User Comments, Suggestions, or Complaints | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Advertising
Buy MLB playoff tickets, plus 2011 World Series, 2011 ALCS tickets and NLCS game tickets. We also have Texas Rangers playoff schedule, tickets to Red Sox games and Yankees game tickets. Plus, buy Phillies baseball tickets, Tigers playoff tickets and the biggies like ALDS baseball tickets and 2011 NLDS tickets. |
Demarini, Easton and TPX Baseball Bats
|
AllianceTickets.com has cheap MLB Tickets. Get all your Colorado Rockies Tickets, Seattle Mariners Tickets, San Francisco Giants Tickets and all your favorite baseball tickets here. We also carry cheap Denver Broncos Tickets, Seattle Seahawks Tickets and Denver Nuggets Tickets. |
Page rendered in 0.5777 seconds
54 querie(s) executed
Reader Comments and Retorts
Go to end of page
Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.
1. DiPoto Cabengo Posted: February 01, 2012 at 01:46 PM (#4051241)Also, I strongly suspect that the Phillies will see the true benefit of playing African-American players when their Cable contract is up, because hey, any extra AA households watching means extra bucks.
Still doesn't make up for the Howard contract, though oddly enough, it just may pay off.
This is so sad. When I was a kid, Soul Train was on right after Saturday cartoons on one of the local UHF stations. I ended up getting exposed to all sorts of great music almost by accident, because I was too glued to the TV to change the channel or go outside and play. Thanks to Don Cornelius, I owned a Jimmy Castor Bunch* LP when I was 8, which is a great thing for a child's development. Soul Train also got me into Billy Preston, The Gap Band, and Earth Wind & Fire, and the Sugarhill Gang. Seriously, in the pre-MTV era (and in the early days when MTV didn't play black musicians) Soul Train was the most easily available source of African-American pop music for a white kid in a white suburb of a white town in the South. That wasn't the target audience, but I can't imagine that I was the only person to benefit from Soul Train as a form of cultural outreach. RIP.
* A belated RIP to Billy Castor as well.
That would be pretty impressive.
Is it racist, if I ask what he is smoking? It sure isn't the objective pipe. 140?!?!? 24 more games than any team has ever won ever. 140-22!?!?
Yes! Okay! This is great! Because earlier you were implying that I was racist because you thought that I was implying that all black people are related. And then it turns out that you people actually are!
That sounds like STEAGLES over in the
76ersNBA thread.I believe the correct phrase is that he is Mascot-American.
In short: it doesn't.
He is an undersea king.
I'm not old enough to remember the 1950's, but I certainly remember 1993, and that was a fairly melanin-deficient group of guys. I don't know how you could study "whitest" team for the last -- say -- 25 years, but that Kruk/Dykstra/Daulton era has got to be up there.
You can say "Winning literally solves everything" but I don't recall that winning team being very popular in the black community.
I have a friend (black woman) who does not really care about golf or tennis, but is very interested in the way Tiger Woods and the Williams sisters are portrayed in the press. It's weird, but, yeah, she doesn't care about (say) WWII aviation but was interested in that Red Tails movie specifically because it was about black people.
So it does happen, sure. I just don't see any evidence here that it's happening in any significant way in Philly.
You should be in my Roto auction room when a Jewish player gets tossed out to bid. Somebody yells "Tribesman!" and the guy goes for a $5-$8 premium.
I'm pretty sure that's because we're all anti-Semitic.
My theory is extreme xenophobia. But, I mean, you know. I have YET to see a certified copy of Scott Rolen's birth certificate.
An older black man who can remember when the Phillies weren't integrated at all, when Curt Flood refused to play for Philadelphia on the basis the Phillies were racist and can remember when Dick Allen was run out of town would be insane to be the sort of blank slate people who claim that race never matters, ever demand them to be.
Besides, I'm sure people of every ethnicity would be happy if their favorite players were from the same background as them. That's just identifying with your tribe.
I'm not disagreeing with you, but how well would that statement go over if you apply it to whites? I think they would be called racists.
