FAYETTEVILLE - Mississippi Valley State outfielder Brandon Dotson, a black player from Louisville, Miss., sat on the top steps of the visitor's dugout in Baum Stadium on May 12 and offered his opinions about why more black players don't play college baseball.

"It's the home, it's the home, you know," Dotson said. "They ain't nobody motivating them to go to school, motivating them to be nothing in life. So basically, they are just taking the other road in life.

"They complain they didn't have the money. They quit playing in high school because their grades were bad. They like to say that momma is single, that daddy is gone."

Dotson said his parents separated when he was young, but both supported him throughout his life.

"It's case-by-case. It's mental," Dotson said. "I didn't let my parents affect my life."

A few feet away, Delta Devils coach Doug Shanks, who is white, listened closely and nodded with approval at Dotson's assessment.

"It's a complex answer," Shanks said. "It involves a lot of things. More than anything else, it involves a breakdown in the families. You start a kid off by saying, 'Let's go play soccer?' No, you start a kid off by going in the backyard and throwing a baseball with his daddy and there not any daddies around.

"There's just a lack of daddies."

Predominantly black college schools like Mississippi Valley State and Alcorn (Miss.) State aren't immune to the ever-dwindling numbers of black players in college baseball.

Alcorn State coach Willie McGowan, a black coach, also buys into the home theory.

"When I was coming up as a young boy, we were exposed to baseball," McGowan said. "We'd go to the field, throw rocks or have rag balls and those kind of things, but now, young kids are exposed to basketball, especially in the inter-cities.

"A lot of parents - black parents - they don't ... they don't put their kids in T-ball and start 'em when they are young, come up through the ranks and, uh, a lot of whites, they do that."

McGowan said many whites in the South are into baseball while blacks stay away.

"On the college level, the black colleges, they don't promote baseball like they do football and basketball and the reason is basketball and football are money-making sports," McGowan said. But I disagree with that, because if you have a good program in baseball, you can make money with it."

"I played other sports, but I chose baseball because I've been playing it since I was age 4. I was throwing rocks when I was 2. It's my love."

- Brandon Dotson of Mississippi Valley State