Baseball’s “Puppy Mill”?: ‘Pelotero’ and the Dominican Connection

Baseball’s “Puppy Mill”?:  ‘Pelotero’ and the Dominican Connection

by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan (in Exile)

Sports films are a staple within American culture.  From the Hollywood imagination to documentaries, there has been a longstanding interest in sporting cultures.  Offering a window into fundamental American tropes and ideologies – meritocracy; bootstraps; rages to riches; the American Dream – sports films fill the insatiable desire for stories of perseverance, redemption, and possibility.   Pelotero, a new documentary narrated by John Leguizamo,  enters into this larger cultural landscape, highlighting the dreams and nightmares of global baseball.

Pelotero sets out to answer a simple yet immensely complex question: how can a country the size of the Dominican Republic, with only 2% of the population of the United States, produce so many professional baseball players?  In 2010, 86 of MLB’s 833 players come from the Dominican Republic; almost 25% of the 7,000 minor league players hailed from this nation of 9.7 million people.  The film’s directors, Ross Finkel, Jon Paley, and Trevor Martin describe their goal as follows:

The central question behind Pelotero was a simple one: Why are Dominicans so good at baseball? The tiny island nation is consistently overrepresented in the Major Leagues, and as America’s pastime continues to globalize, every year brings a fresh crop of young Dominican Peloteros to the top levels of the game. We had a romantic image of these players’ humble beginnings etched in our minds; poor kids chasing rolled up socks through dusty streets as motorbikes whizzed by. However, that vision of street ball felt disconnected to another romantic idea of Dominican baseball; Big Papi, Sammy Sosa, or Robinson Cano slowly trotting around the bases under the bright lights and cheering fans of a big league ballpark. How does one lead to the other? And what is the story in between the two?

Eschewing cultural arguments, those that emphasize role models and “the single-minded pursuit of baseball” and theories that harken Social Darwinism, Pelotero highlights the social, political and economic contexts that funnel Dominican youth into the professional ranks. 

With only two offices throughout the world, one in New York City and the other in Dominican Republic, it is clear that Major League Baseball has focused its efforts on developing future players.  The desperation and poverty facing those in the Dominican Republic and throughout the Caribbean and Latin America has produced conditions ripe for American corporations taking advantage of this potential labor force, ultimately exploiting workers (players) inside and outside the United States. The establishment of “schools” – baseball’s sweatshops that produce its raw materials – has exacerbated this process. 

Beyond filling the League with talented ball players, Major League Baseball teams use the “third world” because the “raw materials” (the players) are cheap. Dick Balderson, a vice-president of the Colorado Rockies, called this process a “boatload mentality.”  The idea behind this approach is to sign a "boatload" of Latin players for less money, knowing that if only a couple make it to the big leagues, teams will still profit from the relationship. “Instead of signing four [American] guys at $25,000 each, you sign 20 [Dominican] guys for $5,000 each.”  The desperation and poverty facing those in Latin America is facilitating this “single-minded” pursuit of sports, creating a situation where professional baseball teams are able exploit this labor force. 

Charles S. Farrell, who is the former director of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Sports, described the dangerous predicament facing youth in the Dominican Republic:

Baseball is mainly the sport of the poor in the Dominican Republic, and viewed by so many as a way to escape poverty. Mothers and fathers put a glove on boys as soon as they can walk in order to pursue the dream of la vida buena.

But with every dream there are dream merchants, those who promise to pave a path to glory and riches for a price. The buscónes, as they are known, latch onto prospects at an early age, giving them advice and consul on how best to pursue the dream. Some are genuine in their mission; others simply hook into a potential meal ticket. Either way, good or bad, the buscónes have become a part of the Dominican baseball scene.

Pelotero highlights the consequences of the overdevelopment of the institutions of baseball alongside the underdevelopment of society at large (thanks in part to the polices of the IMF and World Bank).  It elucidates how everyone from scouts to the teams themselves take advantage of the limited economic opportunities, the manipulated (unfree) marketplace, and the imported American Dream to get young 13 and 14 year olds to work hard so that maybe their parents can have a better life.  Reduced to commodity, the efforts to sell a dream, a future, and most powerfully freedom/independence (signing day is July 2) to the players and their families are crucial in maintaining this exploitative system.  One respondent in the film describes the ways that baseball views these young men: “It’s like when you harvest the land, you put seed on the land, you water it, you clear, and then when it grows, you sell it.”

Sean Gregory aptly described the exploitative approach of professional baseball teams, which take advantage of poverty, inequality, and the dreams of riches in the Dominican Republic and elsewhere.

