“Pittsburgh was called the center of black baseball,” Sean Gibson, the catcher’s great grandson, said during June 26 ceremonies in Pittsburgh for the most ambitious black baseball memorial outside of the Negro League Baseball Museum in Kansas City.

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Fittingly, it also was on Sept. 1, 1971, when, without fanfare for a game against the Phillies, the Pirates became the first major league team to start a game without a single white player. The Pirates had so many black or Latin stars (Clemente, Willie Stargell, Al Oliver) that some players that night didn’t immediately recognize the significance of the event.

But at the same time the Pirates are trying to make sure today’s fans don’t forget about black baseball’s stars and the discrimination that kept them from being appreciated by a mass audience, major league teams are struggling to find new black stars.

Go to any park today, there is a less than one in 10 chance a player will be black, down from 27 percent in the mid 1970s. It’s not that black players are being ignored by the majors — rather, it’s simply because fewer black youngsters, especially those in the inner cities, are playing the sport.

Last October, the Houston Astros were the first team in more than a half-century whose World Series roster does not include a single black player.

Black players are more represented in this year’s All-Star game, with nearly a dozen on the combined 62-man roster.

Blue Jays scout Mike Berger remembers a West Coast scouting trip this spring in which he didn’t see a single black player for days until, standing within the shadow of Robinson’s statue on the UCLA campus, he realized the Bruins’ third baseman was black.

Berger is convinced there are numerous black athletes capable of playing in the majors who are being steered away from the game at an early age by basketball and football coaches. Some athletes also prefer the speed and athleticism required to play those sports, and dislike the standing around that occurs in baseball.

“They’re being pulled into other sports,” Berger said. “I’ve tried countless times, called athletic directors and coaches after the season and asked to work out their star quarterback or wide receiver. They’ll say, ‘He’s not interested, he doesn’t play baseball.’ But I’d like to find out what their skills may be — and it’s not only black athletes, but white athletes, too.

“You wonder sometimes, ‘Where could this guy be in five years if would get in somebody’s system?’ I think back to my days at (Pittsburgh) Central Catholic, and wonder if they’d let Dan Marino play baseball like he did, as good as he was in football. We’re out there looking, scouring for kids, but if they’re not playing, they’re not playing.”

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