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Baseball Primer Newsblog — The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand Thursday, December 08, 2011John Rocker Still Trying to Clear NamePearlman: Give ‘Em Enough Rope (sent this over to ...errr, Jeff).
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Posted: December 08, 2011 at 01:42 AM | 67 comment(s)
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1. Tulo's Fishy Mullet (mrams) Posted: December 08, 2011 at 02:08 AM (#4009808)Another Primate wrote a book!
Also, the active MLB leader in consecutive games played, the moment that Cal Ripken Jr. sat out: Albert Belle.
Don't trust any proverb that needs a proofreader.
No kidding.
I would really like to know the context that makes those comments sound good.
Maybe he messed up the name of the band Foreigner and associates it with New York?
The interview is awesome. Our lengthy discussion on immigration reform? WHAT!?
Don't worry - at least in the 'explanation' or 'meat' as he terms it, he explains he's still sick of 'political correctness' and that the only problem he has with foreigners is that they don't 'assimilate'...
Which means it's pretty clear that this statement is inch-deep meaningless claptrap... I mean, I'm unhappy with an awful lot of our security infrastructure's digital surveillance capabilities and programs, but I really think you'd have to be an idiot not to recognize that the erosion of civil liberties has hit those who happen to have olive skin, have facial hair that doesn't conform to traditional norms, or have a decidedly foreign accent/non-proficiency in English.
It doesn't mean that I like being groped by a TSA agent, but the forefront of civil liberties erosion is one hell of lot more likely to be found by those driving in certain states without fully in order papers and carrying their birth certificates than it is by me standing in an airport line.
No lie: today I saw a pickup with multiple "Speak English" stickers on the window of the cap; on the gate was a bumper sticker reading "Pog Mo Thoin...I'm Irish".
Which is essentially the history of American immigration -- I only vaguely remember my great-grandfather, but he was a Polish immigrant and I do remember that he spoke virtually no English. My grandparents, who were very, very young when they immigrated - were multilingual, generally translating for my great-grandparents. My parents knew a bit of Polish, but nothing approaching conversational. I can basically say "Cheers" and "#### You".
This is no different than the history of any other regional immigration experience going all the way back to the pre-Civil War days when the Know Nothings briefly battled for the remnants of the Whigs... I think the only real difference is 1)modern media - it's not like you had Irish radio stations in the 1850 or Italian stations in the 1890s, and 2)the fact that America is more or less settled means that German, Swedish, etc immigrant communities don't translate into a world where there just isn't space left for immigrant communities to essentially settle an area.
True, but as late as the 1920s Chicago had something like 11 Polish-language newspapers.
hardly a problem exclusive to one side of the aisle. The free exercise/establishment clauses might be the most misinterpreted part of the constitution by the public at-large, nudging out the 4th amendment protections, in my opinion. Amazing how many people think these rights protect you in any context, public or private.
This is true - the idea that 'freedom of speech' means you don't have to face any social consequences for the things you say is an equal opportunity misreading.
I can't and won't speak to whether this was one, because I don't know the particulars of the relationship.
But many athletes understand the "notebook and tape recorder in their face" on-the-record interviews, as well as the "shooting the breeze off the record after the interview is over" chats with the daily beat guys.
What they sometimes don't understand is that a guy can visit your house, have a beer or two and a meal with you, meet your wife or girlfriend and agent - and still use that Day 2 inane musing of yours, once you've gotten comfortable, in an article.
It happens. Again, not saying it happened here. But this isn't a guy running for President, either.
Though not exactly a sympathetic figure.
:)
You've just won the Primey for the best straight line of this thread.
Only Americans...in America...not in the military...right now.
Rocker might be a real racist, I doubt it, that word has lost a lot of its true meaning, he is certainly been very insensitive in the past.
I've observed just as much hatred directed at Rocker than what Rocker dished in that Pearlman article. Of course Pearlman is a hack, that we know.
Don't know if he still is, but for a while (a year or so after he washed out of the Atlantic League) Rocker was dating a black woman.
Why do left wingers all claim to know who "right wingers" are, and what they believe?
Remember: All generalizations are false.
But without the John Rocker saga, we wouldn't have the awesome Eastbound and Down (thanks #36), so what are you gonna do?
The list of Milwaukee newspapers (1833-1957) is impressive. In the 1930s it appears that in Milwaukee one could get a paper in English, German, Polish, Czech ("Bohemian"), Hungarian, Slovenian, Yiddish, and Italian. Sadly, the last Norwegian paper died in 1897. It's only in the last 50 years that these papers have gone away. The Milwaukee Deutsche Zeitung even managed to survive as a daily until 1991.
My library holds something like 2000 "American ethnic newspapers", as librarians call them. Some of them are weekly or monthly activist papers dating from the Civil Rights era or later, and a lot are African-American dailies and weeklies, but the majority are dailies or weeklies in languages other than English, most founded between the Civil War and the Depression.
What we can say, with reasonable confidence, is that he said a whole bunch of bigoted stuff. Regardless of whether we identify Rocker as a racist or anti-gay bigot, he said racist and bigoted things.
Take it away, Jay Smooth.
I think the reason for this is the wild success of these amendments (1st more than the 4th). Most Americans have no concept that one could be put in jail simply for voicing an anti-government opinion. The framers knew that not only could you be jailed but your property stripped and your life taken for saying something like, "The king is insane."