The D.R. is baseball's puppy mill. The buscónes develop and sometimes feed and house these teenage players, with the intent of selling them to the highest bidder, a major league team willing to fork over thousands, if not millions, of dollars to secure a prospect. As a reward for their work, buscones typically pocket 25% to 50% of the prospect's signing bonus. Many folks in the Dominican Republic resent being labeled a buscón because of the term's other connotation: swindler.

A dead cockroach the size of a catcher's mitt rests on the side of the stairway. Papiro ushers me into an apartment that is a comfortable fit for no one yet lodges five of his pupils, all from 15 to 18 years old. In the "living room," there's not a single furnishing other than a few plastic chairs. The light doesn't work in one bedroom, and in another, a crater in the floor could swallow you whole. Only air drips from the kitchen sink. Papiro shows off the "terrace": it's a crunched, pitch-black walkway that houses a heap of trash. (See the top 10 worst MLB all-stars.)

In a country as poor as the Dominican Republic, these quarters are an upgrade for many impoverished teenage boys. Still, even Papiro knows the place isn't pretty. That's by design. First and foremost, Papiro is an investor. And if these hopefuls don't work hard and sign a contract, he'll lose money. "If you make things too comfortable, in the morning they'll never wake up," says Papiro, through an interpreter. "I'll give them vitamins and food. But no comfort."

While in many ways replicating the appeal of the “rags to riches narrative,” Pelotero puts the practices of Major League Baseball and its partners under a microscope illustrating that while some Dominicans do make it, they do so in spite of abuses, mistreatment, and exploitation.   The film, in fact, follows two individuals who suffer greatly because of baseball quest to get the best talent for the least amount of money. 

In recent years the signing bonuses commanded by Dominican players has increased tremendously; whereas Miguel Tejada, Vladamir and David Ortiz each signed for less than $4,000 dollars, Michael Inoa commanded a 4.25 million dollar bonus in 2008, setting a benchmark for future players.  This is where Pelotero enters into the story of baseball in the Dominican Republic. With a changing economic landscape, baseball teams have sought to minimize their costs.

For example, Miguel Angel Sano, a once-in-a-generation talent, sought a bonus beyond that of Inoa.  As signing day approached, Sano’s path to the American Dream turned into a nightmare as rumors of age fraud led to an investigation.  He is forced to provide urine and fecal samples; he provides doctors with his blood and is subjected to a bone scan.  In an effort to prove his age, he even undergoes a DNA a test; yet as the system is working against him, as rumors are spread, as he is unable to freely negotiate with every team, his potential bonuses declines precipitously. He is treated like a criminal and has to prove his innocence to MLB, even as teams have an incentive to spread rumors because ultimately rumors of steroid use or false age lessens the cost to teams. 

We can also see this with the film’s second storyline, that of Jean Carlos Batista.  A very good player, Batista searches for the best possible deal.  Unwilling to sign a contract that he feels is beneath him, he ultimately confronts a future without any contract offer.  He too faces an investigation from MLB about his age.  Although MLB baseball perpetuates a culture of steroids and encourages Dominican kids to lie about their ages – they want guys who are young but who play like men – it is the players who suffer the consequences.  We learn that Batista’s age was not accurately represented leaving him with a one-year suspension.  Yet again, this works in favor of the organization because he is signed for cheaper. 

What Pelotero highlights is the vast ways that baseball not only preys on the conditions of the Dominican Republic for future all-stars, but also manipulates the rules of the game to the benefit of the teams rather than the players.    A powerful examination of globalization and the exploitation, criminalization, and power-differentials at work, Pelotero also replicates the hegemonic narrative of sports as economic opportunity, as escalator out of poverty and despair. 

While Miguel Angel and Juan Carlos each face unfair conditions, unscrupulous individuals, and a rocky road, Pelotero ultimately chronicles the story of two young men who find riches (Miguel signs for a 3.15 million bonus; Juan Carlos gets six figure bonus), who convert their hard work and talent into economic freedom. Only 2% of Dominican players make it to “The Show,” a fact that is masked in Pelotero.  Yes, there is exploitation, yes there is abuse, yes the market isn’t free, all of which is visible with the storiesMiguel Angel and Juan Carlos, but they ultimately get paid.  Too many Dominicans live under these same exploitative and abuse conditions, enduring untreated injuries, and never “make it.”  This too is the story of the Dominican Republic. 

***

David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He has written on sport, video games, film, and social movements, appearing in both popular and academic mediums. His work explores the political economy of popular culture, examining the interplay between racism, state violence, and popular representations through contextual, textual, and subtextual analysis.  Leonard’s latest book After Artest: Race and the Assault on Blackness was just published by SUNY Press in May of 2012.

