The Chris Moeller Archives

Baseball City U.S.A.

It may not be racism that's keeping Jason Heyward out of Mike Matheny's every day Cardinals line-up, but that's just if you want to call it, instead, the old-fashioned "good ole' boy" network. Throughout baseball's long history, "marginal" roster positions have rarely gone to African-American players. There's always been room for the superstars, of course (at least since the 1950s), but blacks still too often have to play like "super whites" to warrant inclusion at the game's highest level. I will go to my death believing this.

It's not just the Cardinals manager, who earned his current job by never having served as either a manager or a coach at either the major or minor league level, it's also the fans and the media. Heyward, acquired in an off-season deal for pitcher Shelby Miller, is already considered a "bust" by each of the named entities. He's been pushed this week into a three-man rotation for two outfield positions (right and center), along with Jon Jay and Randal Grichuk. Why is this exactly?

This bust, an All-Star with the Braves who owns two Gold Gloves and a Platinum one at only 25 years of age, batted just .217 in April, but has already rebounded (despite reports) with a .284 average in May. He has hit safely in each of his last five games, despite being dropped by his manager to 7th in the order, and even 8th on a couple occasions. He's 7 for his last 16, and even with his "slow" start, projects for 32 doubles and 19 stolen bases.

But he's on the bench tonight for the second time in six games, both times even against a right-handed starting pitcher (he's a lefty swinger), and there probably would have been at least another benching if not for left fielder Matt Holliday's flu symptoms throughout the weekend. In his place again tonight is Randal Grichuk, a "still-qualified-as-rookie" with white skin whom Matheny plopped into the #2 batting order slot late last season to the tune of a .171 postseason batting average. Grichuk is being touted by fans and by the club as a five-tool player, and I'd love to see it happen, but I count at least three of those five tools as currently inferior to Heyward's. (Those would be speed, glove, and arm.) Matheny says he can't keep him out of the lineup so you would probably assume he's played his way into it without question. Hmm. He's batting .281 entering tonight, with a couple home runs in 22 games. Some nice extra-base pop for sure, but he's walked only three times. Also, Grichuk doesn't bat 7th or 8th. In his last three starting assignments, he's been slotted alternately, 4th, 1st, and 5th.

The double standard is striking. Fans took to the message boards two weeks ago to destroy Heyward for misreading a fly ball as a base runner. Thinking initially that a long fly that wound up landing off the wall might be caught, he stayed close to second to tag and then didn't score on the ball that went for a double. A misread, but an honest one. One by a guy with his head in the game. Over the weekend, in a game against the Dodgers, Grichuk runs into an out when he's a trail runner at first and forgets how many outs there are, getting doubled off by the right fielder and sabotaging a scoring chance. Nothing online. Nothing about it in the Post Dispatch game write-up. Both players constantly hustle, it's clear, and I can accept online criticisms of the stripe that "the Heyward deal was a mistake." (Miller, who went to Atlanta, is enjoying a stellar 2015 on the mound.) But I have to call racism when I read items like "Heyward will never be a true Cardinal," which I have. This is projection based on race and race alone by members of a fan base that is unfortunately saddled with more than its share of racists.

Matheny has never had an African-American coach on his staff, not in four different incarnations. White left-handed reliever Randy Choate gets the last bullpen assignment in '15, and black lefty Sam Freeman is shipped to Texas late in the spring. Choate posted a 4.50 ERA last season, Freeman 2.61. When Matt Adams went down to injury late in May, reserve Mark Reynolds was given the job at first base. He's a career .230 hitter who has led the National League in strikeouts four times, and in fielding errors three times. That's actually impressively awful. He has fanned 1436 times in 4503 career plate appearances, and owns three of the ten all-time highest strikeout seasons in MLB history (including the top spot). His batting average each season from 2010 to last year is enlightening: .198, .221, .221, .220, and .196. But... he was batting .250 off the bench at the time of Adams' injury, with three homers, so there's no debate in the media or online about his fitness for the new assignment. Meanwhile, Xavier Scruggs begins his second season at first base for the Cardinals at AAA Memphis. He drove in 87 runs last year at that level, with 21 home runs, a .286 batting mark, and a .864 OPS. He's been given only 18 plate appearances at the big league level thus far, and Adams' injury didn't even open up for Scruggs a spot on the big league bench, let alone a job share. Instead, the Cardinals called up a third catcher. In the seven games since Adams departed, Yadier Molina's two back-ups behind the plate have tallied three plate appearances between them. I'm going to make you go online to find out Xavier Scruggs' skin color.

Carlos Martinez pitched a dazzler on Sunday. The team was honoring his deceased former teammate, fellow Dominican, and best friend, Oscar Taveras, and CMart came up big in those most emotional contest, throwing seven shutout frames, and extending his overall streak to more than 21. Maybe that will be enough to silence the narrative finally, from both the club and their fans, that the Dominican pitcher is "immature"and frequently "out of control." I really don't get this one. There have been no embarrassing moments on the field. No off the field incidents. The man has been hard as nails on the mound, nearly unhittable in two consecutive postseasons, never yet wilting for even a night under the brightest lights of the baseball playoffs and World Series. But a friend of mine at work told me this week he heard Martinez is a head case. Of course he did, that's the story the Cardinals are always leaking. Yes, he's intense as hell. But it's not immaturity when Lance Lynn pitches a fit on the mound, swearing loudly and frequently. John Lackey is "old school" in his intensity, an old surly grump, we're told. So was Chris Carpenter before that. Can't people recognize that these are subtly racist attitudes? Why am I the only one writing about this?

You had to depart the Post-Dispatch sports site and ESPN.com to read that there were Ferguson protests outside Busch Stadium again this past weekend. It wouldn't have probably made any headlines at all except that St. Louis police tazed a group of peaceful protestors, claiming that they were blocking traffic. That turned out to be just another blue lie exposed by personal cell phone cameras. YouTube has the video of the protestor-- a member of a St. Louis-area school board, no less-- getting tazed by police across from Ballpark Village while standing firmly on the sidewalk.

We've been saying this for over 10 months on this blog, but the Cardinals need to start acknowledging that this race problem is their problem too, not one that exists in the rest of society but ends at the ballpark gate. They play for a majority-black city, one of only a small number in the league and one in which most fans in attendance at Busch Stadium are white and venture from outside the city limits to the game.

During the summer of 1967, race riots-- the voice of the unheard and the oppressed-- broke out in Birmingham, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, New York, Tampa, Houston, Newark, Cincinnati, Detroit, Buffalo, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, even Rochester, NY, and New Britain, CT, but one did not break out in St. Louis. There's a school of thought that says part of the reason it didn't is because the Cardinals were playing that hot summer on their way towards the National League pennant and a World Series Championship, and more importantly, they were doing so with a racially-integrated team-- one that featured African-American stars Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, and Curt Flood.

Imagery and identity are still powerful. Michael Brown was shot dead last year while wearing a Cardinals cap on his head. There's a Cardinals cap in his coffin. His father wears a Cardinals cap at many of the media events in which he's casting as bright a light as he can power at police violence and our still-unequal America. Michael Brown Senior doesn't wear the cap, as most of us do, to show he's a fan. It's actually a deeper connection than that. He wears the cap because he's showing you where he's from. It represents not the team, but the city.

posted by CM @ 9:06 PM