We know Magic has great business sense, but does he have what it takes to get young Black folks excited about Baseball in the digital age?
by Mark Anthony Neal | Ebony.com
It was 1987: the 40th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s historic breaking of the color-line in Major League Baseball. The first Ms. Black Miss America had been crowned (and crowned again) three year earlier; Michael Jackson was the “King of Pop” and Bill Cosby was the pudding pop champ of advertisers and network television. Surely baseball, once at the cutting edge of integration in professional sports, would play a leadership role with regards to integrating the management level in professional sports. And what better candidate to make that point than Al Campanis, then the general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers? This, of course, was the same organization that forty years earlier were brave and financially savvy enough to make Robinson their starting second baseman.
The reality was, that since Frank Robinson (no relation) was hired to manage the Cleveland Indians in 1975, the Chicago White Sox followed suit in 1978 hiring Larry Doby as manager, and Robinson was hired by the San Francisco Giants in 1981, there had been no other Blacks hired as managers in the Major Leagues, notable at a time when the percentage of Black players in the league was more than 20%. When Nightline host Ted Koppel prodded Campanis about the lack of Black managers in the league, the Dodger GM responded with the now infamous words “No, I don't believe it's prejudice. I truly believe that they may not have some of the necessities to be, let's say, a field manager, or perhaps a general manager…So, it just might just be—why are Black men, or Black people, not good swimmers? Because they don't have the buoyancy.”
Five year after that notorious interview, Cito Gaston became the first Black manager to win the a World Series championship with the Toronto Blue Jays. Nearly decade later then New York Yankee General manager Bob Watson, also Black, hired Joe Torre to manage the team, beginning their dominant run of the late 1990s, winning four championships in five years. Hell, even as we mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of Campanis’ statements, Bronx-representative Cullen Jones is the American record holder in the 50 Meter Freestyle. How's that for buoyancy?
Campanis, who died in 1998, may have been surprised when it was announced that Earvin “Magic” Johnson was a leading member of the ownership group that bought the Los Angeles Dodgers for a record $2.15 Billion. Jackie Robinson’s breakthrough, which help define the direction of civil rights advancements in the decade that followed seems to have come full circle.