Death Isn’t a Slave’s Freedom: The Historic Erasure of Curt Flood’s Life

Death Isn’t a Slave’s Freedom: The Historic Erasure of Curt Flood’s Life

by David J. Leonard | special to NewBlackMan

Nikki Giovanni once write that “death is a slave's freedom” aptly surmising elements of Curt Flood’s life and his struggle against America’s (white) baseball establishment.  Denounced for his efforts to challenge baseball’s slave-like conditions and crucified for his efforts to connect baseball to slavery, to American racism, Flood experienced neither vindication nor compensation in part until his death, at which time Flood tasted freedom in a certain way – freedom from the death threats, abuse, ridicule, and American racism. 

Yet after watching HBO’s recent documentary The Curious Case of Curt Flood, I am less sure that “death is a slave’s freedom” in that Flood was unable to escape demonization and ridicule, as the film turned his life into a spectacle of sorts.  In an effort to illustrate how the human cost faced by Flood and his family, to highlight the difficult path to redemption, the film spends an overwhelming amount of time on Flood’s personal tragedy.  Evidence in the divorce from his initial wife shortly after he fought to live in an Alamo neighborhood and the financial, emotional, and physical impact on Flood during and after his suit against Major League Baseball, Curt Flood’s life is a testament to the costs of resistance and struggle.  

Yet, the film goes too far in this respect, turning Flood’s life into a spectacle, a train wreck that the audience is suppose to stare and marvel at for the duration of the film.  Focusing on alcoholism, fraudulent paintings and the personal demons that haunted Flood, The Curious Case of Curt Flood highlights the narrative grip that confines Flood in our contemporary moment.  In “The Way It Is: HBO’s The Curious Case Of Curt Flood,” Nasir Muhammad & Stephane Dunn elucidate the film’s flaws in this regard, seemingly questioning its narrative focus on the tragedies experienced by Flood and his ultimate redemption, turning an important history into a “E’ Hollywood” story.  They quote Stan Hochman, whose critiques of the film illustrate the powerful ways that death is not a slave’s freedom:

The courageous athlete who dared to challenge an unfair system is depicted as an alcoholic, a womanizer, a woeful husband, a dreadful father, a lousy businessman and a fraud who never really painted those portraits he churned out that enhanced his image as an artist . . . .In the history of warts-and-all biographies, this one slithers near the top of the list.

Curt Flood was a freedom fighter.   That didn’t begin with his challenge to Major League’s Baseball Reserve clause or his rhetorical links to a larger history of slavery.  Curt Flood had a long history of fighting for justice.  At one level, the film successfully documents how Flood’s challenge was not simply about economics but humanity and civil rights.  In 1964, when he sought to move his family to Alamo (CA), only to face an owner (and his gun-toting enforcers) that refused to rent to them, Flood took the matter to court.   Questioning why they called the street they lived on La Serena (serenity), Flood noted that there was nothing peaceful for a black family because of “fear of some maniac with a gun will sneak up on your kids.”  The Floods received a death threat and had been called the N-Word shortly after to moving into his dream home.  The beauty of the American Dream was unattainable for Flood confirming that his economic success did not affirm his humanity or freedom.  

This act of resistance, alongside of his involvement with the civil rights movement, his family history of challenging white supremacy (his mother had to flea the South after she defended herself against a white woman), his challenges to racial discrimination in the allocation of player raises or his involvement with the player’s demand that owners disentangle pension contributions from television and radio money, illustrate a larger body of work for Flood.  Flood described his political orientation in the following way:

I’m a child of the sixties, I’m a man of the sixties. During that period of time this country was coming apart at the seams. We were in Southeast Asia. Good men were dying for America and the Constitution. In the southern part of the United States we were marching for civil rights and Dr. King had been assassinated, and we lost the Kennedys. And to think that merely because I was a professional baseball player, I could ignore what was going on outside the walls of Busch Stadium was truly hypocrisy and now I found that of all those rights that these great Americans were dying for, I didn’t have in my own profession.

The linkages to the 1960s, to a larger struggle for human rights, are evident in Flood’s effort to connect baseball to a history of slavery. He was not alone in comparing the exploitation and experiences of black athletes to those of African Slaves of the eighteen and nineteenth centuries.  Harry Edwards, Tommie Smith, Muhammad Ali, among others, all sought to contextualize the exploitation and abuse experienced by black athletes within a larger history of white supremacy.  He was thus a product of a larger struggle for black humanity and therefore he embraced the language of that movement.  In failing to offer this context, we get a curious interpretation of history that individualizes and dehistorizes the struggle for black freedom.   