I agree with comment 32. If someone said that all their favorite players were white, you'd probably wonder about their mindset.
Kim Batiste was on the team too.
Kim Batiste was on the team too.
And Ricky Jordan and Tony Longmire had a cuppa coffee in Sept.
But all of these guys were bit players. I could understand a difference between this and having two (fairly) recent former MVP's on the current team. Along with Utley, Howard and Rollins were pretty much the face of the 2008 champs.
Yep, sorry. You get less of a leash on racial comments when such comments have in this country been historically been linked to slavery, discrimination, and segregation. For experiencing two hundred years of racial oppression in this country, black people in exchange get to be a little more loose and less politically correct with their language.
My greatest thrill in baseball was when Earl Torgeson stole home to beat the Yankees before a packed Briggs Stadium house right after my 11th birthday.
(Well, not really. In fact I mostly remember cursing a blue streak at Bob Turley for his stupid double pump windup. But if Torgeson had been a Yankee, I would have popped every button on my T-shirt with the full force of Norwegian pride---that'll show em that the Gjetost Boys are good for something besides killing Germans and mountain climbing!)
-------------------------------
I'm not disagreeing with you, but how well would that statement go over if you apply it to whites? I think they would be called racists.
There were (and are) plenty of whites who took particular pride in the Bird era Celtics for many of the same reasons. It wasn't because they were "racists", it was from hearing the years of patronizing derision directed against the talent potential of the white basketball player.** It was one of the few times in history when whites could actually bask in a bit of genuine "underdog" status without looking and sounding like a bunch of idiots with no sense of history.
**Identical to the same sort of patronizing derision directed against potential black ballplayers in the days prior to the coming of Jackie Robinson. Patronization is patronization, no matter what the direction.
We're not talking comments, we're talking attitudes.
If it's racist for a white fan to prefer rooting for white players, then it's racist for a black fan to do likewise.
I happen to think neither is racist. But you can't have it both ways.
And they were called racists.
I agree with you totally. There's absolutely nothing wrong with anyone of any group rooting harder for players of that group. I just think the standard isn't applied equally.
i.e. there are lots of concerns/complaints about the lack of American Blacks in MLB, despite the presence of lots of Latin Blacks, but there are no concerns/complaints about the lack of American Whites in the NBA, thought there are lots of Europeans.
And as a Celtics fan (right?), you probably had to defend your team against a lot of criticism about your team being "too white" and possibly racist. As a lifelong Utahn and diehard Utah Jazz fan, I've heard the "whitest team in the league" comments for most my sports following days. Someone even told me a few years back, "Man, even your black players look white!" (Deron Williams, Carlos Boozer)
A team being "too white" in the NBA (I've heard the same criticism about Indiana over the last 2 decades) is definitely viewed as a negative. I'm not sure how to take that.
And they were called racists.
Fools will be fools, but context is everything.
I agree with you totally. There's absolutely nothing wrong with anyone of any group rooting harder for players of that group. I just think the standard isn't applied equally.
Here's my take on that: I root for the teams and the players I like without any particular concern for color, but when I used to hear those "he plays like a white boy" comments (mostly in jest, I should add) directed at basketball players from some of my black friends, I was kind of glad to see Mr. Bird show them how the game should be played. (smile) I never saw anything particularly racist in their cracks, but rather people who were operating with self-selected limited information.
And if there's a generic principle behind all this, it's that I generally like to see stupid stereotypes shattered from all directions, either by those Negro League barnstormers in the 30's or by those 1980's "too white" Celtics.
I should also add that I felt no such "you show em, buddy" sentiments towards John Stockton or Bill Laimbeer, certainly not when DJ or The Chief were guarding them.
-------------------------------
And as a Celtics fan (right?), you probably had to defend your team against a lot of criticism about your team being "too white" and possibly racist. As a lifelong Utahn and diehard Utah Jazz fan, I've heard the "whitest team in the league" comments for most my sports following days. Someone even told me a few years back, "Man, even your black players look white!" (Deron Williams, Carlos Boozer)
A team being "too white" in the NBA (I've heard the same criticism about Indiana over the last 2 decades) is definitely viewed as a negative. I'm not sure how to take that.
