The Chris Moeller Archives

I know I'm not the first person to bring this to your attention, but I hear it on a nightly basis, and it's driving me a little batty. Daniel Descalso and Shane Robinson, white players, are always "hustling," but Adron Chambers, black, is always "a raw talent." When Chambers hustles down the first base line, he's "showing off his speed," or the like. It never goes away.

The retired Cardinals shortstop, white man David Eckstein, was routinely-- to the point even of some infamy-- tagged by commentators as the type of player that got the most out of his "limited" athletic talent because of his universally-respected work ethic. Do you know who I notice every day playing just as hard and relentlessly as Eckstein ever did? The Cardinals' current shortstop, a Dominican, Rafael Furcal. Yet no broadcaster ever alludes to this attribute of Furcal's game. It's amazing. This is an insult to Furcal's work ethic of course, but in a backwards way, it's also an insult to Eckstein's substantial athletic gifts. My grandmother could play as hard as Eckstein-- well, my grandma's dead, so let's say my brother could play as hard as Eckstein plays, and that wouldn't be near enough for him to ever warrant a spot on a big league roster. Being a big leaguer requires both substantial talent and substantial effort.

I'm not going to mention the names of any specific broadcasters that I feel are routinely guilty of this, but I will say that it's clear that at least one of Ozzie Smith's old teammates never read his book because Ozzie wrote about this cultural double-standard in 1988, and one of Bob Gibson's former teammates didn't read either of Gibby's two books. He wrote twice, three decades apart, about the stereotypical attributes assigned to black baseball players.

The "Runnin' Redbirds" teams that Ozzie played on in the '80s, clubs that always had a core group of African-American players, won routinely with what are usually the prescribed attributes of speed and athleticism. (The general perception is right there in the nickname.) But daring to steal second base, and third base, taking the extra bag, going first to third and second to home on base hits, beating out ground balls, chasing fly balls in the outfield-- these actions require playing your ass off. And don't even get me started about how seldom you hear baseball pundits recalling the collective intelligence of these '80s Cardinals, men who played a very strategic brand of baseball. Their white manager, admittedly brilliant, gets most of the credit for doing the thinking for that team. Imagine the same '80s Cardinals teams, but comprised instead of all white players. What would be their reputation? You don't have to imagine very hard because the Gas House Gang of the 1930s was that team-- and those guys are recognized today, as they were in their time, as the almost quintessential "down and dirty," hustling ballclub. Willie McGee and Vince Coleman got pretty dirty on the field though too during the Reagan Administration. Vince, in fact, routinely had to change out his jersey mid-game, going head first into bags as often as he did.

Most of today's broadcasters came up in the world during the '60s and '70s. Shouldn't they have the social consciousness, or at least the ability to be cognizant of what their words sound like to many of us? Haven't we learned anything in baseball over three generations? What year is this?