Moreover, Flood’s efforts to challenge baseball make sense given his efforts to secure equity and freedom for all Americans.  His determination to transform baseball (and America as a whole) was clearly a manifestation of a lifetime of experienced indignities, from the refusal of a locker-room attendant to clean his uniform along with the white players to his movement from the team hotel to the “colored section.”  The courageous stance that Flood took was thus understandable given his commitment to social justice and the stated impact that a history living inside of American Apartheid had on him.  While acknowledging some of this history, the film’s focus on the peculiarity leaves viewers with the impression that Flood was “odd” and “different” (which had “positive” and “negative” consequences) rather than a product of a system of class and racial exploitation. 

The critiques here are snot imply about the lack of “positive” representations in the film, the erasure of the racism that resulted from his refusal to play by THEIR rules, or even simply about historic accuracy, but rather that the choice to focus on the tragedy and redemption erases not only the contributions of Flood but the ways in which his story provides a historic marker for the larger history about the struggle for racial justice.  

In “‘Death Is a Slave’s Freedom:”’ Curt Flood and the Fight against Baseball, History, and White Supremacy” (Reconstructing Fame: Race, Sport, and the Redemption of Once-Tainted Reputations, eds.,   David C. Ogden & Joel Nathan Rosen – University of Mississippi press), 2008) I explore the ways in post-death media commentaries and political posturing celebrated Curt Flood (as part of efforts to demonize contemporary black athletes and celebrate American racial progress), his contributions to baseball, and his courageous stance against Major League Baseball.  In this article, I wrote the following:

Be sure, the story of Curt Flood is certainly one of courage and resistance, but it is equally a story of power, of the powerful and the great lengths the powerful have gone to maintain that control, those privileges and traditions that guaranteed their hegemony.  In the end, however, only death could save him from the demonization, from the alcohol and drugs that invariably served as an antiseptic for the pain and poverty, from the letters and stares, from the exile, banishment and denunciations.  This part of the story found little place in the reclamation projects that dominated the landscape following his death, but they certainly bear our attention in a time of increasingly reactive and certainly even reactionary narrative. 

Even the respect that his legacy has garnered in the days and years after his death (although despite his contributions on and off the field Flood unjustly remains outside of the Baseball Hall of Fame) has not resulted in a full appreciation of the life, courage, and humanity of Flood.   It results neither in Flood’s freedom nor for the freedom that he fought to secure during much of his life. Meager honors given in death do little to alter the persistence of racism and injustice inside and outside of sports.  Lip service in the afterlife will not suffice nor will memory, especially when historic memory is confined by stories of personal tragedy and redemption; such memorials are unable to secure justice for Curt Flood, Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, Ella Baker, Dorothy Dandridge, or any of the nameless people history selectively remembers.  Death will be the only potential avenue for freedom should the injustices done to Flood, and myriad forgotten others, continues.     And even that will remain illusive because for Curt Flood death isn’t freedom because if it were we would be talking about courageous activism in the face of racism and the hall of fame not that other stuff.    

***

David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He has written on sport, video games, film, and social movements, appearing in both popular and academic mediums. His work explores the political economy of popular culture, examining the interplay between racism, state violence, and popular representations through contextual, textual, and subtextual analysis. He is the author of Screens Fade to Black: Contemporary African American Cinema and the forthcoming After Artest: Race and the War on Hoop (SUNY Press). Leonard blogs @ No Tsuris.

HBO’s The Curious Case Of Curt Flood

Saturday Edition

The Way It Is: HBO’s The Curious Case Of Curt Flood

by Nasir Muhammad & Stephane Dunn | special to NewBlackMan

HBO’s project was long overdue and an exciting prospect – an overview of Curt Flood’s life and exploration of the historic stand he launched against Major League Baseball’s reserve clause in 1969. While the documentary introduces Flood and his infamous suit against baseball to those who are unfamiliar and tries to fill in some blanks about what led to it, The Curious Case of Curt Flood condenses a complex personality and history so much that it distorts some essential details about Flood’s long struggle for players’ rights in MLB. It also commits a serious error in steering clear from dealing with the ‘elephant’ that remains in the room when it comes to Curt Flood’s legacy in MLB history: Despite free agency’s defining role in contemporary MLB, the league is still uneasy about Curt Flood’s challenge to the hierarchy of America’s Pastime - so uneasy that the respect that Flood really deserves as a player and a trailblazer in the Civil Rights struggles of the time continues to be denied.

MLB’s measure of legacy is integrally tied to election into hallowed historic ground, the Baseball Hall of Fame. So far, Flood has not been so honored. Through a select array of photographs and video clips that offer a close-up primarily of Flood at his worst, the documentary mostly presents a strikingly sad portrait of a man headed for self-destruction. Curious Case raises the issue of Flood’s legacy but doesn’t really go there, preferring instead to overshadow and fill in the more significant aspects of Flood’s challenge to the power status quo with sensationalist gossip about his legitimacy as an artist, financial troubles, and a demon [alcoholism] he shared with a long line of sports greats, including Babe Ruth.

