#235. Playing Baseball

"If you build it, he will come," so spoke the ghost of "Shoeless" Joe Jackson in the classic, Pre-Obama America film "Field of Dreams".

The movie showcases America's pastime - baseball - and the deep connection the sport has with Pre-Obama America; the ritual of playing catch with your father; and the dreams that remain crystallized forever when you step onto the baseball diamond, memories so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces.

For Black people however, the film "Field of Dreams" reminds them of all that they were deprived of when they were denied playing in Major League Baseball and were forced to play in the Negro Leagues.

Also, the game of baseball has completely lost its popularity among young Black people, as Major League Baseball (MLB) find itself with less than nine percent of its players Black people:

"When the Red Sox became the final major league team to integrate in 1959 by signing Pumpsie Green, nearly 1-in-5 major leaguers was black. As recently as 1983, the ratio was better than 1-in-4.

Now the figure is closer to 1-in-12.

A report from the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport found that American or non-Hispanic blacks made up only 8.4 percent of major league rosters in 2006. Whites made up 59.5 percent, Hispanics (a group that includes Americanborn Hispanics, blacks from Spanish-speaking countries and others from Latin America) made up 29.4 percent and Asians 2.4 percent.

The percentage of American blacks was the lowest in 27 years.

Further, American blacks held just three of 30 manager positions, one of 30 general manager positions, and 31 of 519 vice president and senior administration positions. There were no American black CEOs or majority owners.

A list compiled by ESPN. com revealed that 69 out of 750 active players (not including the disabled list) on opening day this year were American blacks. Neither Houston nor Atlanta – cities that are 25 and 61 percent black, respectively – had a single American black."

White people, who make up roughly 66 percent of the United States population, are underrepresented in the major leagues, but Black people, who make up roughly 13 percent of the United States population, are slightly underrepresented (considering how many Black males between the ages of 18-35 are in prison, its amazing that the MLB has even that many Black people).

Recently, the 2005 edition of the Houston Astros made it all the way to the World Series and shockingly they did it without the help any Black people:

"Joe Morgan (Black guy) worries about the face of baseball. Watching the World Series, the Hall of Famer is troubled by what he sees.

His old team, the Houston Astros, is down 2-0 to the Chicago White Sox, but it's not their lineup that concerns Morgan. It's their makeup.

The Astros are the first World Series team in more than a half-century with a roster that doesn't include a single black player.

"Of course, I noticed it. How could you not?" Morgan said while the Astros took batting practice before the opener in Chicago. "But they're not the only ones. There are two or three teams that didn't have any African-American players this year."

Morgan said it's a predicament and a challenge for Major League Baseball. While more players from around the world are making it to the majors -- Japan, Korea, for example -- the number of blacks is declining.

"It's a daunting task to get African-American kids into baseball, and I don't see the trend changing," he said.

The last World Series team without a black player was the 1953 New York Yankees. It wasn't until 1955 -- eight years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947 -- that Elston Howard became the first black in Yankee pinstripes."

The Negro Leagues Major League Baseball ain't, as every effort to attract young Black people to the game are underway with the MLB's Inner-City Initiative, as the growing problem of few Black people on the 25-man rosters for MLB teams is a threat to all that is good about America.

Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Jim Rice and Jackie Robinson are all names that baseball fans know and respect, but recent Black players in baseball haven't conjured up the same images of the Black baseball heroes of the past:

"According to a report from CNNMoney.com, black baseball players total a meager 8 percent of all the leagues players many people involved in baseball have speculated as to why this is so, players and analysts alike. Gary Sheffield of the Detroit Tigers suggests that the rise in the number of Latino players has a direct correlation to the drop in the leagues overall percentage of black players. He was quoted as saying, ... Its about being able to tell Latin players what to do being able to control them ...Where I'm from, you can't control us... So, if you're equally good as this Latin player, guess who's going to get sent home The Twins Tori Hunter also suggested that it makes more economic sense to pay for a Hispanic player that costs 2,000 than a black player that cost 2 million.

This issue perhaps best relates to the perception of black players in the eyes of the media some of the more prominent black baseball players arent always shown in the best light. Barry Bonds is demonized solely on steroid allegations and his unwillingness to oblige the media. Gary Sheffield is often looked upon as a malcontent, simply because hes opinionated. Tori Hunter may have been viewed as culturally insensitive for his shortsighted comments regarding Hispanic players and baseball economics. All of this may have an unintended consequence, as it would appear that the black youth of America could someday be lacking appropriate black male athletes to emulate."

Hmm... Black youth not emulating Black male athletes? As Michael Vick Haters taught us, too late for that idea.

Interestingly, MLB players like Doc Goodin, Daryl Strawberry and Barry Bonds have done wonders for removing from baseball purists minds the lily-white images of the "glory days" of baseball that were depicted in "Field of Dreams", as that movie indicates the only diversity people want on the ball field is of the European variety (there does exist speculation that Babe Ruth was the first great Black home run hitter, but SBPDL will leave that for you to decide).

