Negro Leagues Lecture

Last night I went to a lecture by Tukufu Zuberi, from PBS' History Detectives. This guy isn't just a t.v. personality. He's a professor of sociology at University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League school. A smart guy. His lecture was entitled "Taking A Look Back at Negro League Baseball."


I was excited, and even posted a comment on a popular baseball blog that I was going to hear about the Negro Leagues, on Hank Aaron's birthday, in Jacksonville, where Hank Aaron played in the South Atlantic League after integration.  Ultimately, I was disappointed. A portion of my complaint is posted on my other blog, but I'll address the baseball issues here.

I met Professor Zuberi briefly before his lecture.  We shook hands and I mentioned that it was interesting he was here to talk about black baseball in the south on Aaron's birthday.  He didn't know it was Aaron's birthday.   He also didn't find it as interesting as I did.  No big deal.  That's just trivia.

During the lecture, he mentioned Aaron one time.  Someone shouted from the audience "It's his birthday" and Professor Zuberi said "It is?  Okay, it's his birthday" as if he had never heard it before.  Uh-oh.

These are trifles, though.  Would anyone who knows about baseball be troubled by these comments he made:

• "When Jackie Robinson broke the color line in the late 40s.  Well, around the end of World War II.  Around the mid-40s..."  Someone in the audience shouted out a year "1946".  Someone else shouted the correct year "1947,"  which Zuberi obviously was not able to conjure.  Zuberi said "46? 47?"  When more people confirmed 1947, Zuberi said "1947.  That's the mid-40s isn't it?  That's what I said.  Around the end of the war."  I think some fairly casual baseball fans, particularly black ones, know the correct year.  This guy is a sociology professor giving a lecture about black baseball, and he's fumbling for Jackie's rookie year? 

 

• "How do we know Babe Ruth was the best?  You've heard of him, right?  He had 700-something hits."  Hits?  Are you kidding me?  An audience member explained that it was 714 home runs.
  

• Later:  "Hank Aaron came along and broke Babe Ruth's record.  What did he have 715 or something?"  Yeah, he passed Ruth, laid down his bat, and retired.

 

• He would say things like "When baseball players are playing their game, out there on the field, doing what they do..."  And he would talk about baseball like that every time.  He was not familiar with baseball nomenclature.  Not one time did he refer to elements of the rules, equipment or any other baseball lingo.   It's as if he didn't know that they hit home runs, or turned double plays or stole bases.

 

• Every time someone corrected him on a baseball fact he said "I told you I don't play baseball; I'm just a fan."

He struggled to remember his lecture was even about baseball.  It took him 25 minutes before he said the word "baseball."  His meager discussion of baseball comprised about 5 minutes of his 100 minute lecture, spread out over the entirety of the lecture, and contained exactly one reference to the Negro Leagues.  That was in connection with a story he did on a field named for Pop Lloyd, as part of Zuberi's role on The History Detectives.  

He did mention Aaron coming to play for the Jacksonville Braves in 1953, but the Braves were not a Negro League team; rather a Braves farm team.  He looked at his notes to tell us that Felix Mantilla was also on that team.  He struggled for a third name, and found it on his paper after someone in the audience shouted "Horace Garner".  Just names he had written down, but not memorized, to localize his lecture. 

No mention of the Jacksonville Red Caps.  No mention of the dozens of Negro League teams who came through Jacksonville.  No mention of Durkee Field, where black players played the game.  No mention of major leaguers using Jacksonville and Durkee as a spring training site.  No mention of Jackie being sent by Branch Rickey to play his minor league ball in Montreal to avoid the racism of the south (particularly in Vero Beach, the normal place for Dodger prospects to play).  Vero is only a couple of hours south of here.

One saving grace from the lecture was that three former Negro League players were in the audience.  I may have their names wrong:  Arthur Hamilton, Ken Fell and Harold Hair.  They are getting pretty up there in age, but Hamilton and Fell each addressed an audience member's question at some point.  Good thing too, because the questions were about baseball, and I seriously doubt Professor Zuberi could have handled them.