The problem with HBO’s effort begins with it’s obvious over reliance on one dominant source, Brad Snyder and his book on Curt Flood, A Well-Paid Slave: Curt Flood’s Fight For Free Agency. What’s curious is the documentary’s neglect of Flood’s own thoughtful examination of his journey to suing MLB, The Way It Is (1970), an autobiography published during the time period encompassing his suit. While the documentary smatters in Flood quotes from interviews and some of his most frequently used statements, Flood’s very detailed take on his experiences and opinions about the inner workings of MLB in The Way It Is hardly appear and the book is generally invisible save for widow Judy Flood’s liberal borrowing from the text to inform some of her comments.

Missing too is mention of such key defining relationships as Flood’s extraordinary relationship with Johnny and Marian Jorgensen, a white couple, who became family to Flood and his brother Carl. Marian came to live with him some time after Johnny’s brutal murder and basically took care of Flood, his home, and affairs during some of his roughest times. In relying overly on Snyder and Flood’s widow, who became his wife in his later years, the documentary suffers in not putting into context enough how Flood’s experience with owners’ tyrannical mistreatment of players generally and the racial discrimination that confronted black players helped lead to his resolve to resist the reserve clause despite being a major, well-paid star. For example, the documentary fails to accurately connect Flood’s support of players’ collective efforts to improve players’ lot with the fall out that led to owner August A. Busch’s trading of Flood.

Much is made of the ’68 World Series loss attributed to Flood; Snyder offers this and Flood’s demand for more money as Busch’s main motivation. However, Busch’s anger with his “favorite” player was most certainly tied as well to Curt acting in concert with other players in the MLB Players Association in ’69 against owners efforts to in his words “sever the traditional link between the pension fund” and money from radio and television. According to Flood, the players refused to sign their contracts until the owners agreed to better pensions for players and key Cardinal players, among them Lou Brock, Tim McCarver, Bob Gibson, and Flood demanded substantial salary increases. This incensed Busch, who blasted his players at a public meeting with media present.

Toward its conclusion, the documentary chooses to focus heavily on Flood’s personal downward spiral into alcoholism and the tragic portrait he presented of his former self. It ends by concentrating on his journey back into living a functional life and fashions a sort of triumphant recognition of his historic stand before his death from cancer in 1997. The documentary offers those watching who don’t know much about Flood a deceptive reason to feel moved and ultimately good about the seeming respect it suggests he finally received. Yet, the absence of two of the greatest living legendary baseball players, Hank Aaron and Willie Mays, and the current commissioner of MLB suggests the truth. The scorching Philadelphia Daily News review of sportswriter Stan Hochman, who was interviewed for the documentary but whose insights do not appear at all, isn’t too off base in summing up the E’ Hollywood like treatment of Flood:


The courageous athlete who dared to challenge an unfair system is depicted as an alcoholic, a womanizer, a woeful husband, a dreadful father, a lousy businessman and a fraud who never really painted those portraits he churned out that enhanced his image as an artist . . . .In the history of warts-and-all biographies, this one slithers near the top of the list.

Curt Flood’s historic Christmas Eve letter to Commissioner Bowie Kuhn is in the Baseball Hall of Fame Museum, but Flood is not in the Hall of Fame. This fall, the Baseball Writers Association has the power to select Flood as one of ten players to appear on the Golden Era ballot where that sixteen member committee can finally genuinely welcome Flood back into MLB. The documentary raises the issue of Flood’s legacy but it shies away from probing two vital questions critical to a film presuming to treat this major chapter in Flood’s and baseball’s history: Is MLB ready to reconcile its important history with Curt Flood and do the right thing? Or will the silent punishment of Curt Flood be allowed to continue?

Echoes of Feliciano: Carlos Santana Booed at Civil Rights Games

Santana is Booed for Using Baseball's Civil Rights Game to Speak Out for Civil Rights

by Dave Zirin | The Nation

Major League Baseball’s annual Civil Rights Game was poised to be a migraine-inducing exercise in Orwellian irony. Forget about the fact that Civil Rights was to be honored in Atlanta, where fans root for a team called the Braves and cheer in unison with the ubiquitous "tomahawk chop.

Forget about the fact that the Braves have been embroiled in controversy since pitching coach Roger McDowell aimed violent, homophobic threats at several fans. Forget that this is a team that has done events with Focus on the Family, an organization that is to Civil Rights what Newt Gingrich is to marital fidelity.

