13
2013
Featured Post: Ignorance Is Bliss
An article by 
On Sunday, Murray Chass published his thoughts on minorities in baseball with a splash of recent statistics, claiming the numbers would “disappoint, if not disgust” the late Jackie Robinson. The baseball columnist pointed out:
- Since the Philadelphia Phillies named Ruben Amaro Jr. general manager Nov. 3, 2008, teams have hired 14 general managers. All have been white.
- Of the last 23 managers hired, dating to May 2010, three have been minorities.
- Heading into the 2013 season, MLB has only one minority general manager (Amaro) and four minority managers.
The moment Chass starting thinking in these terms, discrimination reared its ugly head. As for his algorithm on equality in baseball – nonsense. Is the game better off if we have 15 white and 15 black major league managers or general managers? Let’s not offend the Hispanic community by ignoring them. Maybe we need to slice the job opportunities into 10/10/10. What about women? Don’t they deserve equal opportunity in the sports industry? You see where this is going right?
At the risk of offending every man, woman and child on earth, may I offer this bold, but novel, idea: Hire the most qualified candidate for the job. The fact that we — regardless of race, creed, culture, color or gender — are still placing labels on people is indicative of a larger problem: racism.
Racism starts, not on the field or in a blog post, but in the human mind. If there are inequalities they should be addressed, but should MLB (or any other organization) be required to meet a race/gender quota? Isn’t policy founded on this principle the very definition of racism at it root?
I grew up in a small railroad town in upstate New York. My high school graduating class could fit all its members on the front of a t-shirt. Translation: it was small, still is. This means nothing to you. But, for me, it revealed something about my personal experience with race. My entire graduating class was white. My entire neighborhood was white. In my recollection, not a single person that lived and grew up in Mechanicville, New York when I was young was anything other than white.
I was ignorant about discrimination – not by choice, but by circumstance. Until about five years ago, discrimination was a radio talk show subject. It was the central theme of a movie or a television program. My life had never truly intersected with the issue. Then, one summer, I found myself devouring books about Jackie Robinson, Josh Gibson, Buck O’Neil, John Feinstein’s The Punch and Glory Road, the story of Don Haskins and the 1966 Texas Tech basketball team.
The stories led me on a personal journey to discover my personal definition of discrimination. It became clear to me that if I wanted to really know about the subject, well, I better find a subject matter expert. Living in Charleston, South Carolina — home of the well-preserved Slave Market in historic downtown — I was confident I could find athletes who grew up, even made local history, for breaking the “color barrier,” in sports. I did better than that, I found two: Remus Harper and Norman Seabrooks, the Jackie Robinson’s of college athletics in Charleston.
I needed to meet, hear, see and listen to their stories, their experiences, if I had any chance of understanding the painful truth. This exploration led me to write two stories about racism in sports: Citadel Grad Breaks Silence and Stumbling Blocks and Stepping Stones. I encourage you to read their stories. What I learned from these two men is discrimination is not a policy; it’s “a learned behavior,” Harper told me. You can’t create guidelines to stifle discrimination. It is an act that starts in the mind.
Seabrooks, the first African-American to play athletics at The Citadel, taught me a lesson in grace and hope. It took him two decades before he could talk about his experience. When he finally did, Seabrooks said he “noticed something different … progress. You are seeing a generation of kids who are growing up whom, unlike my generation, were exposed to African Americans and others in high school and grade school. I realized, these kids grew up in a world so different from my grade school years that, it’s a new place. To paraphrase Dr. King, people are now being judged on their character, not their skin color.”
The more I listened to Harper and Seabrooks, the more I began to realize Thomas Gray was right, mt ignorance was bliss. There is nothing more powerful than to look in the eyes of discrimination and see the pain; or, listen to the voice and hear the pain. Now, when someone like Chass uses numbers to describe discrimination, I can close my eyes and see a face. I know what discrimination, even racism, sounds like.
Statistics tell a story, but not the story. Sure, siscrimination lives, but there has been progress and there is hope. Is there equal opportunity? The numbers tell us one thing, but history suggests another. We’ve come a long way since Haskins, Robinson, Harper and Seabrooks. Would Robinson be satisfied? I doubt it. Robinson was a competitor; he was never satisfied. Would he quit? Not a chance. As William Seabrook’s told his son Norm, “You’re going to have a lot of tough times in your life, but quitting becomes comfortable when you do it the first time. Once you start quitting it never stops.”
