Racial and nationality-based stereotypes of professional baseball players have been perpetuated and reinforced in the United States media since the 1800s (Voigt, 1976). It is unknown whether or not such racial and nationality-based stereotypes and inequitable coverage still exist today, a time in which the number of minority Major League Baseball (MLB) players has reached 40.5% and the number of international players has hit an all-time high of 31% (Lapchick, 2007). Because of baseball's history of unequal and stereotypical coverage of these players, and the fact that international and minority players have become quite prominent in the league, it is necessary to examine which MLB athletes are featured in the nation's top-two general interest sport magazines according to the Magazine Publishers of America (Sports Illustrated and ESPN The Magazine) to determine if the best players are being covered regardless of race or nationality, and to examine what frames are being used to describe such players in feature story coverage in order to determine whether or not stereotypical portrayals of these players are still prevalent in the U.S. sport media.

The purpose of this study was to determine if the "best" athletes received feature story coverage regardless of the athlete's nationality or race. Additionally, this study sought to determine what differences exist, if any, in the frames used by the mass media in describing athletes of differing nationalities and racial backgrounds. Both quantitative content analysis and qualitative document analysis methodologies were employed in this study, which was based on agenda-setting and framing theories.

The results revealed that exactly half of the articles were devoted to MLB players appearing on the best athletes list for the year in which they were featured. Additional findings included statistically significant differences between the expected and actual coverage of best athletes by race, and that stereotypes such as white athletes' working harder for success, black athletes' being naturally talented, Latino athletes as deviant criminals, and Asian athletes as the "other" were maintained over the eight-year time period of the study, further perpetuating such stereotypes into the minds of readers.