What are some reasons for the lack of Black people playing baseball? Here is a list:

--As youth programs dried up the past three decades, basketball courts offered an inexpensive substitute. Then the NBA exploded in popularity.

"Dr. J came along, then Magic Johnson and then Michael Jordan. They got icons that transcended the sport," Solomon said. ". . . It's like golf with Tiger Woods. Tiger didn't save golf. But he made it cool."

--Despite initiatives such as the Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) program and the Urban Youth Academy in Compton, Calif., many believe Major League Baseball still has not done enough to penetrate America's inner cities. Hank Aaron called on baseball to do more in June to increase participation.

--Baseball's marketing lags behind the NFL and NBA, especially when it comes to exposing its young, black stars, some players said.

"You look at the TV, you see LeBron (James) and you see Kobe (Bryant)," Sabathia said. "You don't see Ryan Howard and Jimmy Rollins or these guys out there."

--College baseball programs have just 11.7 scholarships to offer, meaning most players do not get free rides -- or even 50 percent scholarships -- unlike football (85 full scholarships) and basketball (13 full scholarships).

--Baseball has been a game passed down from father to son for generations. The absence of fathers in urban communities may have fractured that link.

"Baseball is a sport where you have to have a dad to teach you how to play catch, and a dad to be there with you to teach you the game," Sabathia said. "There's not a lot of dads in the community these days just for whatever reason."

--The increasing importance of travel teams on youth development may prevent working class and poor families from participating.

--The influx of new ballparks has fueled rising ticket prices, putting the game out of reach for many families. The cost of the average ticket rose 5 percent in 2009 to $26.64, according to the Team Marketing Report. The Fan Cost Index, which measures the cost to take a family of four to a game, including food and parking, rose 3.2 percent to $196.79.

Of course, the real reason so few Black people play baseball is for the same reason Stuff Black People Don't Like includes Father's Day, since nearly 80 percent of Black people are born out of wedlock.

Black people find baseball boring for a few reasons that most people don't want to consider: not because the average MLB game lasts three hours, but because the average MLB game is incredibly boring. Black people don't like baseball, not because there is no beer served after the 7th inning, but because there are so few Black players to cheer for in the first place.

Of course, some Black people still believe racism is the problem behind everything and is always the bogeyman behind every evil action of white people:

"An angry Milton Bradley lashed out at his treatment from Cubs fans Wednesday, suggesting he has been the victim of racial abuse at Wrigley Field.

But Bradley declined to give specifics, saying no one wanted to listen to him.

"America doesn't believe in racism," he said sarcastically before repeating the remark.

Speaking to beat writers in the Cubs clubhouse Wednesday before their 9-4 victory over the Nationals, Bradley was asked to clarify his comments from Tuesday night, when he said he faced "hatred" on a daily basis.

To what exactly was Bradley referring?

"I'm talking about hatred, period," he said. "I'm talking about when I go to eat at a restaurant, I have to listen to the waiters bad-mouthing me at another table, sitting in a restaurant, that's what I'm talking about -- everything."

Milton Bradley might be booed by white people, because it is only white people who go to MLB games anymore. He might not get good service at restaurants, because he is a bad tipper, another SBPDL.

Worse, Jackie Robinson, the man who integrated baseball and has an entire day -April 15 - for his honor, can't catch a break anymore, according to Black MLB player Tori Hunter:

"Jackie Robinson was special, and I don’t think a lot of players know what they’re wearing his number for. I think some players are wearing it because the teams want them to wear it. I don’t think they know what’s behind the number.

You don’t have to be African-American to know what he went through. You’ve just got to be a smart person or a person who knows what pain is like.

For the past 10 years, I’ve been called the N-word, like, 20 times. Not in Minnesota. In Kansas City. In Boston.

I think Jackie Robinson went through a lot just for us to play this game. Had he not gone through that, we probably wouldn’t be playing this game. I probably wouldn’t be here today.

Rondell White was going to wear Jackie Robinson’s number, too, but he’s on the disabled list. And Jerry White will wear it. They represent Jackie Robinson, too.

What bugged me was that Houston doesn’t have a black player . . . and this might not be true at all, but, in my opinion, I feel like everybody (on the Astros) is wearing it because they don’t have a black player. A lot of teams are wearing it, and they barely have black players."

SBPDL has tried to tell everyone that Black people will not be happy until everything in America is 100 percent Black. You can't make Black people play baseball and you can' put Black people on baseball teams, just because they are Black. Sorry Mr. Hunter, that is not how it works, as sports are the ultimate test of talent and affirmative action policies don't work on the playing field.