We should never quit the pursuit to right the wrong. But as a whole we must understand, discrimination is not a set of numbers, it’s an act that leaves a deep scar on people’s lives.
About the Author: John Strubel
My name is John Strubel and I have been a Mets fan since 1972. Professionally, I have been a working member of the media since 1987. In addition to media relations and broadcast work for the Detroit Tigers and Tampa Bay Rays minor league affiliates, my career spans 25 years in the radio industry as a on-air personality, program director and sports-talk show host. You can reach me at john@johnstrubel.com or on Twitter @johnstrubel
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NL East Standings
| Team | W | L | Pct. | GB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Braves | 24 | 18 | .571 | - |
| Nationals | 23 | 20 | .535 | 1.5 |
| Phillies | 20 | 23 | .465 | 4.5 |
| Mets | 16 | 24 | .400 | 7.0 |
| Marlins | 11 | 32 | .256 | 13.5 |
Last updated: 05/18/2013
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Outstanding post, John.
Excellent, excellent post John. Such an issue is one that tends to be avoided by writers due to the sensitivity of the subject, but you took it head-on and hit it out of the park! Nice job.
Why are you reading the Times? Isn’t their motto “All the news that fits we print?” You would find more honesty and common sense in a brothel.
And we Met fans ran three of them out of town…How proud we must be right now….
Jackie Robinson was a Republican
Really good writing John.
As I have previously posted, I have very little time for whatever Murray Chass writes. He is a bitter, vindictive old man.
wait….
in over 100 years of baseball…
u think that there have only been 2 minority GM’s that were qualified ?
LMAO
ok
your ignorance on this subject ( due to circumstance ) does not erase the fact that MLB has always been a good ol boys club
when you are a minority in this country, you dont have the option of pretending it doesnt exist
So is Murray Chass wrong? There were no qualified minority candidates for GM? While there should not be a quota, MLB should do better than zero. The NFL and the NBA have done far better jobs in this regard.
Affirmative action takes work. It involves giving minority candidates a chance. Can you honestly state that the 14 GMs and the 20 managers were the “best man for the job”? John Gibbons was the best candidate the Blue Jays could hire for manager? There wasn’t a single minority candidate with better qualifications? The managing game is not close to being a meritocracy and MLB should work a lot, lot harder at increasing minority representation.
Hi John,
What many should find comforting from your own personal experience is though you admitted about your own personal experience….
“I was ignorant about discrimination – not by choice, but by circumstance. Until about five years ago, discrimination was a radio talk show subject. It was the central theme of a movie or a television program. My life had never truly intersected with the issue.”
…. it still did not shape you to be a contributor to it. You couldn’t have been in order for when first reading up on those atrocities they had such a deep impact.
Unfortunately, so many of us who remember how things were even less than a half century ago (ouch, that makes me feel so old) believe we are seeing the rise in racism in this country once again though sometimes it is hard to rationalize the degree and how this is affecting America today. You are to be admired for your own admitted being “ignorant about discrimination” not allowing yourself to become what so many others in your situation have turned out to be – oblivious and ambivalent – like so many others have.
I think it is because of that experience – one which is completely opposite of your’s – that makes many of us who lived through those times, even as children and teenagers and Caucasian background, more sensitive to the issue and therefore those strong memories of injustice might very well be clouding our judgement quite often. President Obama correctly alluded to that regarding Rev. Wright five years ago when pointing out how difficult it is for some having been surrounded with racism to be able to see clearly how things have indeed changed.
Chass is no different and though I agree – let everyone be measured for whom they are – there are still areas in which equal opportunity is still not prevalent. I know of unions that try to remain “closed shops”. My wife worked with an insurance broker who had a partner dealing in real estate and when minorities came in he stirred them toward certain areas only, not letting them know of houses available in those unofficial but still “restricted” neighborhoods. We’ve seen many a politician and public figure rewrite history to make that shameful part of our history appear less atrocious – or at least exploiting that for their own personal careers.