Listen to either Bill Russell or John Thompson give their take on that sort of garbage, and you won't feel quite so isolated. They know the difference between real racism and the fake sort cited by those "this team is too white" loudmouths.
There was a great comedian / radio talk show host who used to have a perfect way of dealing with clowns like that. He'd listen to them rant, then interrupt them and ask them to count the money in their wallet or in their pocket. After they told him how much they had, he'd say "Okay, now tell me what's wrong with the white man."
Then after another minute or so of hearing them rant, he'd tell them to re-count their money. The point usually got across, even to the dimmest of bulbs. Sometimes you just have to give fools enough rope to hang themselves.
Oh I agree. Joking doesn't bother me, and my brother and I often make jokes about the token white guy at the end of a lot of teams benches ourselves. The only time these comments start to bother me is when people start implying that management has ulterior motives and is deliberately trying to field the whitest team possible. I don't know the circumstances that led to say, Boston or Indiana having "too white" of teams, but in the case of the Jazz I've followed all their moves for over two decades and I'm certain they're just doing what every other team is doing - trying to find and sign the best possible talent that's willing to play for them. The big city hip-hop type of players don't seem to be too interested in playing in the swinging nightlife-centric metropolis that is Salt Lake City (sarcasm), so management often has to look elsewhere. They do what they can to compete.
they're very well-spoken.
Who, Williams and Boozer? Or the guy that pointed out that they look white?
Back in 1982, legendary scout Howie Haak — who had scouted Jackie Robinson for the Dodgers and then Roberto Clemente for the Pirates — came under fire when he suggested the Pirates, whose lineup was heavily black and Latino at the time, might need more white players to help connect with the Pittsburgh fan base. (Haak was defended by Bill Madlock and others, who knew Haak cared only about winning and wasn't a racist.)
Now, 30 years later, and after two decades of almost incessant dialogue in favor of diversity and against discrimination, we see black and Latino writers routinely making the same basic point that had gotten Haak into trouble with ... black and Latino activists.
And that is a very racist thing to believe, and it's insulting to the people it's presumably intended to respect. How can people feel a common purpose with each other if it's considered okay for some of them to be racists? Racism is racism, period. The past is the past. It isn't the present. There isn't anybody walking around today who owned slaves, or even anybody whose father or grandfather did. There are fewer and fewer around who were adults during the Jim Crow era. There's also nobody left around who was a slave or whose father was a slave. There is plenty of racism around still, but the only way to eliminate it is to . . . well, eliminate it. Racism by whites against blacks perpetuates racism by blacks against whites, and guess what? The reverse is also true. They're both bad. The only thing that's not racist is to hold everyone to the same standard, regardless of race, and that's true no matter how uncomfortable it makes some people because of what happened in the past. We don't have to be ruled by the past.
He's a native of the Galapagos Islands. Check his long-form birth certificate!
Yes, and some people have been saying that ever since the Civil Rights movement turned on a dime in the late '50s and subverted itself, becoming essentially what it was fighting against--the Civil Rights Only For Our Kind movement. It's cost liberalism dearly and that is only now conceded to be undeniable by the clique of fair-weather liberals.
Yes, and some people have been saying that ever since the Civil Rights movement turned on a dime in the late '50s and subverted itself, becoming essentially what it was fighting against--the Civil Rights Only For Our Kind movement. It's cost liberalism dearly and that is only now conceded to be undeniable by the clique of fair-weather liberals.
Morty, you did mean the late 60's and not the late 50's, didn't you?
Those two groups, joined at the hip symbiotically, were the main culprits in rendering any serious discussion about race into a grotesque cartoon. If one of them wasn't shouting down Daniel Moynihan with cries of "blaming the victim", the other was whining about "reverse racism" at the drop of a pin. Facts about social conditions and the legacy of centuries were treated by both sides as if they were radioactive.
