Big league bigotry comes full circle - Sportscene - Column

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), July, 1997 by Wayne M. Barrett

The politically correct police -- in this case, black professional athletes and their enablers, the liberal sporting press -- are at it again. They blatantly are playing the race card in the wake of the season-long celebration marking the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking baseball's color barrier.

The height of absurdity on this issue was reached this spring when a column in The Sporting News decried, among other things, that the Dodgers, the team for which Robinson played during his 1947-56 Hall of Fame career, currently only have one native-born black American on their roster. The columnist asked: Wouldn't Jackie be ashamed, and sickened, if he were alive today to see how his old team was behaving?

Besides the fact that the Dodgers have had so many black stars over the years that it would be impossible to even begin listing them all, the Los Angeles roster is chock-full of minorities, including many Latin American blacks. The Dodgers' mound staff isn't known as "The International House of Pitchers" for nothing.

Perhaps most infuriating is the obsession with numbers. For instance, it has been cited that, in 1959, American-born blacks represented 17.25% of all major league ballplayers. Today, it's 15.4%. If you're going to play that game, blacks only comprise 10% of the general U.S. population, so they're overrepresented by more than five percent in the big leagues. Seriously, though, the game is open to everyone and critics would be hard-pressed to point to any of the 28 major league rosters and not be able to find plenty of minorities.

Actually, the case of general managers is where the black proponents show their true stripes. No sooner had the New York Yankees won the 1996 World Series than Bob Watson was addressing a post-game press conference saying how proud he was to be the first black GM in history to guide a championship team. Imagine if a white man claimed to be the white embodiment of baseball genius? Couldn't Watson have celebrated the pinnacle of his wonderful career as both a prominent player and ground-breaking general manager on an individual basis, simply expressing happiness and gratitude at finally being part of a World Series champion, which is, after all, the ultimate goal of all baseball personnel? Instead, he had to hold himself up as a symbol of a race, hoping to spur the hiring of other blacks based on his success.

The liberal press agreed, bemoaning the fact that there hasn't been a subsequent rush to hire black executives. In other words, if one black man succeeds, then automatically all black GMs will bring their teams success. Yet, isn't that a case of reverse discrimination, hiring someone based on the color of his skin? Well. since Ken Caminiti of the San Diego Padres won the National League Most Valuable Player award, all clubs should look to draft and trade for Italian-Americans. Speaking of Italian-Americans, Joe Torre, who managed the 1996 Yankees, ended a three-decade-plus record of futility of never having won the World Series as either a player or manager. Does this mean that if a club wants to win the World Series, it had better hire an Italian? Or better still, does this mean that Italians make lousy managers because it took Torre so long to win a title? Isn't it ludicrous to attach race labels to individual success or failure?

"People don't want to face the facts; people don't want to hear the truth," Florida Marlins outfielder Gary Sheffield told The Sporting News. "But we know what's happening out there. No one's fooling us. I can honestly say racism is worse today than it's ever been in the years I've played.... You want to know why there aren't any black players? Because you've got to be twice as good as anyone else. If you're not, you just won't make it. Why do you think you hardly ever see any black bench players? You better be a star, or you're not making this team. They don't want a black player sitting on the bench making money. You got to be white."

Now wait a minute. For starters, Sheffield, Albert Belle of the Chicago White Sox, and Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants -- all of whom are black -- are three of the surliest and most uncooperative players in baseball today. They also are the three highest-paid players in the game, as each pulls down about $10,000,000 per year. despite never having helped their respective teams into the World Series (never mind winning one). Some prejudice!

As for black bench players, Dodger Manny Mota made a career as a pinch-hitter extraordinaire. Today, Ricky Henderson, at $6,000,000 per annum, is coming off the bench for the Padres. It is true, however, that there aren't a lot of high-salaried black reserves. Then again, there aren't a lot of high-salaried white reserves either. In this age of astronomical salaries, teams empty their bankrolls on their stars and try to save on the reserves. Aging stars used to finish their careers coming off the bench. No longer, unless they're willing to take a big cut in pay. When that deal is offered to blacks, more often than not, they scream racism. Club owners don't need those headaches, so they avoid the situation altogether.