Stuff Black People Don't Like includes baseball, for "Field of Dreams" shows the ultimate fantasy of baseball fans and it simply to another catch with Dad, a sensation that most Black people never felt in the first place. Also, the movie shows what most Black people believe about white people anyway, that they would like to watch only white people play sports.

Baseball will always be a Pre-Obama America game. As the game fades in popularity and relevance, so does the majority population that built America. Baseball is still seen as a white thing, and remember, SBPDL includes Acting White for a reason.

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#236. Michael Vick Haters

The National Football League (NFL) is as much a business as it is an entertainment organization. The NFL generates much more than $1 billion a year for its 32-franchises and the city's they play in and occupies a majority of the time that people have on their Sunday's.

Ratings for the NFL have never been higher, and the amount of money spent broadcasting games never greater:

"Currently, three American terrestrial television networks CBS ($3.73B), NBC ($3.6B) and FOX ($4.27B), as well as cable television's ESPN ($8.8B) are paying a combined total of $20.4 billion to broadcast NFL games through the 2011 season for CBS, FOX, and NBC and through 2013 for ESPN."

Black people make up 13 percent of the United States population, and yet they make up more than 65 percent of the NFL's rosters. Millions of people worship these athletes and form positive opinions based on the players they watch on Sunday.

Television has created the ultimate machine to induce positive images of people who the Nightly News Casts of most major cities would otherwise destroy:

"I asked ... prominent psychologists, partly famous for their work with hypnotism, if they could define the TV experience as hypnotic and, if so, what that meant. I described to each the concrete details of what goes on between viewer and television set: dark room, eyes still, body quiet, looking at light that is flickering different ways, sounds contained to narrow ranges and so on. Dr. Freda Morris (former professor of medical psychology at UCLA and author of several books on hypnosis) said, "It sounds like you are giving a course outline in hypnotic trance induction."

"Dr. Ernest Hilgard, who directs Stanford University's research program in hypnosis and the author of the most widely used texts in the field (said), "Sitting quietly, with no sensory inputs aside from the screen, no orientating outside the television set is itself capable of getting people to set aside ordinary reality, allowing the substitution of some other reality the set may offer. You can get so imaginatively involved that alternates temporarily fade away. A hypnotist doesn't have to be interesting. He can use an ordinary voice, and if the effect is to quiet the person, he can invite them into a situation where they can follow his words or actions and then release their imagination along the lines he suggests. Then they drift into hypnosis."

Black people love television and they love that white people watch so much of it and have fallen in love with sports, for Black people dominate both sports and crime in America, yet white people only acknowledge the former.

It is for this reason that SBPDL is proud to discuss Michael Vick and the nearly universal support he has from Black people. Vick, the recently freed from jail and recently signed quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles, once was on contract for more than $100 million dollars.

He was a massively popular athlete and looked to be the genesis for merging of Black people and quarterback position once and for all.

That was before he was found guilty of being one of the heavyweights of dog fighting and sent to jail:

"Today (July 20,2009), however, Vick's freedom is official as his 23-month sentence for his part in financing and operating the Bad Newz Kennels dogfighting ring comes to an end."

Vick was always a polarizing figure, but his arrest exposed the reality of Black Unity for all to see:

"The racial divide emerged early in the case against the Atlanta Falcons quarterback, apparent at rallies filled with cheering - and overwhelmingly black - Vick supporters and at anti-Vick protests that are noticeably white.

Vick's opponents say the evidence against him is overwhelming. For many black supporters, that judgment evokes uncomfortable questions about race and guilt in America.

"White folks 'been grindin' on an ax ... and that ax ain't got sharp enough for them," said Earnest Hardy Sr., who called the case a witch hunt targeting a successful black man."

Vick was recently re-instated to play in the NFL and he and his new team - The Eagles - have seen how Black people have responded to this signing (glowing admiration):

"The Philadelphia chapter of the NAACP, the Black Clergy of Philadelphia and other local civil rights groups had planned a demonstration to support Vick.

However, the Eagles called the NAACP after hearing of the plans for the demonstration at the stadium, and asked them to cancel the rally to stop a potentially "ugly scene," J. Whyatt Mondesire, president of the Philadelphia chapter of the NAACP told ESPN."

Mediatakeout.com, the most visited urban website in the world, had this to say about Michael Vick:

"I am tired of this shyt! White people don't want black people to have shyt! I'm saying Michael Vick lost his job, lost over a 100 million dollars and went to jail over some fuccing dogs! Damn white people what more do you want?"

Yes indeed, white people, what do you want? Black people to follow the rules and laws of America?

In Ohio States 2009 opener against Navy, Vick-esque QB Terrelle Pryor (Black player)wore his support for Vick on his face:

"Terrelle Pryor is usually compared to another tall, lanky, hotly-recruited quarterback who could outrun everyone on the field, Vince Young, but the sophomore pledged his eye-black allegiance Saturday to another scrambler of his formative years, the recently resurrected Michael Vick."