We really have exactly the freedoms the framers wanted to protect, stunningly so, and, thus, when most people try to rationalize why you'd need the first amendment in the first place they can't really get it. So they end up thinking it's supposed to protect from others' censure, rather than the king's wrath.
The same is true, to a lesser extent, for the 4th amendment. Most of us* have never had much interaction with police or investigators and our police and investigators know that they at least have to look like they're obeying the law (and, though the exact number is arguable, most do). Thus, we don't really think, deep down inside, that we're at risk of unlawful search and seizure. So when the authorities want to violate the amendment to get a "terrorist" we think it's great, rather than a potential threat.
Again, the bill of rights has been so overwhelmingly successful** that we take it for granted. Hell, no one even knows what the third amendment is.
* Obviously not all.
** Obviously not all the time in all places for all peoples. I'm not saying it's anything like perfect, just very, very good.
I had the right to remain silent but I didn't have the ability, to quote Ron White.
My eldest is studying the amendments and he studied first, second, and fourth just this week. I wondered why they skipped the third and sat and thought about it. I was proud I remembered what it was before googling it (to check).
Something to do with powdered wigs I think. Or requiring sideburns to be shaven. I forget.
I mean, we had to learn it with the teacher making the kind of jokes that Matt made. Which actually made it the easiest to learn, I think.
Absolutely - it's not black and white, pun intended... Studs Terkel's Race: What Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About the American Obsession is an excellent case study and well worth the read (as are most of his collections).
Whatever Jeff Pearlman did or didn't do with the interview - I've heard enough of Rocker, and this article reinforces it - to feel comfortable in my own assessment of him as a class A #########. I have no power to, nor would I if I could, send to prison or some sort reeducation camp. But he's an individual, he's made statements I find running from distasteful to atrocious - so I'm perfectly fine and happy with my assessment of him as a #########. I'm also not going put $15 in his pocket to give him an opportunity to 'explain' himself further.
He's releasing a book.
The old maxim of sticks and stones is actually true you know. If you get overly offended and affronted by mere words, as an adult, you probably have some significant failings as a person.
He's releasing a book.
The over/under on how long it'll take for that book to be available for $0.01 on Amazon? About 8 to 10 months, max. It's hard to imagine why any publisher would want to throw money down a rathole on an instant remainder like this.
Ummm... This makes no logical sense.
All Rocker got in return was "mere words", too... so where's the tragedy?
So people offended by the mere words have significant failings -- but John Rocker, who didn't get beaten up, who wasn't tossed in prison, who wasn't deported to Elba, who wasn't even suspended or prevented from playing but merely started sucking so that he was more trouble than he was worth -- was treated unfairly?
Are "mere words" unidirectional?
He was suspended, but otherwise correct.
Rocker's biggest career problem was that he stopped getting guys out. As for the demonization - he's probably parlayed that into more fame/money than it ever cost him, so I'll reserve my sympathies for the less bigoted among us. Whatever mistreatment he got from Pearlman, which I have no doubt was substantial, since it was Pearlman, he's amply demonstrated through the years that he can act like a classless douche without Jeffy's able hand.
OK - my mistake... he lost 14 games w/o pay -- but then kept pitching for the Braves and also got shots in Cleveland and Texas before teams decided a reliever who walks 5-6-7 guys per 9 wasn't worth the trouble.
But his public persona comes off terribly, which isn't all that surprising. He had one, limited, skill. There is no reason to think he wouldn't be like any joe-hillbilly-hick when talking about life, the universe and everything. Which is the biggest reason not to buy his book. What are you likely to learn that will be of any help to you?
The one thing that got me is why anyone cared so much what he said in the first place. I think it is a troubling sign that we give celebrity opinion so much weight, for good or ill.
They were covering one a day in class and the listed ones for this week were 1, 2, & 4. They might have mentioned it in passing I suppose. I'll ask him directly. He was able to describe 1 & 2 pretty well though (the ones he had covered).
Not to mention how low the "celebrity" bar has been set in the first place.
I wonder how many people had the slightest idea who John Rocker was before that interview was published. Of those, how many outside Atlanta could tell you anything more than "I think he's a pitcher for the Braves"?
I'd guess the answer might be maybe a few million baseball fans, mostly of the hardcore variety who lived in one of the other NL East cities. I know that I'd never heard about him before that, or if I had, it was in one ear and out the other. I suppose he must have pitched in the 1999 World Series against the Yanks, but if he did, it mustn't have meant too much one way or the other.
But after that SI interview had been published? By the time that tirade of his had been spread onto every news broadcast and blog from here to China, Rocker was far better known worldwide than Greg Maddux or Chipper Jones. Even my wife, who barely can name 5 ballplayers in history**, somehow heard about Rocker and what he had to say about that #7 train. Cynical as it may seem to say it, if you want to grab the attention of the treasured "casual fan", you can think of few more efficient ways of doing it than having a truly Moron Moment. Just ask Al Campanis.
** Jeter, Ripken, possibly Babe Ruth, and if you give her a few minutes she'll think of the others
(fighting Lassus for the fork....)
Well, you didn't have to profess your ignorance of 5.
Disney.
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