I talked to Hamilton for a bit, and he showed me a picture of him in catching gear.  An old baseball card-style pose.  I asked him if he could still feel the dings he took as a catcher.  He limped around on a bad hip.  I asked him what he thought of catching equipment today, and he said "a whole lot different."  I asked him if he had ever been hit in the neck, because Steve Yeager in the 1970s came up with the throat protector.  Hamilton called Hair over and said "Tell him 'bout that time I got hit in the neck."  Hair then related a story from a game they played in Jackson, Tennessee where Hamilton went down for the count.  As he walked away Hair said: "You should hear the story about when Satchel Paige put Arthur in the dirt!"  I said: "He managed to leave out that story."  Hair said:  "He always does."

Roberto Clemente

In the latest issue of the SABR publication "The National Pastime," Peter C. Bjarkman makes an impassioned plea that Roberto Clemente should be accorded the same respect as Jackie Robinson for paving the way for Latino ballplayers.

Put aside for a moment the validity of that premise, which is easily challenged just by reading the article. As the article points out, Clemente was not the first (or second) Latin ballplayer, or even the first Latino all-star.

More troubling is that Bjarkman spends almost as much time depressing Robinson's on-field accomplishments as he does promoting Clemente's. About Robinson he says, "a 10-year .311 career batting average, barely1,500 base hits, less than 150 homers, a single league batting trophy and a half dozen All-Star game appearance [sic] hardly seem the key to Cooperstown." (emphasis added by me). The language is peppered with negativity.

Robinson, of course, also played in the Negro Leagues and he didn't reach the majors until he was 28 years old. Clemente hit the bigs at age 21.

I may be wrong, but in addition to Clemente being hispanic, isn't his skin black? Would Clemente have had a roster spot if not for Robinson, Larry Doby and the like? Did Clemente play under the same conditions as Jackie? Bad as they were for Roberto, they were much much worse for Jackie and Larry.

Bjarkman later says MLB has diminished the game's Latino heritage through its Latino Legends All-Star Team. Here, I agree, but not for the reasons stated in the article. See my post in 2005 on this topic. Bjarkman says MLB slighted "legitimate Hall of Famers" Tony Perez and Orlando Cepeda, in favor of "contemporary favorites" Vladimir Guerrero and Manny Ramirez.

First, it isn't a slam dunk that Tony Perez and Orlando Cepeda are Hall of Famers. Perez' OPS+ was 122. Hitting 22% better than the league average when you are at first base is not such a big deal. Cepeda's claim is stronger with an OPS+ of 133.

Guerrero? OPS+ of 148. Ramirez? OPS+ of 156!

Don't like OPS+? Here are their WARP numbers per 162 games from Baseball Prospectus: Perez (6.31); Orlando Cepeda (6.70); Vlad Guerrero (8.59); Manny Ramirez (9.78). Clemente, by the way, had 8.44 -- though I'm not arguing that Vlad or Manny have the same impact as Roberto.

In total WARP, the totals favor Ramirez, Perez, Guerrero and Cepeda, in that order. But remember, Ramirez and Guerrero are still playing. Vlad is only 31 years old. He's not done. Vlad and Manny are among the very best hitters of their generation, much more so than Perez and Cepeda.

I'm not sure if Clemente should have his number permanently retired a la Jackie, but I'm sure it isn't going to happen by trying to elevate him over Jackie, or by touting Perez and Cepeda as superior to Guerrero and Ramirez.

Is MLB really slighting Clemente by not putting him on the same level as Robinson? The Hall of Fame is for great players, and Clemente unquestionably belongs. Why isn't that enough?

The Black Aces

The African American pitchers who have won 20 games or more in a season refer to themselves as 12 Black Aces. Dontrelle Willis just joined the club. What is shocking is that he is only the 13th member, which will necessitate a name change for the group. Here are the members:



Vida Blue;
Al Downing;
Bob Gibson;
Dwight Gooden;
Mudcat Grant;
Ferguson Jenkins;
Sam Jones;
Don Newcombe;
Mike Norris;
J.R. Richard;
Dave Stewart;
Dontrelle Willis;
Earl Wilson



Since 1947 when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, there have have been 341 twenty game seasons, involving 186 different pitchers. So 7% of the pitchers who have accomplished 20 game seasons were African American. Of the 341 seasons, 30 were by African American pitchers, or 8.8%.



Of course, 12 Black Aces do not include those black players of hispanic descent. Without trying to identify which hispanic pitchers might be considered black, clearly pitchers like Pedro Martinez, Luis Tiant and Juan Marichal would be on the list. So too Joaquin Andujar and Mike Cuellar.