At least when it came to history, the black nationalists had a certain amount of justification for their posturing, even if most of that posturing was purely cynical and wholly calculated, offered in many instances just to see how far they could take it before having their bluff called. (See Wolfe, Tom, and Bernstein, Leonard)
With the backlashers, however, there was usually little more behind their rhetoric than an angry pout. Many or most of them had fought the civil rights laws every step of the way, and now all of a sudden they were telling blacks that "you now have everything you fought for", and shut up and leave us alone. Yada yada yada and in 2012 the same two mindsets are still basically talking past each other. The problem is that while the quasi-nationalist mindset has been marginalized within one of our two major parties, the backlash mindset holds a dominant position within the other one. Mix in the inseparable element of class, and you've got a prescription for political paralysis.
**Newt Gingrich at his worst has never depicted a cartoon version of "liberals" with a tenth as much venom as black nationalists and their white wannabee allies did in the heady days of the Black Panthers.. If you didn't have a thick hide, a strong sense of humor, and a bit of an anthropologists' perspective, it was not a good time to be a liberal. It was as frustrating as arguing with Ray, and nowhere near as civil.
I'm not just referring to Black extremists. They never pretended they were about anything but titt for tat racism. They were just looking out for their tribe. They say their niche and they went for it. That's entirely predicable. Even understandable. I'm talking about those who excused and ran interference for them despite it being in bald contradiction to what they had been holding two seconds before.
I'm referring to liberals and moderates on the left who went along with the conceptual farce for--what, forty years now—and who still alibi for that party line. The principle liberals promoted for years and decades, though, was expressed in terms of universal color-blind equality—that’s about rising above tribe. That was idea being sold. That was the deal offered. Instead, they reneged on it at the exact moment when they got a chance to implement and carry out that principle. They corrupted their ideals almost instantaneously with victory. They became, and still are, exactly the same as those they attacked, when those they attacked happened to be white. They had a chance to rise above it, and they chickened out.
(They remind so much of the moderates and secular liberals who attack those who attack the religious fundamentalists, but not the religious fundamentalists in principle. Suddenly, when faced with those who demand equality, they're so ####### understanding of those who do the wrong.)
Even recently these pod liberal types, encapsulated in the cliché PC this or that (there are reasons things become clichés, though), went after James Watson for a casual comment, not even wanting to know, as a mere threshold measure, what he meant by what he said--they just immediately lunged for the throat—no discussion or thinking was allowed. Yet, these faux liberals gave Al Sharpton a complete free pass on his racist transgressions along with a lifelong seat to pontificate at will at certain Cable News Network tables. Let's not even get into Larry Summers--which is exactly the same mindset applied to sexism. It’s so obvious a perversion of ideals. No, liberals can be just as dishonest and hypocritical as any other political group, and just like any other group, they make their special pleadings. But, if it's all about special pleading, why was Plessy wrong? Or, indeed, slavery? It’s all too much like a puxssy hound complaining about the modern woman’s lack of virtue and character. A rule that amounts to I-don’t-have-to-be-any-better-than-the-worst-of-my-enemies is no rule at all. It’s just rallying the troops for war.
And more generally, what happens when theory and history collide? Do you just say that history should never inform policy? Does history end the second that the laws are changed, and everything that went before then gets wiped out? And if you don't believe that, does that mean that the only alternative is to play the "race card" in wildly inappropriate contexts and pretend that 2012 is 1962?
This is a point I generally address more to libertarians than to others, but when you try to reduce every discussion to a matter of rigid "principles" without any consideration of history or context, you're going to wind up getting nowhere, with both sides eventually saying that they're going to pick up their toys and go home.
I thought I made it as clear as glass. The line is that if you claim as an overarching universal right that discrimination on the basis of race is wrong, then that should have meaning--your principle should apply as avowed regardless (or irregardless) as to the outcome--which is to say, to what you want. If it doesn't, it leads me to think you were just leading me on. That you have another principle, undisclosed, that is motivating you. You keep wanting to have all these wild cards. If your principle is really just a partisan one, then don’t expect your opponent to rise above himself when you won’t. We're back to conflict and one-upmanship. Yeah, I know—your sort was justified; you were on a holy crusade; there sort wasn’t. My reply: based on what? We're at war or we're back to a universal principle that applies to everyone. Hey, plant your flag, and defend it.
