Sad But True
Presented with no implication of racism, nor with any other comment.
American-born players of color, not of Hispanic descent:
2010 DODGERS (4): Garrett Anderson, Matt Kemp, James Loney, Cory Wade (DL).
1965 DODGERS (8): Willie Crawford, Tommy Davis, Willie Davis, Jim Gilliam, Lou Johnson, Nate Oliver, John Roseboro, Maury Wills.
1953 DODGERS (5): Joe Black, Roy Campanella, Gilliam, Don Newcombe (Military Service), Jackie Robinson.
1950 DODGERS (4): Dan Bankhead, Campanella, Newcombe, Robinson.
Happy Jackie Robinson Day.
(PS AT 2:25 PM EDT: To state what might not be instantly recalled: Russell Martin is Canadian. We can broaden the definition to include him but the point is unchanged)
Baseball Nerd 
Number of black Americans on the 1946 Dodgers: 0
What’s the point?
How many Hispanic players were on the Dodgers 1950 team?
Happy Jackie Robinson Day.
Asian – Kuroda, Huo (dl)
Latino – Montaserios, Ortiz, Padilla, Ortiz, Troncoso, Furcal, Ramirez, Belliard
Martin is black Canadian. most of the Latino players are black, too (Manny – hello?)
L.A. is as much Latino & Asian as it is black; it’s also a city of immigrants. the team reps the community pretty well. i know your post was about American-born, but MLB is a game of imports: it’s one of the few legal opportunities for poor kids from poor countries to come here & strike it rich. Americans are already here, have many more options – and many of them opt for basketball, football, etc. with 5% of the people in this country here illegally, and a huge percentage of recent arrival (2 generations or less), there’s not a lot of point talking about “American-born” — it’s not relevant to many fans.
I am struck by the irony.
I always thought that the beauty of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier, or any other triumph of racial desegregation was the fact that we were looking past race, and just looking at people as individuals.
Counting up the number of black players on a roster seems completely opposite of what we are supposed to be striving for. It just seems like a very racist point.
“We should have more black people on the team” is a shockingly racist sentiment. But nobody seems to realize that.
So, basically. Ok. There are fewer black American ball players than there used to be. So what? If there’s no discrimination taking place, I don’t see what the problem is.
As a white male married to a women who is bi-racial (Japanese -American and white) whose first marriage was to a African-American male (which produced two multi racial children) believe me, racial identity is and always will be an issue in this country. My stepson married a white female, and people have no problem asking me about my grand children from this union, “What are they?” So, I tell them the fractions of their their makeup. The best response i have heard is that they are 100% beautiful.
Having said all this, I think the example of the Dodgers as laid out by the previous post omits one pertinent fact: at least 3-5 of the players mentioned are either bi- racial or multi-racial. Trivia: Jackie’s 1st “white” team was the 1946 Montreal Royals, also Canadian.