So Chass might be onto something for racism still exists to some degree in various parts of society. It is nothing like it was and for example, though I admire Ralph Nadar for many things, I sincerely believe he is living in the past in certain ways not recognizing where things have changed as far as degree. If Chass is off base as to the degree it exists in baseball, it’s because so many of us cannot completely rid ourselves of the scars of our past that we might over-react or become readily suspicious of certain acts and trends. But that shortcoming is also a strength for all the good that it does cause.
It’s just not a perfect world because as humans we’re not perfect, either. But I hope this might explain why Chass might have gotten too caught up on this subject, even though there might be something there.
I think the fact that some Caucasians can live in this country and still be ignorant or oblivious to race and/or discrimination is a privilege that most minorities will never know. This does not mean that Caucasians are unqualified to speak about race. But what it does mean is that, those from the dominant power group for hundreds of years can scream we want equality now…and we should be judged on the content of our character, but the numbers here seem to scream that this might not be happening.
Look at it this way. One of the greatest laws in this country was the G.I. Bill, in my opinion. I don’t have to school anyone on all that came from this bill; you can wikipedia it if you need a refresher. However, like most of the laws in the United States…I give it a 9, or 10 out of 10. However…when you talk to African-American and other minority groups whether they got equal access to education, jobs, housing, and all the other doors that this Bill was supposed to open the door for…they will say, great law, but the enforcement of it was terrible for minorities. The law was fair, but the enforcement of the law for minorities was awful or non-existent. This is what I got from the article.
In true Bill Cosby form, I say all that to say this, the dominant group can now want and call for equality, but the numbers say otherwise. You may hate Murray Chass. You may never like another thing he ever says. But don’t ignore this simple point…baseball is not doing good job of promoting minorities into leadership and largely remains a “good ol’ boy network”.
Hi Hank,
And for all the things I have criticized the Wilpons for, I have always said their idea of the Jackie Robinson rotunda was a touch of class. It is a beautiful tribute to a very courageous individual and a necessary one for all those who came later need to be reminded that there is an ugly side of the human specie as well as a beautiful one and that it can be planted and sprout in our own back yard and not just half way around the world.
It’s often a hard equilibrium to maintain – wanting to see both the good and the bad that permeates around us and being able to distinguish one from the other.
Hey Joey,
Great point about the Jackie Robinson Rotunda. I’ve heard Mets fans complain that there’s more Dodgers history at the stadium than Mets. But, I was there for the first game ever in Citi, and when I walked in, I was proud that my team was intentionally honoring one of my heroes and arguably the number one reason why I fell in love with baseball as a kid. You’re right. The equilibrium is hard to maintain, but rotundas and monuments that help tell our story, surely do help.
Hi Hank,
Thanks for the nice words.
Was thinking of the great points you made too and it made me think of Ann Coulter and how her re-writing of history is dangerous because it is representative of a growing culture which could influence the current young and future generations into an ignorance that is certainly not bliss but quite dangerous and would cause those generations to look at Jackie Robinson as just a ball player. Even more frighting is, as I had alluded to, that we already see a new wave of racist divisiveness on both sides. For example, in her book “Mugged” comes this oft cited passage:
“Long after pervasive racial discrimination ended, they kept pretending America was being run by the Klan and that liberals were black America’s only protectors.”.
She also claims that pervasive racial discrimination ended around 1964. Well, guess that means everything that went on since – starting with those three civil rights workers murdered in 1964 – which included two “liberal” white members of CORE – was just a minor incident.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-kkk-kills-three-civil-rights-activists
Also, how many of the young today realize that inter-racial marriage was still illegal in 22 states until the Supreme Court struck down anti-miscegenation laws in 1967. So it’s important that we keep the memory not just of our own racist past but of the holocaust, the purges of Stalin, the horrors of war, the genocide of the Armenians in Turkey, etc alive so horrors like those are not repeated in the future.
And if we remember Dick Young, more important that his vendetta on Tom Seaver, were his remarks in the early seventies that poverty meant only having enough money to buy a black and white television set or on the 25th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier that one should see that there was a rookie in the lineup who went on to become a great player.
