by John Walters

Starting Five

Well, The Bases Are White

Yesterday, Howard Bryant of ESPN.com, whom I don’t know, wrote an essay prompted by Oriole All-Star Adam Jones’s declaration that “Baseball is a white man’s game, by design.” You can read it here. I may be misinterpreting it, but Bryant appears to be saying that you won’t see a protest such as Colin Kaepernick’s in baseball because it is a “white man’s game.”

Maybe you won’t be seeing one like that because while the NFL is 68% African-American (more than five times the national average) and while the NBA is 74% African-American (more than six times the national average), MLB is 8% African-American (only two-thirds the national average). Baseball just isn’t all that black, and so the issue that Kaepernick is raising isn’t as relevant to the 92% of MLB who are not black. And if you say, Well, it should be relevant to all of them, well, everyone has their own problems. Why isn’t someone in the NFL taking a knee during the anthem about hazing? Or sexual assault? Or Super-PACs?

Bryant also writes, “The game has cultivated the front-office posture of a Fortune 500 company, placing another barrier to advancement for people of color by preferring young, often unproven Ivy League talent over people of color who have deep institutional knowledge of how baseball works and is played…” So, is he throwing shade at Theo Epstein here? Because what has the dude with the Yale degree ever done to demonstrate that he belongs in a GM’s seat? Baseball employs plenty of Latino and yes, black, instructors at the level of play.

A lot of what takes place at the GM level is about advanced mathematics and statistics. I’m not saying a person of color cannot do those jobs, but I am saying that it doesn’t hurt to have an MBA or to be scholarly while dealing with the daily stresses of contracts, waiver wires, juggling players on disabled lists, etc. It takes more than just keen intelligence; it takes familiarity with contracts, big business, leverage, etc. Fortune 500 companies also go after Ivy League alums for the same reason.

At the front-office level, baseball isn’t about showing an 18 year-old how to properly execute a hook slide. (Note: Artie Moreno is baseball’s only minority owner. My friend nearly did an eight-figure non-baseball business deal with him once. Nearly. Moreno tried to low-ball him after the deal was agreed upon. Thought his leverage would pressure my friend to succumb. My friend told him to stick it. I don’t know that that makes my point or disputes it, but it’s just a piece of information I thought I’d share with you.)

Now, where Bryant’s story really, really loses me is where he writes, ” In a country full of world-class black athletes, baseball cannot seem to attract many.” That’s the fault of baseball? A few uncomfortable points that Howard chose not to raise: 1) In the childhoods of Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Jackie Robinson, the NBA did not exist and the NFL wasn’t on television; black kids then did not aspire as much to play those sports then. They do now. 2) I’m more than willing to say that, on average, blacks are superior athletes to whites (look at those NBA and NFL percentages above), but the NBA and NFL reward raw athletic traits such as speed and power more than baseball does. Those traits don’t help you hit a curveball or throw one as much.

There’s a reason so many Dominicans and Cubans are in the MLB: because Dominican and Cuban kids play baseball day and night as soon as they’re out of the crib. It’s the same reason why China, India and the USA, the world’s three most populous nations, don’t have a prayer in a soccer match against Argentina, the world’s 32nd-largeest nation. It’s about culture.

Last night, while I was still seething over Howard’s PC misrepresentation of the truth, Dellin Betances got a save for the Yankees. Betances is a Dominican-American who was born and raised in Manhattan. And then T.J. Rivera, a Latino who was raised in the Bronx, hit the game-winning home run for the Mets. They’re both men of color. Both raised in the inner city.

Baseball isn’t keeping black kids out of the sport, and if it isn’t attracting many, that’s not baseball’s fault. Black kids, by and large, would rather play basketball. Or football. There’s a great photo of Willie Mays, early in his career, stopping in I believe Harlem to play a game of stickball on the street with some black youths. I doubt anyone in Harlem has played stickball in the past 20 years.

2. From Connie to Vin to Julio

Last night Michael Kay of the YES Network, who does a terrific job as the Yankee broadcaster (I’m only privy to NYY and NYM broadcasts, but the Yanks have a terrific booth team with rotating analysts Ken Singleton, Paul O’Neill, David Cone, John Flaherty and Al Leiter), shared this note during the Dodgers-Yankees game: Dodger broadcaster Vin Scully, who will call his final game on October 2nd, began with the Dodgers in 1950, when they were still in Brooklyn.

That same year Connie Mack was managing the Philadelphia Athletics. Mack had been in baseball since 1886 and was born in 1862, before the Battle of Gettysburg.

And I’ll add that last night the Dodger starting pitcher was Julio Urias, who is only 19 and was born in Mexico. Let’s assume Urias has a long career and is still in the game in 2030 and lives to at least the age of 66, which would mean at least until 2062. That would mean Scully bridged the span of 200 years of baseball people, from birth to death (1862 to 2062) and 144 years of MLB careers (1886 to 2030). Pretty astounding stuff.

3. Run Away Train

You train for a marathon; you don’t marathon for a train.

Last Sunday runners at the Vai Marathon in Lehigh Valley, Pa., found their 26.2-mile jaunt interrupted for up to 10 minutes by a slow-moving choo choo. They were, as you might expect, pissed. Adding to the frustration, Sunday was the final day for aspiring Boston Marathon entrants to run a qualifying time for next April’s iconic race in the Hub. More than a few entrants at the Vai were vying for a spot in Boston. How race officials will treat their times has yet to be decided.

4. Lunghazi

Last night Stephen Colbert noted, accurately, that perhaps Hillary Clinton should have disclosed that she had pneumonia. After all, the lung-based ailment did kill William Henry Harrison. And by the way, this is a bad look for you, CBS News.

 

On the other side of the race, Dr. Oz is going to have Donald Trump on as his guest today to talk his health records but Oz already said, and I quote, “I’m not going to ask him questions he doesn’t want to have answered.”

I mean, does this quack have any idea how ironic his name is?

5. FLOTUS, Steph and Ellen

I like these three humans. So here’s a good excerpt of their chat yesterday.

Music 101

Eden

Everyone has their favorite autumn albums or artists, no? My two favorite autumn albums are Our Time in Eden by 10,000 Maniacs and Enlightenment by Van Morrison (or just about anything from Van the Man, to be honest). But then again, there’s no better time to be in New York City than from mid-September through mid-October.

Remote Patrol

Orioles at Red Sox

7 p.m. ESPN

Did you know that Red Sox starter Rick Porcello, who takes the hill tonight, is 20-3? Before this week, I didn’t. I agree with Tim Kurkjian, who believes that the Sox will take the A.L. pennant, but I think these are the two best teams in the American League. The good news for this Yankee fan is that the Baby Bombers will avoid seeing Porcello this weekend.