White people are aghast that Black people will support a criminal and felon like Vick, but remember, Black people defended Michael Jackson after his death.

A "Hater" is defined as:

"A person that simply cannot be happy for another person's success. So rather than be happy they make a point of exposing a flaw in that person."

Thus, Stuff Black People Don't Like includes Michael Vick haters, as Vick is the man who was going to revolutionize the quarterback position and thus, complete the Black dominance of the NFL. However, he was thrown in jail for dog fighting, a prominent form of entertainment for Black people. Almost all Black people want Vick to play again and support him, but white people are hating against Vick:

"There is an even stronger divide along racial lines with African Americans supporting reinstatement 80-9, but whites by only a 42-39 margin."

Television is how Black people have the complete support of white people in America and sports are the medium in which white people fall in love with Black people. Michael Vick's fall from grace showed how quickly the hypnosis of television can wear off, when the reality of Black culture is shown for all to see.

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#84. Ghosts, Dogs and Registered Mail (a hoax?)

Black people are sometimes subjected to horrifying hoaxes. Black people, it must be remembered, can do no wrong in America and because of them, we finally have what CNN has called the "first hip president" in Barack Hussein Obama.

Without the ultra-hip Obama at the helm, the United States would still be run by boring, dry and insipid White men.

However, Black people have been the subject of a ruthless hoax that has attempted to slander their collective good name in what they fear the most.

A purported poll in Ebony magazine asked that very question (what do you fear the most?) to its readership, which is comprised almost entirely of Black people.


Black people responded, with:

1. Ghosts
2. Dogs
3. Registered Mail

A poll was also purported to have been conducted by Country Living, a magazine devoted almost entirely to White people. It asked the identical question, garnering a much different top three from White people:

1. Nuclear war/terrorist attack in US
2. Child/spouse dying/terminal illness
3. Terminal illness/self

This largely internet driven rumor has been deemed a hoax. No such poll was conducted by Ebony. Nor Country Living.

Snopes, an online investigation website, reports that:

"...the racial denigration in the piece is obvious. When white folks worry, they concern themselves with weighty matters, but when black people fret, their anxiety focuses on far less dire things… Moreover… the fears of white people mostly involve dangers that threaten others as well as themselves, but black people (sic) worry about things that are strictly limited to the individual. Black people are therefore not only laughably trivial in their concerns, but also wholly self-involved."

How dare anyone believe that Black people are trivial, laughable and self-involved! This hoax, that Black people fear ghosts, dogs and registered mail is silly and obviously a lie.

Hoax-Slayer, a website that debunks hoaxes, goes further, writing:

"The bogus "results" of the supposed surveys perpetrate unjust and outdated racial stereotypes. The implication is that the black responders are motivated largely by foolish superstition while the "superior" white readership is concerned about more important issues. This idea is seemingly a throwback to earlier times in which black characters in books and films were often unfairly portrayed as shallow, overly superstitious, comedic figures as opposed to more intelligent and capable white characters.

The rather bizarre reference to "registered mail" is probably intended as a racial slur that suggests black people are more likely to receive unwelcome letters such as summonses, overdue payment demands and the like via registered post than are their white counterparts."

However, three recent stories do give some validity to this poll, an alleged fabrication. Perhaps it is just a coincidence that they all fall in line with the top three things Black people fear and all involve Black people.

In Atlanta, a woman was arrested for conducting an exorcism on her son:

"A Lilburn woman remained in jail Wednesday without bond after police said she attempted an exorcism on her own son.Police arrested Sandra Alfred, 46, on Friday, charging her with false imprisonment and child cruelty.She is accused of handcuffing her son and making him go without food for three days."

Michael Vick, a former All-Pro quarterback in the NFL, was convicted of numerous charges for his roll in killing dogs, and training them to be fighting animals. He was sent to jail and kicked out of the league. Any person who would kill dogs obviously does not like them and fears them.

And finally, perhaps the best example of Black people fearing registered mail, comes from the recent financial meltdown, which has been called the "diversity recession".

The article reports:

"About half of all mortgages for blacks and Hispanics are subprime, versus roughly one-sixth for whites."

The subprime Mortgage crisis, which has largely been the powder keg behind the financial meltdown of the world markets, is almost entirely due to subprime mortgages not being paid...

So, perhaps Black people would not want to see any registered mail, since its arrival in your mail box bespeaks something horrible, like not paying your mortgage and having your house foreclosed. Bizarre indeed.

These are of course minor examples of individual Black people, or in the case of the subprime mortgage fiasco - a lot of Black people - merely playing into hurtful stereotypes that the fictitious poll of things that Black people fear purported to find.

Black people do not fear these things. There is absolutely no proof that Black people are, "not only laughably trivial in their concerns, but also wholly self-involved."

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