Around noon, my father would pick me up. It may have been any day of the week but in my memory its a Friday. In all of professional sports, there is nothing more iconic (and a bit controversial) than the Friday day game at Wrigley Field. You can fight me on this.
Friday nights represent a tremendous opportunity for sports teams to sell boatloads of tickets. Due to some archaic rules governed by the neighborhood in which they reside, however, my hometown team cannot legally host baseball games at night on Fridays. Thus, every Friday that the Chicago Cubs play at home they play in the afternoon. This forms the backdrop for some of my dearest childhood memories at the ballpark:
Marveling at how hard Greg Maddux could throw. My brother excitedly commenting "Just wait until Kerry Wood comes out if you think Maddux throws hard."
My father, an avid drinker of Diet Pepsi, noting that "Pepsi and hot dogs are pretty disgusting things, but somehow Pepsi and a hot dog at the ballpark always taste wonderful."
An avid Atlanta Braves fan sitting behind me screaming "LET'S GO SMOLTZYYYY!!!" in a near silent crowd as their legendary, future Hall of Fame closer sent my favorite team home with a loss.
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I love this game. My wife recently told me that while it makes her sad to see how sad I get when baseball season ends, she can't help but be a bit excited to "get [her] husband back." I watch baseball, read about baseball, talk about baseball, decorate my house and desk with baseball paraphernalia. If you looked at my internet search history probably about 70% of the entries would be related to baseball. I truly live and breathe this game.
It is because I love this game so much that I want to vacate all records and achievements of Major League Baseball prior to 1947.
That was the year Jackie Robinson made his debut. Baseball was officially "integrated." A fair argument could be made that rather than put the line at 1947 I should draw it in 1959. That was the year the last Major League team deigned to permit a person of color to play on their team (sorry Boston...tough look for y'all). It's semantics to me. It is a disgustingly low threshold for integration to say permitting a single black player to play a kid's game over EIGHT DECADES following the official end of chattel slavery in the United States constitutes "integration" anyway. Besides, if I argue for vacating all records prior to 1959 then we lose Jackie Robinson's Hall of Fame career and I'm not about to do my boy like that.
Prior to 1947, there was the fully segregated MLB and a side-along league known as the Negro Leagues for black players. The Negro Leagues and their players are recognized in Cooperstown (home of the Baseball Hall of Fame) but treated as a separate league. By contrast, numerous all time great white players are represented in the Hall (anyone heard of Babe Ruth?). This is deeply inconsistent. Neither people group was truly playing a universal game. Neither group had the privilege to test their skill against the very best players in the country. From a strictly competitive standpoint, this was not the Major Leagues. It was the White Leagues and the Negro Leagues.
From a moral standpoint, the picture is even more stark. When my beloved Cubs won the World Series in 2016 (I was there, by the way, it was a top 3 moment of my life), they famously ended the longest championship drought in American professional sports: 108 year. Let that sink in for a sec. One hundred and eight years without a championship. Want to know what was happening while the chubby white guys in stirrup socks and collared jerseys were celebrating with cigars and handlebar mustaches their second consecutive world baseball championship extravaganza? Black men and women were being saddled with the flimsiest of "charges," fined extravagant fees, sentenced to "hard labor" until they could pay off those fees, leased to private companies, worked in horrific conditions in mines or fields, died at a staggering rate, were chained together in the aforementioned mines, and were punished so cruelly that many died from wounds inflicted. This was slavery in every way but name.
Let that sink in for a second. While white men were celebrating a glorious championship, black men were dying in bondage. This was 43 years after emancipation. I wish I could say this practice of convict leasing ended in 1908. I wish I could say it still didn't persist in some form to this very day. I wish...I wish...I wish...
I don't intend to accuse all baseball players of antiquity of horrific crimes against humanity. I don't intend to paint baseball as a racist institution (I mean, it is...but that's a different blog post...). I don't seek to punish players for simply being alive and playing a game they love at a time when baseball was not integrated. All I would hope to accomplish with this measure is to hold a mirror up to baseball and have it take stock of its past and the context in which it existed. Let what came before 1947 be baseball but let's accept that we were wrong. Deeply, horrifically, inexcusably wrong. Babe Ruth was an incredible player, but he didn't play Major League Baseball. He played White Baseball. If we are to treat Satchell Paige's career in the Negro League with an asterisk, let us also treat Babe Ruth's career in the White League the same.
This isn't likely to happen. At least not any time soon. Even so, from now on I will advocate strongly that the Chicago Cubs have won only one championship. In fact, their last time participating in the World Series was 1945, two years prior to Jackie Robinson's debut so, as far as I am concerned, the Cubs have only participated in one World Series. I want to love a game that champions equality and takes responsibility for where it went wrong. Baseball, like all professional sports, has a responsibility to advocate for social justice. Vacating records from the pre-integration period of baseball history is a small, small step. But it is a step. Let's take it.
Until that happens, you can still find me where my dad would take me those Friday afternoons in Chicago nearly two decades ago: at Wrigley Field, drinking my Pepsi and eating my $6.50 hot dog. I'll be rooting for my Cubbies to bring home their second championship.
Thanks for sharing this really important perspective! I've always thought that sports has an opportunity to bridge barriers and advocate for equity in ways that other industries/sectors find hard. What I've found hard to reconcile, as a sports fan, is how the capitalist, racially-tinged values in some of those other industries that made them drivers of inequality have creeped into sports. Football, basketball and others have all had their moments to become a leader in celebrating the diversity of their players and fans, and have more often than not abdicated that responsibility. What you call out - redefining historical success - is such an important question to ask.
ReplyDeleteIt is a classic chicken/egg conundrum. Because sports are fundamentally capitalist institutions, it may be better to view professional leagues as mirrors rather than leaders. If we demand social justice of our sports leagues using our wallets, they will provide it. If we are comfortable with the status quo, the status quo will remain. In some areas I feel it is incumbent on us as fans to acknowledge that the product for which we are cheering is a reflection of what we as a society want to buy.
ReplyDeleteWell-said. This brings up a larger question for me, too, about who (or what) should be our leaders, vs. our mirrors. There is a lot of pressure for public figures and institutions to be moral, or just, or kind -- is this fair? How do you determine the appropriate time and place to demand this of an institution or public persona?
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