The reason Atlanta was such a brutally awkward setting for a Sunday Civil Rights setting, was because Friday saw the Governor of Georgia, Nathan Deal, sign HR 87, a law that shreds the Civil Rights of the state’s Latino population. Modeled after Arizona’s horrific and unconstitutional SB 1070, HR 87 authorizes state and local police the federal powers to demand immigration papers from people they suspect to be undocumented. Those without papers on request will find themselves behind bars. Civil rights hero, Atlanta’s John Lewis has spoken out forcefully against the legislation saying “This is a recipe for discrimination. We’ve come too far to return to the dark past."

But there was Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig, celebrating civil rights in the Georgia, and chortling excitedly about the 2011 All-Star game in Arizona. In the hands of Selig, irony becomes arsenic. Thank God that Commisioner Selig was stupid enough to choose the Civil Rights Game to honor, among others, the great musician Carlos Santana. Santana was supposed to be the Latino stand-in, a smiling symbol of baseball’s diversity. And maybe, he would even play a song!

But Bud picked the wrong Latino. Carlos Santana took the microphone and said that he was representing all immigrants. Then Santana added, "The people of Arizona, and the people of Atlanta, Georgia, you should be ashamed of yourselves." In a perfect display of Gov. Nathan Deal’s Georgia, the cheers quickly turned to boos. Yes, Carlos Santana was booed on Civil Rights Day in Atlanta for talking about Civil Rights.

Read the Full Essay @ The Nation

Saturday Edition: What Barry Bonds Remembers

Saturday Edition 

What Barry Bonds Remembers

by Mark Anthony Neal

When Barry Bonds was recently convicted of obstruction of justice, it brought to an end a nearly decade long investigation of Bonds and his use of performance enhancement drugs (PED). Though Bonds is, perhaps, the most notorious of a generation of professional athletes who tried to chemically enhance their longevity on their respective fields of play, there were always elements of the investigation of Bonds, that suggested that there was something more at play.

In a society in which race still matters, the Federal Government’s case, in collusion with the popular media’s disdain for Bonds (as was the case throughout his career), was never simply about race. Bonds’ relative militancy in response to the trial and the legacy that he doggedly pursued throughout his career, were fueled by slights and insults that were remembered from generations earlier.

The conviction of Barry Bonds occurred, ironically, only days before Major League Baseball celebrated the 64th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s famous breaking of the color line in the sport. In far too many minds, Jackie Robinson—a legitimate national hero—is the direct anti-thesis of contemporary professional ball players like Bonds, who are invariably described as selfish, money hungry, and inaccessible. While such descriptions are used to depict many professional athletes, when applied to Black athletes, it takes on added animus. For example, terms like “ungrateful,” “arrogant” and "disrespectful" become shorthand for the very idea of the Black athlete, whether directed at Jack Johnson or the Michigan Fab Five.

For several generations of Americans, Robinson was the embodiment of the Black athlete who was grateful for his opportunity to play professional sports; the kind of figure who became a national treasure and an object of nostalgia in the aftermath of the (momentary) radicalization of Black athletes in the 1960s as exemplified by Jim Brown, Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul Jabbar), Tommy Smith, John Carlos, and most famously Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay). As Malcolm X suggested right after a young Cassius Clay won the heavyweight boxing championship, “Cassius Clay is the finest Negro athlete I have known…He is more than Jackie Robinson, because Robinson is the White man’s hero.”

With the image of Robinson gleefully galloping around the bases or stealing home, cemented in the national memory, few could bear witness to the pressures that he faced, or the ways that he fought back against the indignities that he faced. For a player who was known for stealing home, arguably one of the most difficult individual plays in the sport, in which one must use cunning and guile, it should not be surprising that Robinson might have responded to the racism of the day in ways that went unnoticed by many.

I was reminded of such moments during a recent lecture given by Cornell University Professor Grant Farred, "Stupid Bastards: Jackie Robinson and the Politics of Conciliation" in which he recalled an incident during a spring training game in New Orleans in 1949. The incident was initially covered by writer Roger Kahn in his well-read tome The Boys of Summer. In a nod Robinson’s drawing power, the owner of the field in New Orleans, allowed a group of Blacks to watch the game from the stands. Robinson though, was apparently dismayed when Black fans cheered the police officers who allowed them into the stands, shouting: “don’t cheer those goddamn bastards. Don’t cheer. Keep your fuckin’ mouths shut…Don’t cheer those bastards, you stupid bastards. Take what you got coming. Don’t cheer.” (108-109)

Robinson seemed to want to make sure that he and those Black fans who entered the stadium that day would never forget the price they had to pay—literally—for the privilege to play and watch a game. Robinson intrinsically understood that there were many more important and difficult battles to wage. The police that those fans cheered that day, would be the same officers directing fire hoses at them and standing in the entrances of soon to be integrated public schools in a few short years.

