Only The Horsehide Was White

The last thing I want to do is bump the comedic brilliance of our Weekend Correspondent down the page. But today is April 15, and that is significant. Not because of the IRS, although I hope you jackasses have paid The Man. No, today is the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s first game in the bigs, and this event has been typically, nauseatingly overprocessed by the four-letter network.

It wasn’t enough for ESPN to turn the (very cool) NFL Draft into a two-month festival of snores. They then had to create a multimedia assault around the gayness of John Amaechi. ESPN had the publishing rights to Amaechi’s public outing. So they aired dozens of interviews with him, and then took the opportunity to grill every single sports-related figure on Earth about their feelings. Most of the comments were benign and boring, yet LeBron said a few things that made him unpopular in the Bay Area and Tim Hardaway jumped into a pool of burning gasoline. Conveniently, ESPN was there to cover it all, as if it were a random news story.

Now we have the Robinson anniversary. As it so happens, it falls on the same day as ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball, which has already ruined Opening “Day” this season. So we get the Dodgers facing the Padres, interspersed with millions of clips of Jackie, interviews with old black men, and Joe Morgan telling us about the experience (while staying mighty positive).

A few themes that Joe and the Bristol Machine will beat us over the head with today are: A.) How great and noble baseball is for honoring Jackie in this way, B.) The controversy over who’s wearing Jackie’s No. 42, and C.) The dearth of African-Americans in the game today, how much of a tragedy that is, and what we can do to remedy it.

All three of these themes make me puke. First off, it is the height of hypocrisy for Bud Selig to dry-hump the legacy of Jackie Robinson, when he represents the ownership of Major League Baseball. The only thing that kept Negro Leaguers prior to Robinson out of baseball was the ownership of Major League Baseball. And the only reason Robinson and other early black stars were let in, prior to seminal civil rights events such as Brown vs. Board of Education, the Birmingham bus boycott and the Johnson voting rights legislation was a desire to win baseball games. Plain and simple. Branch Rickey was a good man, and he stuck his neck out at a time when doing so had serious repercussions, but the root of his move was to improve the plight of his historically struggling ball club.

Bud Selig is going to pat himself and his fellow owners on the back so hard tonight that he may require Tommy John surgery. What would be more honest would be an acknowledgement that his predecessors artificially created the color barrier. They should use this day to honor Jackie, yes, but also to be publicly accountable for their stance 60 years ago.

At last count over 150 major leaguers will don Robinson’s No. 42 jersey today. This rubs some, like Torii Hunter, the wrong way. Hunter feels that only African-American players should be allowed to wear Jackie’s digits, which is flat bunk. The significance of Robinson’s achievement was that of creating opportunity, an opportunity that now exists for players of every race and nationality. Why wouldn’t an Asian or Dominican player feel the same debt to Robinson that Hunter does? And why couldn’t a white player show the same respect?

In America we tend to break discussions of race strictly long a black-white border. That ignores the fact that Latinos are the fastest growing demographic in the country and that immigrants from every country, race and ethnicity on the planet call this nation home. Most also play baseball, and for Torii Hunter to exclude them from today’s celebration is just plain ignorant.

Finally, we have this tired debate over the dwindling numbers of black players in MLB. Where have they gone? ask the morons. How can we get them back? Where they’ve gone is to other sports, and they’re not coming back. In 1947 baseball was the biggest sport in the country. Jackie Robinson was a baseball star at UCLA, but he also played varsity football, basketball and ran track. If he were a modern athlete, there’s very little chance he would have gone on to play baseball. He was a good enough running back to make the NFL, which is where he’d probably set up shop today.

These days kids who are good athletes are typically not allowed to play multiple sports. They’re pigeonholed early and placed on traveling summer teams. And baseball today is a very regional sport. Look at the top college and high school teams. With very few exceptions, they’re all in the South and West, where they can focus on the sport year-round. I suppose if you’re a black kid in those areas, you may wind up on a track to the big leagues. But if you’re from the Midwest or Northeast, you’ll more likely end up playing football or basketball.

In addition, the decline in African-American players coincides with a huge influx of Latino and Asian ones. The game has never been better, or more internationally diverse. And many of the black players that remain are superstars, and there are even some that are clean. So when Joe Morgan tells you tonight that it was better back in his day, tell him he’s full of shit. The game is fine.

(Update: The Dodgers-Padres game was as bad as I could have ever expected. I think baseball has made an entire generation hate Jackie Robinson now. The best, and by best I mean worst, was the half-inning that Rachel Robinson, Jackie's widow, spent with John and Joe in the boof. Thanks to Padres' pitcher Chris Young's eternal shittiness, she muct have talked for an hour and a half. Painful.)

(Update No. 2: I don't know who it was, because they didn't put his name on the back of his jersey, but No. 42 for the Dodgers was fucking everywhere last night. He stole like ten bases, pitched well and even made some sparkling defensive plays. I need to get that kid on my fantasy team.)