In the off-season–and any season without baseball is “off,” as in slightly rancid–the big news in the sports world was political, the fierce controversy over NFL players “taking a knee” during the national anthem to protest… well, a variety of things, from police shootings to the rhetoric of the president. A good deal of this sports politics had to do with race–as a good deal of all American politics has to do with race. That helps explain where baseball stands in this controversy.
Hart, McCovey, Mays 1967
With rare exception, baseball players remained standing during the anthem and stood apart from the protests. While the 2017 World Series winners, the Astros (minus Puerto Rican player Carlos Beltran), made the ritual trip of champions to Trump’s White House on March 12, 2018, the 2017 NBA champion Golden State Warriors spurned the ceremony and several members of the Superbowl-winning Philadelphia Eagles said they would boycott a similar event. This contrast emerges from the historical connection between race and baseball.
Roots
Baseball has long been seen as the more politically conservative of the major sports. Although its earliest players had working-class and farm origins and even engaged in labor action, they disproportionately arrived in the big leagues from the rural south, which helped shape the culture of the sport. In the post-World War II era, baseball had a more traumatic desegregation experience–the fury around Jackie Robinson–than did the national football and basketball leagues. In the current era of MLB’s financial success, it’s no wonder that multi-millionaire ballplayers lean right, or at least the white ones do–which is what most MLB players are.
In 2016, 7 percent of MLB players were black, although black players had been as many as 18.5 percent of the rosters in 1975. (My own San Francisco Giants reflect that change. The 1967 opening day lineup had three African American and two Latin players; the 2017 opening day lineup had one of each.) The arrival of Latin American and Caribbean players has been a major factor in the reduction of black players, but so has the increasingly expensive and suburban industry for producing ballplayers, prep from tee-ball to private coaches to college.[1] In contrast, about 70 percent of NFL payers are black and almost 75 percent of NBA players are.
The MLB has cautioned its players against being politically outspoken and they have listened. But it is notable that the controversial activists in baseball have tended to be African American or Afro-Caribbean. Curt Flood led the fight that eventually brought free agency for MLB players. And over a decade ago, baseball had its own Colin Kaepernick moment.
As described in the Organization of American Historians’ Magazine of History, Puerto Rican slugger Carlos Delgado faced a storm of personal attacks in 2003 for what he did not do: He would not emerge from the dugout to stand for the 7th-inning rendition of “God Bless America” that the MLB had instituted after 9/11. He was protesting, Delgado said, not the memory of 9/11, but the use of patriotic themes to support the war in Iraq, which he saw (correctly) as unconnected to 9/11, and also protesting the U.S. Navy’s use of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques for target practice. Later, when Delgado became a New York Met, he acceded to the team’s request that he join the players on the field. His point had been made. Notably, he did not get the swell of support from other baseball players that Colin Kaepernick got from other football players.
Indeed, when, during the Kaepernick controversy, baseball players were asked their opinions, “several players quickly denounced the action, stating it was un-American and asserting that Kaepernick had to learn about the history of freedom in America,” reported Mary Craig. “As Adam Jones succinctly put it, ‘baseball is a white man’s sport,’ where political engagement is at best a hobby rather than a necessity and at worst career suicide.”
Race also affects who watches which sports on TV. Although couch-potato-ing football is clearly preferred by all racial groups, whites are much likelier to choose watching baseball to watching basketball and blacks much likelier to choose basketball over baseball.[2]
Changes?
The MLB has come to see its racial problem–in the stands and on the field–and is trying to recapture African American fans and players. The political tone might be changing as well. In the wake of the recent Stoneman Douglas school shootings in Florida, the MLB had all teams wear the high school’s SD baseball cap for a game during Spring Training–perhaps a statement about gun control. (And yet, the Cubs’ Anthony Rizzo, a graduate of that school, had to deny he was making any statement about guns when he visited his alma mater after the tragedy.)
Sports as the site of ethnic and racial struggle is hardly specific to the United States. Indeed, matters are far worse in Europe, where “football” (i.e., soccer) teams are often associated with specific ethnic groups and fans scream anti-African, anti-Muslim, and antisemitic taunts at players and opposing fans. Violence has often escalated to the point that authorities must not only build protection barriers in the stands but also sometimes prohibit fans from attending. We are thankfully not there, but attention needs to be paid to the lasting culture of the sport.
As we pay attention to the brew of race, politics, and sports, we can at the same time still enjoy the fact that, as of Thursday night, a brand new fresh season is on….. Go Giants!
Andrew McCutchen joins the Giants, 2018
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Notes
[1] H/t Andy Baggarly. See also here.
[2] In a 2013 Gallup Poll, about 42% of both groups preferred watching football, but 16% of whites versus 2% of blacks preferred baseball, while 8% of whites versus 28% of blacks preferred basketball. (Data courtesy of iPoll.)