To be sure, there were likely many such moments of private tirades by Jackie Robinson, besides the one that Kahn was privy to that day in 1949. Willie Mays, arguably the most popular Black ballplayer of the late 1950s and 1960s, recalls that his own relationship with Robinson was tainted, because the latter felt that Mays needed to be more outspoken about the racist insults that were still directed at Black players well into the 1960s. Robinson was no militant; a moderate Republican by choice, what angered Robinson most was when hard-work and diligence among Blacks was diminished by mainstream culture. Such was the case when Robinson, a second lieutenant in the Army, faced court martial in 1944 for challenging Jim Crow laws in Texas (Fort Hood).

If Mays was not interested, Robinson found an attentive congregation in some of Mays’ peers—the generation of Black ball players that emerged after Robinson broke the color line. Players like Hank Aaron, Frank Robinson, Bob Gibson and later Curt Flood—who was largely responsible for the advent of free agency in professional sports, because he resisted being treated as chattel—embodied a generation of Black baseball players whose sense of pride and justice, and willingness to challenge the status quo in the sport, and to a lesser extent the larger society, literally leveled the playing field.

Barry Bonds’ sense of this history was more personal; he had the opportunity to witness first hand the frustrated demeanor of his god-father Mays, as his legendary career came to an end and he realized that he would never be feted the way some of his White peers, like Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams, were. Bonds had an even more intimate view of his father’s struggles in the sport (particularly in the absence of Mays’ mentoring), as Barry Bonds’ skill-set—the quintessential five tool player of the 1970s—eroded in concert with his descent into alcoholism. Barry Bonds never forgave the press for being a source of his father’s anxieties and frustrations, which was manifested in his active disdain for the press corps beginning his rookie season with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1986.

Though he was not particularly close to his father, Bonds’ seemed driven to achieve a level of success that his father was unable to sustain. And though his level of achievement seemed to transcend the animus he generated among the journalists who covered him, Bonds seemed to literally shrink in the face of the two-headed muscle-bound homerun machine—Sosa and McGuire—who became the faces of the sport in the late 1990s. Bonds’ finely honed skill-set, which made him the logical heir to players like Mays and Mantle before him, was suddenly an afterthought for nation who desired a sport where “they bang(ed) ‘em, where they hang(ed) ‘em.” By all accounts, this is when Bonds’ dance with PEDs first began; Bonds making sure that he would not be forgotten.

Bonds and Ken Griffey, Jr.—linked by their like skills as players and fathers who excelled in the sport—were of the last generation of Black players who could remember the era in which the presence of Black players radically transformed the sport. Griffey was not immune to witnessing the  slights that came with the racial shifts in the sport; he famously refused to even consider playing for the New York Yankees in response to how Yankee management treated his father. Yet Griffey, who was known throughout his career as “The Kid"--a clear nod to the boyish charm that Mays presented as the “Say Hey Kid—cultivated a much different relationship with the fans and the press corps, in comparison to Bonds.

The reasons why Bonds and Griffey chose to remember those slights and insults and for the vastly different ways that each chose to acknowledge them, remains to be seen. How Griffey processed this all—including the criticisms directed at him late in his career for not living up to the expectations placed on him—is likely locked away in those same little boxes that Jackie Robinson had to pack away his frustration and anger. The mask that Paul Laurence Dunbar surmised about at the end of the 19th century, was the game face that many Black athletes wore at the end of the 20th century. Griffey was as adept as any in this regard.

Griffey could always take comfort in how highly compensated he was, in ways that were unfathomable for Robinson and those first two generations of Black baseball players. Surely Bonds could also take comfort in such trinkets of success, but like that private rant that Roger Kahn captured in New Orleans in 1949, Bonds seemed to always want the fans, the press corps and sport itself, to pay for what he was forced to remember.

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Mark Anthony Neal is Professor of Black Popular Culture in the Department of African & African American Studies at Duke University.  Neal is author of five books, including the forthcoming Looking for Leroy: (Il)Legible Black Masculinities (NYU Press).

'Left of Black': Episode #8 featuring Freedarko and Bomani Jones

Left of Black'--Episode # 8
w/Mark Anthony Neal
Monday, November 8, 2010

Host Mark Anthony Neal has a wide ranging conversation with economist and sports talk host, Bomani Jones about the branding of Lebron James, the lack of interest in baseball by African-American youth, the proposed “All-White” basketball league and the travails of rap artist T.I. Neal is also joined by Nathaniel Friedman aka Bethlehem Shoals, founder of the popular website Freedarko.com

-->Bomani Jones is the host of ‘The Morning Jones” on Sirrus Channel 98 and a former columnist for ESPN’s Page2.

