星期二時透過電話在他密爾瓦基的辦公室內說到"我不想錯過任何可以改變的機會
，我們想知道是不是哪裡做的不夠好、為什麼不夠？然後想辦法去改善。
Dave Dombrowski, the president of the Detroit Tigers, is the chairman of the
committee, which includes several other front-office executives,
but also Bernard Muir, the athletic director at Stanford; Frank Marcos,
the senior director of baseball’s scouting bureau; and the former Mets manager
Jerry Manuel.
底特律老虎的總裁Dave Dombrowski為此委員會的主席，成員包括了幾位總經理和一些
業界人士，前大都會總教練Jerry Manuel也在內。
Black players from the United States made up 8.5 percent of the 25-man rosters
on opening day. The highest percentage of African-Americans playing in the
majors, according to new research by Mark Armour from the Society of American
Baseball Research, was 19 percent in 1986.
根據各隊開幕戰的25人名單，美國黑人球員只佔8.5%，比率最高的一年為1986年，那年
黑人球員在大聯盟佔了19%。
The figure commonly cited as the peak is 27 percent in the mid-1970s,
but Armour said that percentage included dark-skinned players from Latin
American countries.
雖然有人指出最高峰是在1970年代中期的27%，但Mark Armour說這項數據把同為
深色皮膚的拉丁美洲球員一起算進來了。
“The number got to around 19 percent in the mid-70s and stayed there,”
said Armour, who also studied photographs of every player in the majors over
a 40-year span. “I am very confident it didn’t get any higher than 19
percent.”
同時也研究每張大聯盟球員照片超過40年的Armour補充說"在70年代中期也差不多在19%
左右沒有太大的變動，我很確定絕對不超過19%。"
Even so, the decline is staggering. In the last generation, baseball has lost
more than half its percentage of African-American players. Several teams,
including the World Series champion San Francisco Giants, have no
African-American players.
即便如此，減少的趨勢是確定的，棒球界少了超過一半的非裔美籍球員，包含去年世界大
賽冠軍舊金山巨人在內的好幾支球隊裡連一個非裔美籍選手都沒有。
“A lot of people can say, ‘This is a problem,’ ” Dombrowski said.
“But trying to come up with a plan and recommendations to get all of these
ideas tied together will be extremely important.”
老虎總裁Dombrowski說大多數的人會說這的確是個問題，但試著想出解決方法和把各方
意見集合起來是更加重要的。
Dombrowski’s team features several prominent African-American players,
including Prince Fielder, Torii Hunter and Austin Jackson. He said that while
the Tigers have not seen much increase in African-American fans at their games,
there has been “tremendous growth” in participation in youth leagues in
Detroit.
老虎隊陣中有好幾位非裔美籍的主力球員像Fielder、今年新加入的Hunter和年輕好手
Austin Jackson，總裁又提到當老虎隊美國黑人球迷數量沒有增加的同時，我們可是持續
投入底特律當地少棒的經營。
“It’s something we’ve been cognizant of for an extended period,”
Dombrowski said. “We’ve tried to do things, but it’s apparent that the
numbers aren’t increasing as far as participation is concerned. So even
though there have been a lot of good ideas, we need to get to the roots of it.
"我們必須長遠地來看這個問題，我們試過很多方法了，不過就參與人數而言，很明顯，
人數並沒有增加，就算有很多好點子，我們還是必須從根源著手。"
LaTroy Hawkins, the veteran reliever for the Mets, said Monday that baseball
in the United States had become a game for the rich. Hawkins, who is
African-American, said the main problem was that N.C.A.A. Division I baseball
programs offered so few scholarships compared with other sports.
紐約大都會老將LaTory Hawkins說，棒球在美國是有錢人的運動，我想問題還是出在
美國大學棒球聯盟提供的獎學金比其他運動要少得多了。
Top-level college football programs offer 85 scholarships, all full rides.
Division I basketball programs offer 13 full scholarships, also full rides.
Division I baseball programs offer 11.7 scholarships, but those are often
divided among many players.
頂尖的大學美式足球隊提供85個全額獎學金，一級大學籃球有13個獎學金也是全額，
相較起來一級大學棒球只提供11.7個獎學金而且通常分散在不同球員之間。