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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，大联盟的球员们会穿上背号42号的球衣来
纪念他对棒球界的贡献，讲述Jackie Robinson一生的电影"42"本周末也将在美国上映，
然而，穿着他背号的非裔美国人(美国本土黑人)却不多，这个问题也让大联盟官员越来越
头痛。
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.
大联盟主席Bub Selig在星期三主持第一次17人小组的会议，将研究探讨非裔美国人参
与大联盟棒球的议题。
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星期二时透过电话在他密尔瓦基的办公室内说到"我不想错过任何可以改变的机会
，我们想知道是不是哪里做的不够好、为什么不够？然后想办法去改善。
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.
底特律老虎的总裁Dave Dombrowski为此委员会的主席，成员包括了几位总经理和一些
业界人士，前大都会总教练Jerry Manuel也在内。
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.
根据各队开幕战的25人名单，美国黑人球员只占8.5%，比率最高的一年为1986年，那年
黑人球员在大联盟占了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.
虽然有人指出最高峰是在1970年代中期的27%，但Mark Armour说这项数据把同为
深色皮肤的拉丁美洲球员一起算进来了。
“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.”
同时也研究每张大联盟球员照片超过40年的Armour补充说"在70年代中期也差不多在19%
左右没有太大的变动，我很确定绝对不超过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，减少的趋势是确定的，棒球界少了超过一半的非裔美籍球员，包含去年世界大
赛冠军旧金山巨人在内的好几支球队里连一个非裔美籍选手都没有。
“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.”
老虎总裁Dombrowski说大多数的人会说这的确是个问题，但试着想出解决方法和把各方
意见集合起来是更加重要的。
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.
老虎队阵中有好几位非裔美籍的主力球员像Fielder、今年新加入的Hunter和年轻好手
Austin Jackson，总裁又提到当老虎队美国黑人球迷数量没有增加的同时，我们可是持续
投入底特律当地少棒的经营。
“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.
"我们必须长远地来看这个问题，我们试过很多方法了，不过就参与人数而言，很明显，
人数并没有增加，就算有很多好点子，我们还是必须从根源着手。"
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.
纽约大都会老将LaTory Hawkins说，棒球在美国是有钱人的运动，我想问题还是出在
美国大学棒球联盟提供的奖学金比其他运动要少得多了。
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.
顶尖的大学美式足球队提供85个全额奖学金，一级大学篮球有13个奖学金也是全额，
相较起来一级大学棒球只提供11.7个奖学金而且通常分散在不同球员之间。