-->Nathaniel Friedman is the co-author of FreeDarko Presents: The Undisputed Guide to Pro Basketball History

Do Black kids still like baseball?

Do Black Kids Still Like Baseball?
by Mark Anthony Neal | TheLoop21

It was one of the most memorable times I spent with my dad. Summer of 1973 and Hank Aaron was running down Babe Ruth’s career homerun record. The Atlanta Braves were in New York City for a weekend series with the New York Mets and my day surprised me with tickets. Hammerin’ Hank didn’t disappoint—he hit two homers that day. By the season’s end, Aaron had 713 homerun, two short of breaking Ruth’s record.

My dad couldn’t afford to take me to games often. Though we lived in the Bronx, literally minutes from Yankee Stadium, my dad was a Mets fan—a holdover National League fan from the 1950s before the New York Giants relocated to San Francisco and took my dad’s favorite player, Willie Mays. For my dad’s generation of Black men, Black baseball players, led by Jackie Robinson, Mays, Aaron and Frank Robinson, who would later become Major League Baseball’s first Black manager, were the realization of a world undergoing change.

When I first started watching baseball during the 1971 World Series, the sport was dominated by young Black ballplayers. The 1971 Pirates, who won the series that year, were the Blackest team in the league, in both style and substance, featuring future hall- of-famers Willie Stargell and Roberto Clemente (whose running style everybody wanted to imitate), Dock Ellis, who the year before pitched a no-hitter while high on LSD, Al Oliver and Rennie Stennent. Not interested in political issues, the 1971 Pittsburgh Pirates were my dad’s version of Black Power and he made sure I understood the significance of their ascendance as champions.

I was hooked, as many of my peers were, this in the era before the NBA had become an international brand and the New York Knicks were derisively described as the New York “N----r-bockers.” Part of the appeal was that many of the best baseball players in the 1970s and early 1980s were Black, and they were fundamentally changing the way the game was being played, whether talking about Lou Brock and Rickey Henderson on the base paths, Rod Carew, whose .388 batting average in 1977 was the highest in thirty years and Reggie Jackson, who became Mr. October.

Black dominance in professional baseball made sense in the 1970s, as the era marked the high-water mark of the percentage of Black players in the Major Leagues. For many kids in the hood, baseball was still a sport that could get you out of the hood, into college, the minor leagues and possible the majors. But something has happened along the way.

Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21.com

'The Tenth Inning': Just a Beautiful Thing

Baseball has an ugly face, that’s the business part.
—Pedro Martinez

'The Tenth Inning': Just a Beautiful Thing
By Cynthia Fuchs
PopMatters Film and TV Editor

“There’s something that happens on the field that’s like poetry, like ballet,” says Gerald Early. “The remarkable thing about the game,” he goes on, “is how beautiful it is, despite all the ugliness that might be around it at times. It’s just a beautiful thing.”

Speaking near the beginning of The Tenth Inning‘s second half, premiering on PBS 29 September, Early describes his love for baseball is deeply personal, based on his childhood experiences and particular plays etched into memory, a concept illustrated as he speaks by still photos of bodies in mid-air, strained and contorted, and for that instant of a play, perfect. For Early, who so appreciates such individual acts of grace, the “ugliness” is around the game, as opposed to inherent in it. It’s a view that helps him to love the game still, even knowing about the Steroid Era, recurrent labor disputes, costly stadiums, underpaid facility crews, and exploitative farm systems.

Early’s dilemma is at the center of Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s four-hour follow-up to 1994’s Baseball. And it remains unresolved, in part because baseball is, as Keith Olbermann noted at the start of the first part of The Tenth Inning, a game immersed in its own history. This makes for at least two sorts of fans, those who remember and can rhapsodize over plays, like Early, and those who know stats. The documentary makes use of fans who are also players, reporters, and historians, an assembly of men—and Selena Roberts and Doris Kearns Goodwin (note to Burns: girls like baseball too)—who set about here pondering their devotion to a sport that has disappointed them repeatedly.

Recent disappointments loom large in The Tenth Inning, which means to look at what’s happened in baseball since Baseball. By turns treacly and rapturous, pedestrian and insightful, the documentary submits that, as Howard Bryant observes, “Most people have found a way to make their peace with the sport they love.” Still, the history rankles. And here, too much of it is noted only briefly.

Read the Full Essay @ Popmatters

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Cynthia Fuchs is director of Film & Media Studies and Associate Professor of English, African American Studies, Sport & American Culture, and Film & Video Studies, at George Mason University.