The Chris Moeller Archives

An endangered species

Chris Rock made an entertaining video for Bryant Gumbel’s HBO show addressing black people’s fading interest in baseball. The gist of the message is that, if Black America doesn’t think the sport is cool, Young America won’t think it’s cool. He’s basically right about that, although he’s a comedian and therefore, he has exaggerated some items, such as the damage being done by ballpark organs (they are a very small part of any baseball game and can also be heard on occasion at NBA venues). Also, baseball is not, as Rock claims, dying. (Not referring to Rock here specifically, but it’s funny how we hear these arguments loudest when the Yankees suck.) The business is financially very strong, and still very much of the culture. Baseball could long outlive its competitors based on the support of only white people and Hispanics, but do we want that to be the scenario that plays out? Of course not. Black America does decide what’s cool.

The corporation of Major League Baseball does have a major problem in its promotion of the game. As Rock points out, MLB has bizarrely promoted the sport as a period piece, and at that, a period in history that black players were excluded. Beginning in the 1990’s, the ballparks and the uniforms started reverting back to “vintage” form, vintage being the era of the 1930s and 40s, and let’s not forget how this was a widely-celebrated change. Gone, or vanishing, from player fashion were the pullover jerseys, the form-fitting uniforms-- the “pajama” look basically, but those were fashion trends started by African-American players when they were at their peak population of about 20% of the total number of big league players. (In 2015, they are only 8%.) Also, the smaller, “retro” parks and the removal of artificial turf at about a dozen big league facilities reverted the game back to one of lumbering batsmen and station-to-station baserunning.

Observers, white and black, frequently make the case that black kids don’t play baseball anymore, and that’s probably true, but what’s also true is that MLB front offices don’t value the traits anymore that African-American players have traditionally brought to the game. The stolen base, an art form perfected by African-Americans almost exclusively, fell out of favor with the rise of Sabermetrics. Teams began to defend against it better, but also the smaller parks, and by extension, the increased likelihood of a long ball, meant that a stolen base had become an unnecessary gamble. Now it should swing back though. Home runs are markedly down, so is scoring in general, and the new commissioner makes dumb statements like that he might consider banning the defensive shifts that are being successfully employed against pull hitters. (Why does this also make me fear that he will ultimately be the commissioner that forces the designated hitter rule into the National League?) Maybe the solution to beating the shift—and bringing some of the offense back-- is employing players that spray the ball from foul line to foul line and put pressure on the defense with speed and cunning. The latter round of “new” parks have also seen increased green space, which favors speedy outfielders over home run sluggers. Parks in Miami, San Diego, St. Louis, Seattle, and Queens, New York all would seem to warrant a new offensive and team-building approach over what worked five years ago.

Let's talk about my Cardinals as an example of the current environment. Chris Rock did. They play in a majority-black city. Among their greatest living players are African-American Hall-of-Famers Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, and Ozzie Smith. As recently as the 1996 season, the club had more than a half-dozen “core” black players-- Ron Gant, Ray Lankford, Brian Jordan, Ozzie, Willie McGee, Dmitri Young, Royce Clayton, and Bernard Gilkey, more than 30% of their roster. Last year they had one on their postseason roster, relief pitcher Sam Freeman. Close to zero, but not zero, as Rock claimed. African-Americans seem to still be well-represented on All-Star teams. In our quest for retro-fitted baseball, have we reverted back to the time where there’s still roster space for elite players, but the marginal spots get filled by white players?

Sometimes I wonder with the Cardinals. First, they seem to draft very few black players. The last “core” black Cardinal before Jason Heyward’s acquisition this off-season was Reggie Sanders a decade ago. Where does field manager Mike Matheny stand on this issue? On Jackie Robinson Day in 2013, he was asked by the local paper for his reaction to the fact that there were no black players on the Cardinals’ roster on the anniversary, one of only two teams in the league for which that was the case. His response, "I had no idea. It's just not something that enters my mind because it's not the way I view people... I guess there are people that pay attention to that, but we're just trying to find the best players we can put out there." Okay. Matheny had Freeman on the postseason roster last year, but he grounded the left-hander for the duration of October after an appearance in the first game against the Dodgers. He lost confidence in the hurler after he came from the bullpen and walked two left-handers in succession (on long at-bats each). Yet he brought in another lefty, Randy Choate, to face one left-hander in the same game and he gave up a home run to Adrian Gonzalez. Choate continued to be used through the postseason, making four appearances against San Francisco, recording only three outs of the eight batters he faced, walking three, giving up a hit, and throwing a ball away-- and a game-- fielding his position. During the regular season, Freeman’s ERA (2.61) was nearly than two runs lower than Choate’s (4.50). That game at Dodger Stadium was also Freeman’s last as a Cardinal. He was traded to Texas.

