Strange Fruit, Pt. III:  “Things Don’t Get Challenged In Baseball”

I was struck by something last week, and I?m going to try and lay it out for you. Here?s a game we often play around here: Athlete A: The best ever at what he did. Brought down by forces outside his sport when no one in his sport could stop him. Unlikeable, on many accounts. A braggart, given over to his vices; womanizer, lecher, and abuser. Lawbreaker. Athlete B: The best ever at what he did. Brought down by forces outside his sport when no one in his sport could stop him. Unlikeable, on many accounts. A braggart, given over to his vices. A womanizer and a lawbreaker. Now which of these men is Barry Bonds, and which of them is Jack Johnson? Not that it really matters. Not yet, anyway. As I sat this week, watching PBS? excellent Unforgivable Blackness, which chronicles Johnson?s life and career, the similarities between his story and Bonds? fairly leaped out at me. But more than just the likeness in their meteoric rises, and crashing falls, was the things that were written about Jack Johnson, and the things we see written now about Bonds, or, truer still, about many many athletes of non-Caucasian extraction. If you haven?t seen the movie, please do. But be warned, it is not an easy thing to see. But neither are today?s sports pages. In Unforgivable Blackness, we hear, time after time, what people were writing about Johnson, as he defeated white challenger after white challenger to maintain his title. The deep-seated desire to see Johnson fall, for no more reason than he was black, is palpable in their words. And it was then I realized that I had heard it all before, in 2007. I?m going to digress for a moment, and say that I can?t chalk Barry?s treatment up to racism on the whole, but I do know this: just like people hid their hatred for Johnson behind their supposed moral outrage for his drinking, gambling, and womanizing, so, too, do many people couch their hatred for Bonds by proclaiming that he cheated the game. But the song remains the same. It?s easy to shrug off the question of prejudice when it?s someone that?s easy to hate. And shrugging off that question, in my opinion, has led us down an unfortunate path. We like to think that we, as a country, have moved on, moved past the days when Jack Johnson can?t get a fair shake. But as I watched the images fly across the screen, and listened to the newspaper writers? bilious biogtry, I realized that we?ve gone a very short distance in a very long time. And as I watched the people at the Jeffries-Johnson fight wave their white flags, I couldn?t help but remember the people who flocked to Marc Ecko?s site and voted for him to brand Bonds? 756th HR ball with an asterisk. We have a long way to go. But we need to figure out how we got here in the first place. We need, as Cornel West puts it, a return to Socratic questioning. We need to begin uncover and analyze our hidden assumptions and their logical implications. We need critical thought. We need discourse. There is complete lack of critical thought in 99% of sportswriting today. I would even argue this paucity of critical thinking is the primary reason that (the disappearance of ?n****r? and ?ape? as proper adjectives in today?s papers aside) most sports pages carry much the same prejudice they did in Jack Johnson?s day. Jason Whitlock, a man with whom I agree very, very rarely, has put it better this past week than I ever could: Of our three major sports leagues, the least amount of racial diversity among the journalists/broadcasters covering the games is in baseball. As best I can tell, Joe Morgan is the lone, influential, non-white voice in baseball. Things don?t get challenged in baseball. There?s a comfy network of peers writing about, talking about, managing and coaching, general-managing, owning and commissioner-ing Major League Baseball. There?s significant diversity playing the game. But there is virtually no diversity shaping the way the game is viewed. # That?s why all the steroid hysteria is focused on the players. # That?s why in the years before Bonds turned to steroids to keep pace with all the ?cheaters? we were sold the bogus story that juiced balls powered the home-run explosion. # That?s why ownership and managers never get adequately questioned and vilified for their role as the No. 1 benefactors and blind-eye proponents of steroids. # That?s why Tom Hicks, the owner of the Texas Rangers, would have the audacity to claim that A-Rod owes him an apology. # That?s why ESPN broadcaster and baseball shill Peter Gammons could be celebrated for decades as the gold standard in baseball journalism by his peers in the media. # That?s why Sports Illustrated?s Selena Roberts has pursued A-Rod like Moby Dick, unveiled her report about his steroid use a week after the Super Bowl and has a book about A-Rod ready to be released in the coming months. # That?s why ESPN suspended Scott Van Pelt for calling Bud Selig a pimp. # That?s why Mike Lupica ran me off ?The Sports Reporters? because I refused to allow him to put a black face (Bonds?) on a drug epidemic that by the 1990s was clearly colorless, pervasive and initially sparked by white athletes trying to keep pace with black athletes. I?m not suggesting a colossal, racist conspiracy. I?m saying it?s easy for any of us to fall victim to our biases if our thoughts are rarely questioned by people who look, think and experience life different from us. As yourself this question: how many African-American owners are there in MLB? To my knowledge there are none. How many African American GM?s are there? One, Chicago?s own Kenny Williams. How many African American baseball writers are in the BBWAA? I couldn?t find the exact number, but only one of national prominence was on the list, Bryan Burwell of the St. Louis Dispatch. ?Things don?t get challenged in baseball.? That?s just the point. When a Hispanic player is painted as a headcase, while a white player exhibiting much the same behavior is called ?passionate,? or ?fiery,? that?s something that should be questioned. But it?s not. There is no discourse, no questioning, because from the owner down to the beat writer, prejudice has become parlance.