If those liberals in the ‘50’s had said upfront from the beginning that they wanted not equality in principle but special dispensation that would give them equality in fact no matter what, what do you think would have happened to their support? You just get to make the rules; you don’t get to game the rules in the middle of a contest when you don't think the contest will go your way. Or if you do think you should be able to do that, then that’s really your principle. Be clear and honest about that, and we’ll see how long that game goes on.
"Color-blindness" means "color" is not an issue. Period. It doesn't mean one thing for one color and another thing for another color. We had that rule If the rule is "no discrimination based on race", then that's the rule. If the rule instead is "you can discriminate to give one race a leg up", then fine. But don’t #### your pants when the opposition then works t effect a rule along those lines to benefit them The air kind of goes out of the tires of moral outrage when you view it in terms that you now say should apply.
In Hell. The initial presumption itself was an outrage (and we saw that same thing manifest itself with Paterno and with Bill Conlin). That they revised their opinion makes amounts to something like a limited amend, for those that did and that apologized for their initial wrong, but it isn't a pardon and certainly doesn’t whitewash in advance their doing something like that again. Al Sharpton is an odious, programmed fuxcktard racist. But his opinions exist separately from him, just as all messages can be separated from the messenger. There's no reason to tolerate him—certainly not until he first makes amends. But, then, why even then? It didn't work for Pete Rose. (Or Al Campanis. Or Jimmy the Greek. Or a host of others.) Why should he be enshrined? Why is he different from James Watson? No one wanted to know what Watson thought, but everyone wants to know what Sharpton does. How does he rate that?
History was addressed. Laws were passed and were put into effect in order to stop what had been happening. You know, those white racists you have pigeonholed so neatly also had their "historical" reasons, reasons in some cases that were prima facie understandable and even justifiable in terms of their cultural history and their culture at the time. The plea that liberals in the Civil Rights era made was made to end-run historical/cultural pressure and was in terms of a higher law than historical culture--until they got that, and then suddenly that wasn't enough--it was necessary and right that what they had fought against be instituted against the "other" just as it had been against them, although, if you like, in a lighter grade of virulence—not that they should be given credit for that, because they would have tried to if they thought it wouldn’t be self-defeating. You wanted what the white racists had, and you wanted sweet revenge. Ttit for tat is entirely understandable. It's not a higher moral law, though. As Kurt Vonnegut would say, so it goes.
Few people, none sane, are pretending 2012 is 1962. It's still a violation of your avowed principle. That it may not be as bad does not excuse it (or does it in your mind?). One small hate crime is not killing six million. It still is what it is, and there's no reason to tolerate one but not the other. The principle should be what it was claimed to be: you're entitled to not be a victim of racial discrimination. It shouldn't be, discrimination is okay if it's against the right people. We keep wanting to fine-tune society through political engineering down to the living room. It's expensive, in money and effort, and it causes acrimony. But , of course, everyone sees there Utopia--and that Utopia is always based on one thing: everybody doing what you want them to. That you don't think it's not such a big deal says something about the banality of every day wrongs degrades relations incrementally until it makes people very cynical and frustrate. Especially when that wasn’t the deal offered and struck.
If those liberals in the ‘50’s had said upfront from the beginning that they wanted not equality in principle but special dispensation that would give them equality in fact no matter what, what do you think would have happened to their support? You just get to make the rules; you don’t get to game the rules in the middle of a contest when you don't think the contest will go your way. Or if you do think you should be able to do that, then that’s really your principle. Be clear and honest about that, and we’ll see how long that game goes on.
