A Research On Major League Baseball - 1168 Words

According to Thomas Wilson, â€Å"sociology of sport findings present [that]†¦ the higher one’s social class, the more likely one is to be involved in sports. Studies have repeatedly shown that indicators of social class are positive predictors of sport involvement in the general† (2002). However, not much research has been done to look at the relationship between cultural and economic capital provided to a fledging athlete by their hometown and the pattern of success it will present to them in their later life. For my project, I will focus on Major League Baseball due to its accessibility of raw, open source data online. The hypothesis is that socio-economic inequality not only presents unequal opportunities for economic improvement for†¦show more content†¦And what we’ve found is that kids in cities are now much less likely to participate in sports than kids in suburbs† (â€Å"Next Level,† 2011). Joshua Kjerluf Dubrow and Jimi Adams conducted a study on NBA players in which they coded the player’s childhood income status from old news clippings. They found that an African-American child from low-income family had a 37% lower chance of making an NBA roster than an African-American child from a middle or upper-income family. A white child from a low-income family is 75 percent less likely to become an NBA player than middle-class or upper-income whites (2010). Dubrow and Adams state that â€Å"the intersection of race, class, and family structure background presents unequal pathways into the league† (2010). NBA players tend to come from hometowns with median populations of around 110,000 people and are 59% white. Around 34% of black athletes in the NBA come from a household earning no more than 150% of the poverty line. Interestingly enough, 0% of white NBA players come from single parent homes (Dubrow and Adams 2010). In order to observe the effect of socio-economic differences from childhood on the opportunity in which to play in the MLB, and then to win a World Series title, I will use each player’s median hometown income and population, averaged out over 18 years and calibrated today’s dollars. To answer the first part of