Race and Sports

Gary Sheffield of the Detroit Tigers had this gem to offer when asked by GQ why there are not more blacks playing baseball. I'll cut him some slack that when he talks about 'his race' he really means African Americans and not necessarily Africans from Mozambique.

He was responding to the 'crisis' in baseball that there are so few African Americans playing the game. I blogged about this earlier, so I won't go into my arguments again. But Sheff brings up a point worth exploring. Are big league teams more interested in controlling their players than having the best ones out there? Is this control issue limited to baseball, or does it apply to other sports as well? If it applies to all sports, does this mean that we'll be seeing more Latin Americans (or Europeans or Asians) and fewer African Americans in the NBA?

Where his argument breaks down is when he says that if an African American and a Latino player are of the same ability the Latino player will make the team because, and these are Sheff's thoughts, the African American players give management too much shit. No kidding? Hm...two guys who play equally well, but this guy's a pain in the ass. Who should I keep? That's not racism, that's avoiding problems. Gary's got to put himself in management's position for a second.

Now, if the African American players are being treated worse and and rebelling against it, that's a different story. But, he's not saying that. Rather, he's implying that black players play the 'disrespect' card faster than Latin players. And, if that's the case it's a shame. Sports is one of the true meritocracies in our society. There is too much at stake for a team to reject someone for a reason other than his playing ability. I'm thinking if I saw a guy get cut/sent down instead of another guy of equal ability because he was running his mouth, I'd shut my pie-hole. I guess Sheffield has a different view.

Where Have You Gone, Mr. Robinson?

Yesterday was the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in major league baseball. While I'm not one of those people who looks at sports as a microcosm of our society, this was clearly a watershed event. This was before the army was integrated, before Brown vs. Board of Education and before Rosa Parks. Baseball was truly the national pastime then and there were so many good "Negro" players that they had a separate league filled with ballplayers who should have been in the majors.

I was watching a game on TV with my f-i-l when baseball celebrated the 50th anniversary. I asked him what it was like when Robinson played his first game. He said it made the papers for a day or so, but wasn't the biggest story. I thought that was weird given how big of a deal is made of it now, so I asked my dad (who was a huge baseball fan in Philly when he was a kid). He gave me pretty much the same response, though I can see why it wasn't a big deal in a racist town like Philly, where Robinson got some of the worst treatment.

Now, of course, the people who some how get paid to worry about such things are concerned that there aren't nearly as many African-Americans playing baseball as there used to be. Why? We'll, here are three guesses as to why basketball is more popular:

1) Baseball is slow and boring compared to basketball.

2) Basketball allows for more individual expression and that's what our society LOVES.

3) Basketball has always been the game of those lower on socio-economic scale (it was primarily an inner-city Jewish game in the 30s and 40s) because it is inexpensive to play compared to baseball.

It's got nothing to do with anything nefarious--the sports heroes of black youth have changed. And baseball's steroid scandals probably haven't helped.