Matheny has no African-Americans on his eight-man coaching staff. In fact, he hasn’t for any of the four years he’s been the Cardinals manager even though he’s been turning over his staff by at least one or two heads each season. I’m certain he would tell you that, like his roster of players, he’s putting the “best” candidate at each coaching position, but isn’t that always how it works in America? Matheny, incidentally, was given one of the premier jobs in Major League Baseball, the one he currently has, despite having had no minor or major league coaching or managing experience. Jose Oquendo, from Puerto Rico, had been on Tony LaRussa’s coaching staff for more than 15 years, and had managed the Puerto Rican team at the World Baseball Classic, but I guess Matheny was the better candidate there.

Young African-American athletes are hopefully considering baseball as a worthy pursuit. It is fifty times safer than football. Its retirees don’t walk around crippled or dazed, for the most part. The potential for longevity and earnings can match, if not surpass, any other sport. Major League Baseball has the only union in North American professional team sports that’s worth its salt. You can get paid as you develop your talent, unlike football or basketball, where the plantation mentality still abides. You don’t get your summers off, but you’re in the fresh air for the duration of each one. You can’t be quite as expressive with your game as you can in basketball, but you can still do beautiful things with a piece of lumber or leather. You can also pick your own walk-up music. What other sport offers the opportunity for a theme song for each player?

Rock’s argument that old-fashioned rules suppress expression are largely overblown, especially when placed in the context of race. The African-Caribbean players are still doing their thing The day Rock’s video hit the internet, a player blew a gasket on the field over a rival player admiring his own home run, and that severely-miffed player was Adam Jones, an African-American All-Star. Does football really tolerate celebrating more than baseball does? In football, there’s literally a penalty assessed when you do it. Don’t we always hear that NFL stands for the “No Fun League”?

For African-American fans, I can’t make as strong a case for investing yourself in the game. It’s the least expensive option to attend among the big four, but still too much. You also need to feel wanted, and for that, some work is definitely needed. If Major League Baseball desires to be “cool” with the young and the African-American, and it definitely should, it would do better to bail on so much of the pro-family rhetoric. That recruits the kids when they’re 10 or 11, but then they’re rebelling against you when they rebel against mom and dad at 15 or 16. Be more subtle about it. Families need to know that attending a game is rated PG-13, but this “what about the children?” crap regarding performance-enhancing drugs has been as self-defeating as any other recent trend in the game. Football treats steroids as superficially as it thinks it can get away with. In baseball, people around the game won’t shut up about it. You have a once-in-a-lifetime African-American superslugger in Barry Bonds, and you do nothing but try to destroy him. (This week, the one charge that stuck against him was overturned.) Compare what he was accused of doing to anything the worst football or basketball players have done. This has been in insane business strategy.

Also, enough with the flag-waving. Ever since 9-11, the goo has our shoes sticking to the stadium floor like bubble gum. The National Anthem’s not enough anymore. “God Bless America,” a joyless, targeted fuck-you to atheists and agnostics, has been added to it, and during some games, it's replaced the jovial and glorious “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” I’m forced to stand for it and remove my cap even though it was written by a song-plugger hawking sheet music in the New York City Bowery. The league acts like it has to honor military heroes at every turn, but never does it honor any other kind of hero. The flyovers, the constant glorification of the warrior state-- African-Americans are our collective national conscience. They, along with most young people, see easily through this pandering plea to patriotism.

How about African-American Heritage Night at the park? The Phillies have one, to complement heritage nights for Greeks, Irish, Jews, and Latinos. St. Louis could use some ethnic heritage education too. The team had to deal last year with online videos showing redneck Cardinals fans arguing with Ferguson protestors outside Busch Stadium during the playoffs. The organization stood shockingly silent after that embarrassment, failing to make the link that needs to be made when you are representing a city on your uniforms, and both the local and national public is perceiving that you’re on one side of an issue because the racial make-up of your employees and your customers is so monolithic.

The team's corporate partners need to get on board with this too. The commercials during the game focus heavily on the white families. During last night's telecast, Dobbs Tire and Auto (the Cardinals’ official tire center or whatever) ran a commercial where the joke is that all the mechanics delay the start of their work day to listen to the National Anthem. It’s humorous, but all six mechanics in the ad are white guys. Have you been in an auto shop during the last decade that didn’t have an African-American or an Hispanic guy working in the garage? For a year, I went to a place for oil changes that was all lesbians. The world is changing.

Trading for Jason Heyward with an eye towards making him a core player on your club for years to come becomes a shockingly important priority, business-wise as well as baseball-wise. To those so many white Cardinals fans that say the team make-up should be color-blind, like their manager's outlook on life, I say what so many wise men have been saying recently about similar statements: that pleas for color-blindness, when the concept is nowhere near a reality, is just another example of white privilege. Race does matter, and that’s what Rock is saying to Major League Baseball when he points out correctly that black people don’t need baseball, but baseball needs black people.

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4/24/15- This kind of thing would help.

posted by CM @ 7:28 PM