Next Year the Astros Won’t Be So Colorless
By Richard Davis (10/27/05)
So you thought you were going to make it through the World Series without being called a racist. Don’t be a fool. This is 2005. The Houston Astros didn’t have any black players, and somebody’s got to take the blame. Astros general manager Tim Purpura says that too few blacks creates a “huge, huge problem for baseball.” Problems that huge in America have only one cause, and you’re it, my white friend.
Blacks accounted for just 9 percent of big-leaguers this year. Why? According to Joe Morgan, who attained fame, a sizable fortune, a hall of fame sports career and a lucrative gig as a TV announcer despite unremitting efforts by whites to keep the black man down, the cause is the “perception among African-American kids that they’re not welcome here.” So much for there being no crying in baseball.
Let me see if I’ve got this straight. Seven-year-old black boys are choosing not to go outside and play baseball because they don’t feel they’d be welcome in the big leagues. Of course they’ve never heard of Willie Mays, Barry Bonds, Reggie Jackson or Hank Aaron.
No, their finely tuned racial sensors tell them there’s just no point in learning the game anymore. If they’re going to be so unwelcome in Yankee Stadium -- paid just minimum wage, never applauded, forced to ride in the back of the team bus -- then forget it. They’ll just learn to dribble basketballs instead. Those NBA fans are so much more welcoming, and if you don’t feel the love, you can just jump into the stands and beat the snot out of them. Now that’s sport.
I doubt I ever put on a glove as a kid thinking I was going to be welcome in the big leagues. Maybe as a groundskeeper, but even that was a long shot given my lifelong aversion to grass cutting. Then there’s those thousands of Negro League players who managed to learn the game pretty well knowing with absolute certainty they’d never be welcomed on the white man’s field of dreams.
In any case, racial logic today says you count heads, and if there aren’t not enough black ones, then it’s racism, subtle though the white man is making it these days. No one can say exactly how whitey is pulling the welcome mat out from under those black kids, but you know he is, and furthermore, as always, it’s entirely up to him to fix the problem.
“We know we have work to do,” said a sniveling, driveling commissioner Bud Selig, the only person in baseball no one suspects of using steroids. “I’m very aware, I’m extremely sensitive about it, and I feel badly about it.” I feel a little nauseated myself.
Of course no one feels badly at all that NBA teams are even more racially segregated. You have to look far down the bench to find a white American, and he’s probably folding towels. Then there’s football. Let’s see, how many Asians, Mexicans, Jews, Arabs or Indians do you find? No one has a huge, huge problem with any of those racial disparities.
Just as Selig was castigating himself for not having enough black players, Air Force Academy coach Fisher Deberry was being castigated for saying the same thing, that his team didn’t have enough black players. The difference was that Selig, Morgan, et al, think more blacks are needed purely for racial reasons. Deberry wants them to make his team more competitive.
Fretting over a loss to Texas Tech, Deberry suggested that the academy needed to diversify its roster because it “just seems that … Afro-American kids can run very, very well.” It’s impossible to argue against that observation given the state of athletics today -- name one white sprinter -- but Africans in America don’t permit suggestions that they are different in any manner, all evidence to the contrary. That’s prohibited speech, as Deberry learned the hard way.
In truth Deberry, Selig and Morgan are all racists in the same vein, only Selig and Morgan are a little more advanced, that is, more dishonest. Neither Selig or Morgan could tell you why there should be more blacks in baseball. A good argument could be made for more blacks in grad schools, but the same argument doesn’t hold for sports. If there should be more blacks in baseball, then there should be more whites in basketball and football. And don’t even mention the other races and ethnic groups. Why shouldn’t they get to play? (Which really isn’t a bad question.)
All you can say for sure is that there’s going to be more blacks in Houston next season. I don’t bet on games, but I’d bet the farm on that.
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