And a note to John – please do not feel these comments are directed at you because that is definitely not the case. I’m just expanding on the point of what you raised with your own personal experience but about the dangers of ignorance not being bliss when it comes to others and a growing emergence.
the problem is this…and i will be BRUTALLY FRANK….
Fred grew up in Brooklyn….grew up a dodger fan….grew up admiring Jackie Robinson for all that he did…and the rotunda is an extension in a sense of FRED’s experience as a child growing up in brooklyn…
I truly believe Fred was in Willie Randolph’s corner….and really wanted Willie to succeed, as did Omar..where as Jeff did not
….and neither did Tony…this is why the whole firing issue was handled so awkwardly….
this is also why Jerry Manuel, OF coach and so coincidentally, a former teammate of Tony B in 1980 in the expos farm system….was promoted to bench coach in 2006….it almost seems sinister that he talked Willie out of using Tom Glavine to bunt over Endy / Valentin in the 9th inning…instead convincing willie to use Cliff Floyd….
this does NOT make Fred Wilpon a champion of civil right’s causes…
Hi Just,
That shrine to his boyhood team could have been built without a rotunda honoring Jackie Robinson as well. Saying that it showed a touch of class does not infer one as being in the forefront of the civil rights movement but neither should one be belittled because of that as well.
Great post John.
This is an issue that can only be judged by looking into a man/woman’s heart to ascertain the content of their heart, think I heard that somewhere.
Anyway I agree that having more minorities represented in the FO of many teams would help those who look for discrimination under every rock.
Discrimination is one thing, racism is really not even the proper use since we are all part of the human race, another word corrupted by those that have an agenda, not a solution.
My only addition to current state in baseball applies to the lack of black players due to the attraction of basketball, no minor league system, more attention, attraction to football, etc.
Baseball is a sport that many say put them to sleep, pointing to the pace of the game.
I say the pace, both team getting 3 outs per inning, 9 innings per game and NO clock.
The lack of a quick paced game, outstanding plays almost every minute is what the culture for the last decade wants and many kids growing up in poor neighborhoods don’t need a basketball or football to play, as long as one player does.
The cost, glove, ball, bat , uniform and playing field is a determent but not a racism issue cause poor crosses many cultures.
Best qualified is the right move for some teams though I question whether some teams are not willing to “give a chance” make the move; that doesn’t make them “racist” but we will always have those in the media and power that can destroy a sport, team, person or community with that corrupted word, the “r” word..
Having grown up in NY, PR, OH and FL I have seen this “problem” from many sides but until you invent a heart change pill or we start acting like good neighbors then this shall continue.
Off subject a bit, but let’s have some fun with this.
Try to figure out which ballpark that picture of Jackie was taken at. If you want to guess DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER FOR I’M GIVING MY HUNCH.
———
It is a road uniform and obviously not Ebbets Field since there would be that big scoreboard in the background.
It’s not the old Yankee Stadium because there is no bullpen between the stands and the bleachers. It’s not Philadelphia for the same reason as Brooklyn – no big scoreboard in right. In St. Louis, the right field stands were higher up. In Pittsburgh the stands did not jut so far from right toward center. The stands were not partioned in right field so it’s not Crosley in Cincinnati. The old Braves Field in Boston the stands in that area was partioned. We know it’s not Wrigley.
So, you know what my guess is? Municipal Stadium in Cleveland and the picture was taken at the 1954 all star game.
It’s not Sportsman’s Park either because they had no cutout and the bleachers went all the way around. I thought it was the Bee Hive at first, but it’s not. You may be right.
Hi Maniac,
And notice that while Jackie was approaching first, the guy in right was still in his fielding position? There was obviously a ball put into play (even if it was foul to the left side) and by one would think the right fielder would at least have an instinctive reaction instead of still being crouched with both hands on his knees.
Jackie is also looking to his left where the ball and the play must have been. Back then they really did keep their eyes on the ball and always ready to take the extra base. They don’t sprint to first with their heads down like Bourn, Pagan and Crawford do sometimes.
Hi Maniac,
When I was a kid playing sandlot and hit a grounder that was fielded I always wound up running to first with my head down and arm covering it – in fear the first baseman couldn’t catch the ball thrown to him and hit me on the left side of my face. Really did.