Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie, And…Racism

Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie, And…Racism

– By Ed Kociela –

It’s supposed to be America’s Great National Pastime, the thing we cling to from boyhood dreams to fading memories of our glory days.

And, in some respects, I guess at least part of that remains true.

I can remember the sights and scents of the industrial-looking shrine they called Sportsman’s Park where, as a child, I would sit in the stands and root for the St. Louis Cardinals, particularly Stan Musial. That little plot of earth at the corner of Grand and Dodier in St. Louis was as blue-collar as it got, many of the residents walking to work at the Carter Carburetor plant near the ballpark. On the nights when the Cardinals played at home, a little Hispanic man would push his tamale cart up and down the streets near the stadium after the game, the spicy scent carried in the hot, damp, summer air.

I was quite young when I started to realize that these athletes, nah, these gods of baseball, lived lives much more complicated than the stats I had memorized off of the back of their baseball cards. I learned that they often had to stay in separate hotels and motels because of the color of their skin, that they might not get favorable calls from an umpire if they were of Latin descent, that most of them came into the big leagues with two strikes against them because of their culture and heritage.

It all came back to me the other day when one baseball Hall of Famer dissed a future Hall of Famer with an ignominious racial taunt.

Jack Morris, who barely made it into the HOF with a record some say was undeserving of the honor, was broadcasting a game between the Detroit Tigers and Los Angeles Angels when he used a caricature of an Asian accent to describe how the Tigers’ pitcher should be “Very, very careful” in how he pitched to Shohei Ohtani, who was coming to the plate.

Ohtani, a young man from Japan, is turning Major League Baseball on its head. At a time when the game is being killed with statistics that may or may not shape the outcome of a game, when the cost of a ticket rarely leaves enough in your wallet for some peanuts and Cracker Jack, and when most of the players in the league would not have made it past the minor leagues back when Musial played but are taking down several million a year in salary now, Ohtani is your deep, clean breath of fresh air as he dismantles Mantle and, Lord have mercy, benches The Babe as he marches on to become possibly the greatest of all time. He can pitch, he leads MLB in home runs, he can hit for average, run the bases, play the outfield.

He’s bigger than Babe Ruth, at least during this spectacular season.

And, old white guys like Morris don’t like it.

Bally Sports Detroit, the network that broadcasts Tigers baseball games, has suspended Morris indefinitely and ordered him to undergo sensitivity training as a result of his performance the other night.

We are already seeing, however, some who claim that as a 66-year-old, Morris is of a different generation when racial slurs and epithets were more common, or at the very least, spoken more in public, suggesting, perhaps, that we should shrug it off as a slip of the tongue.

But, Bally Sports Detroit did the right thing. Just because Morris is of a certain age does not give him a pass for spewing in a racist manner.

We saw this before, of course.

When Henry Aaron was chasing Babe Ruth’s career home run record his life was threatened on a daily basis by bigots. In 1998, when Mark McGwire hit his 62^nd home run of the season to top Roger Maris (61) and Ruth (60) for the single-season record the game was stopped and the ‘rolled-up McGwire, who would go on to hit 70 homers that year, was given a classic Corvette.

But, Aaron’s ordeal wasn’t the beginning, of baseball’s racist roots, either.

I can recall when the Cardinals would go to spring training in St. Petersburg, Florida and the players of color were forced to stay in separate motels until stand-up guys like Tim McCarver, Mike Shannon, and Musial, plus team-owner Gussie Busch challenged Jim Crow to a knockdown-drag-out. They won when Busch bought out all of the rooms at a St. Petersburgh motel so all of the players and their families could stay together during spring training. This was a dozen or so years after Jackie Robinson supposedly broke baseball’s color barrier, around the time The Boston Red Sox became the last segregated team in MLB by putting Pumpsie Green on the field.

And, of course, there was the Pre-Jackie Robinson Era when players of color played in the Negro Leagues, as they were called because the major league organizations would not sign them.

Look, more than any other sport, baseball is analogous to our American culture, a reflection of our humanity. It’s often described reverentially as a poetic, serene game, but the truth is, despite that there rolls an undercurrent – sometimes subtle, sometimes not – where the truth abides and people like Morris are exposed.

So we forget the warriors like Bob Gibson, Bill White, Curt Flood, Frank Robinson, Roy Campanella, Roberto Clemente, Aaron, and, yes, Jackie Robinson and the others who were fierce in their desire to level that playing field and break new ground as we continue our love affair with the game.

Unfortunately, it is no longer just a game. That’s why there should be no place in Major League Baseball for Jack Morris or his kind who would denigrate the human spirit and dignity with such painful slurs.

Shohei Ohtani, who has shown incredible poise on and off the field this season, said he wasn’t offended and that the remarks were not personal before adding that “It’s kind of a tough spot.”

Yes, it is “kind of a tough spot,” one that not only MLB, but our American culture must resolve.

Whether young, old or in between.

Viewpoints and perspectives expressed throughout The Independent are those of the individual contributors. They do not necessarily reflect those held by the staff of The Independent or our advertising sponsors. Your comments, rebuttals, and contributions are welcome in accordance with our Terms of Service. Please be respectful and abide by our Community Rules. If you have privacy concerns you can view our Privacy Policy here. Thank you! 

Click here to submit an article, guest opinion piece, or a Letter to the Editor