The Griffey showdown was one in a long line of coded racial arguments, minor battles between two types: the “standard” white player and his nonwhite foil. The archetype of the white baseball player has always been a study in negative space. He does not flip his bat after home runs. He does not insult the hard-working fans with talk about politics. He never takes more than one day at a time. As a result, he cannot exist without a foil to embody all those “flashy” or “hot­headed” or “provocative” things he is not. The foils, of course, have generally been black. But as the demographics of the sport have changed, so, too, has this dynamic.

Last year, black players made up just over 8 percent of big-league rosters, down more than 50 percent from 1981. Analysts have been searching for an explanation. Some argue that baseball’s retrograde culture and traditions no longer appeal to inner-city youth who have been mesmerized by the speed of basketball and football. Others focus, far more convincingly, on the rising expenses of youth baseball programs and the relative dearth of scholarships offered by college baseball programs: According to a report from the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, black players made up only 2.9 percent of Division I college baseball teams in 2014-2015.

The decline in black faces in the Major Leagues coincided with a surge in Latino players, who made up roughly 30 percent of rosters last year. But rather than embrace and promote its Spanish-speaking stars, baseball’s media have mostly ignored them. Even the Latino players who were ultimately celebrated and enshrined in the Hall of Fame have had to go through humiliating acculturations to make them seem more American. For example, the press insisted on referring to Roberto Clemente as Bob or Bobby, something he hated. Vladimir Guerrero, the Clemente of the aughts, who hit and threw with a balletic violence, seemed to go through his entire career without a single memorable interview or profile.

Baseball still has the power to create the sorts of moments that turn rebellious kids into lifelong fans. This past October, José Bautista of the Toronto Blue Jays emphatically flung his bat up the first base line after hitting a dramatic, late-inning home run in the playoffs, an outburst that shot into every corner of social media. Bautista almost seemed to be staking out new turf in what was considered acceptable — it was the most unapologetic bat flip I can recall seeing in the Major Leagues — and so, predictably, it generated controversy. Nearly five months later, Goose Gossage, the crotchety Hall of Fame closer, told an ESPN reporter that “Bautista is a [expletive] disgrace to the game. He’s embarrassing to all the Latin players, whoever played before him.”

In November, Bautista published an article titled “Are You Flipping Kidding Me?” on the website The Players’ Tribune, in which he wrote about the bad faith of the media toward Latino players, the fact that their celebrating was seen as unsportsmanlike and how the pressure to play by “country club” rules chafed. “Baseball is a metaphor for America,” Bautista wrote. “It’s a giant melting pot made up of people from all over the world and all walks of life. How can you expect everybody to be exactly the same? Act exactly the same? More importantly, why would you want them to?”

This year, for the first time ever, all 30 Major League ball clubs will be required to hire a full-time Spanish-language translator. That it took until 2016 for baseball to provide a bridge between Spanish-speaking players and the public shows just how little baseball has cared about any story that fell outside its usual archetypes. But such negligence is shortsighted. It’s hard to imagine the “Griffey in ’96” campaign without Showalter, or Reggie Jackson’s ’70s superstardom without the press boxes full of old men who bristled every time he spoke. These stories, and all the conflict, contradiction and excitement they bring, are the very catalysts of nationwide interest.