"Color-blindness" means "color" is not an issue. Period. It doesn't mean one thing for one color and another thing for another color. We had that rule If the rule is "no discrimination based on race", then that's the rule. If the rule instead is "you can discriminate to give one race a leg up", then fine. But don’t #### your pants when the opposition then works t effect a rule along those lines to benefit them The air kind of goes out of the tires of moral outrage when you view it in terms that you now say should apply. History was addressed. Laws were passed and were put into effect in order to stop what had been happening. You know, those white racists you have pigeonholed so neatly also had their "historical" reasons, reasons in some cases that were prima facie understandable and even justifiable in terms of their cultural history and their culture at the time. The plea that liberals in the Civil Rights era made was made to end-run historical/cultural pressure and was in terms of a higher law than historical culture--until they got that, and then suddenly that wasn't enough--it was necessary and right that what they had fought against be instituted against the "other" just as it had been against them, although, if you like, in a lighter grade of virulence—not that they should be given credit for that, because they would have tried to if they thought it wouldn’t be self-defeating. You wanted what the white racists had, and you wanted sweet revenge. Ttit for tat is entirely understandable. It's not a higher moral law, though. As Kurt Vonnegut would say, so it goes.
Few people, none sane, are pretending 2012 is 1962. It's still a violation of your avowed principle. That it may not be as bad does not excuse it (or does it in your mind?). One small hate crime is not killing six million. It still is what it is, and there's no reason to tolerate one but not the other. The principle should be what it was claimed to be: you're entitled to not be a victim of racial discrimination. It shouldn't be, discrimination is okay if it's against the right people. We keep wanting to fine-tune society through political engineering down to the living room. It's expensive, in money and effort, and it causes acrimony. But , of course, everyone sees there Utopia--and that Utopia is always based on one thing: everybody doing what you want them to. That you don't think it's not such a big deal says something about the banality of every day wrongs degrades relations incrementally until it makes people very cynical and frustrate. Especially when that wasn’t the deal offered and struck.
Wonderful post Morty!
I usually don't agree with you, and sometimes find your arguments offensive, but this is 100% spot on.
And well written. Bravo!
Except to one particular point: Yes, if Tawana Brawley had come up to me and said that she was raped by a white man, my first instinct wouldn't have been to think she was lying. What was despicable about Sharpton's reaction wasn't that he at first believed her, but that he was so quick to publicize and convict her alleged rapist (Steven Pagones) without making any serious determination of the actual facts.
Rape is a serious crime, and it doesn't deserve an automatic brushoff. But being accused of rape is equally serious, and it should never be made in public by a third party if that third party wasn't a witness, or if that third party hasn't made a thorough investigation that included a long cross-examination of the accuser. But Sharpton wasn't there, and Sharpton relied solely on the girl's word, in the face of a mountain of conflicting evidence.
If you want to equate that position with the one of the queen in Alice in Wonderland, I can't stop you. But it does absolutely nothing to clarify the issue.
**When did I ever call Jimmy the Greek or Al Campanis racists? I don't mind defending my own comments, but I'm not Dave Zirin's speechwriter.
this is the whitest team in recent memory
Yes, Morty, that's just what it means, really. OTOH you do know a hell of a lot about movies.
For shame. Everyone knows repugnant bigots should only be allowed on cable television once they've established their bona fides through talk radio.
John Tyler's grandson is still alive.
(I still can't figure Morty out. Sometimes I'm in favor of kicking him off the internet, and sometimes I wish he was on the next bar stool over.)
I think there are still two grandsons still alive--the other is in poor health.
President Tyler was born in 1790. So in only three generations, 222 years have been covered. I think
I think Richard Dawkins somewhere answers a comment about how to increase the life span (by a lot) in general, of men in particular, and he says don't let us procreate until we're older--women in their forties, men in the their sixties and seventies. I'm on board. Of course, Dawkins got to marry whatshername from Dr. Who.
That's not gonna work so well. It starts to get really, really hard for women to get pregnant around 40. Not to mention lot's of health risks to the babies.
(I still can't figure Morty out. Sometimes I'm in favor of kicking him off the internet, and sometimes I wish he was on the next bar stool over.)
Concur.
You must be Registered and Logged In to post comments.
<< Back to main