Ted Williams -- Best Hispanic Player

Chevrolet and Major League Baseball have released a ballot for the greatest Latino players ever, and Ted Williams is not on it. Some people are outraged at the omission.



In my opinion, this highlights the problem with classifying people by race or origin. It isn't that simple. And it doesn't matter.



Williams had a Mexican mother and grew up in San Diego. Is he a "latino" player? That depends on how you define latino. If you define it by blood, then yes. If you define it by country of origin, or prejudices suffered, then probably not. The GM press release says they want to honor players of "latino heritage." Does "heritage" mean bloodline, or experiential heritage associated with a particular classification? To me, a list of people that only identifies players with "latin" blood is ridiculous. Who cares? What do bloodlines have to do with quality? Why even bother to classify people by race or bloodline? I thought we were trying to get past all that. What's next, the "All-Irish" team starring Dale Murphy?



Maybe MLB/Chevrolet should have called the list "Players Born in Latin American Countries" or "Players Who Were Not U.S. Citizens" or "Players Who Were Treated as Hispanic Minorities in the United States." Clearly it makes more sense to honor those who have overcome prejudices and similar hurdles, as opposed to those who have "latin" blood in their veins. I don't see the point of compiling a list of every major league player who might qualify as "latino" by blood if they didn't have the same experiences as the latinos who were foreign-born, or non-English speaking, or otherwise identified as a different group.



Although I realize I'm treading on sensitive ground, I'm trying to figure out why it matters whether Williams is included on this list. Do latinos consider Ted Williams to be a source of pride? If so, why, unless he had similar experiences in terms of barriers and prejudices? If what he most has in common with them is a latin american parent, then using Williams as a source of pride is just a statement that bloodlines have something to do with quality. "Look, our guy with some Mexican blood is better than your guy with some Scottish blood."



Was Williams vocal about being hispanic? Did he consider it a source of pride when he played? Was he a great ambassodor for latinos? Maybe he feared prejudice when he was breaking in, but after a couple of years, Williams was the "greatest hitter that ever lived". A player of that caliber had the opportunity to cause people to look past heritage and look at merit. Yet it seems we know about Williams' hispanic lineage primarily because researchers dug up the information after Williams' playing days were over. If I were hispanic, I'd be much more proud of Felipe Alou.



Of course, the reality is that Chevy doesn't care about any of this. This is a PR stunt. They (and MLB) want to ensure they are reaching the broadest possible audience and are "inclusive," particularly in light of the recent controversy involving the San Francisco radio show host's comments about hispanics. They stepped into this morass, and they'll have to deal with those who feel Williams was slighted, but Chevy and MLB should have just left it alone.



And on the other side, if you are upset about Ted Williams being excluded, let it go. I see no point in delivering up another racial or ethnic controversy just for the sake of doing it.

Felipe Alou and Racism

Last night on Outside the Lines Felipe Alou referred to Krueger as "Satan". When Bob Ley asked Alou if Krueger should be fired, Alou said "No, I don't want anyone to lose his job."




Not even Satan?




I understand why Alou and the hispanic players are upset, but Alou has said he is "shocked" that the attitude expressed by Krueger is still alive. Is he really? Does he live under a rock? Is there anyone else here who believes that racism is dead and buried, even in team sports?




Generally, blurting out a comment like this indicates an underlying attitude. It does not mean Krueger walks around overtly hating other races, but it indicates that somewhere inside he sees Latin players as not having the same "baseball intelligence" as other races. His internal conflict slipped out to see the light of day.




Nearly every white person can think of an instance where he or she has had a racist thought, even if not intentional. Some of it is conditioning, because it takes a long, long time to get racism out of the system. Until all parents are free from racism (which is not even remotely close to being true), kids will pick up on those attitudes, whether explicitly taught them or not. In each generation, more and more kids (hopefully) will reject the outdated attitudes of their parents, but inevitably, many will carry them along. It's similar to attitudes we inherit from our parents about religion, politics, the environment, etc., except that racism is clearly an incorrect attitude to hold.




Some will carry the inherited attitudes along accidentally, absentmindedly reaching for the car door lock when a black person crosses the street in front of their car, for example. Then thinking, why the hell did I just do that?




Fortunately, many are wise enough not to blurt out something stupid on the radio...but then, most don't have a radio show.