Major League responses to SB 1070
by Troy Lyle
Arizona Senate Bill (SB) 1070 was created with but one goal in mind, to undermine the civil rights of Latinos in Arizona. The odious and controversial bill has been called a witch hunt, “the hate bill,” and racist to name a few. In effect it provides blind provisions by which Arizona police can approach, detain, report and in some instances imprison illegal immigrants—men, women and children of color—based on nothing more than suspicion of false status.
The bill is far more convoluted than my above description, though in general it must be said that it falls prey to man’s weakest sense, that of sight, and uses it to justify a chain of discriminatory acts. Latinos are brown, they speak another language, therefore they are different, subject to things those of us who are not brown would never allow to happen to us.
Being a sports writer, I immediately think of the bill’s ramifications within baseball, a sport dominated by Latinos, many of whom are today’s superstars and tomorrow’s hall of famers. Earlier this summer Chicago White Sox Manager Ozzie Guillen objected to SB 1070 saying he would not participate in next year’s All Star game if it remained in Phoenix. He was immediately joined by San Diego Padres first baseman Adrian Gonzalez and a host of other Latino players including Albert Pujols and Yovani Gallardo, as well as several players of white and black heritage, Jerry Hairston Jr. and Heath Bell to name a few, all of whom stated they would boycott next year‘s game.
Other prominent organizations and individuals have also spoken out against SB 1070. Major League Baseball’s (MLB) players union and New York Congressman Jose Cerrano and New Jersey Senator Robert Mendez came out in direct opposition of the bill. Fans everywhere began showing up at venues from Boston to Los Angeles with banners and organized protests calling for MLB to reverse its position of support for the discriminatory Arizona law. And that’s not to mention the countless other Americans who’ve taken to the streets and polls to voice opposition. As a friend of mine put it, “It’s a bill that affects everyone … the very future of America and the Constitution on which it was founded.”
Before I continue let me take a moment and state for the record that I’m a white male born in Louisiana and reared in Virginia. My life has been fairly ordinary—safe. But having spent my formative years in the South, I have seen first hand the nasty side of racism. I played several sports throughout high school in the mid to late 80s. I’ve seen black and Latino players held to different standards all because some white coach thought he knew what was best for men of color.
So I must be cautious here. The last thing I want to be is yet another white man looking in from the outside, pontificating as to how to solve the problems of race relations in America. In reality I know very little. Nonetheless, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist or esteemed philosopher to see SB1070 for what it truly is … a hate bill aimed at Latinos everywhere … one that spits in the face of the 28 percent of major league baseball players who are of Latin heritage.
Then: Latinos hit the Big Leagues
Major league baseball has a long and storied history when it comes to men of color. A short walk through Latino baseball history shows the facts in horrific fashion.
From the early 1900s on through the late 60s, little known Latino baseball greats such as Jose Mendez, Cristobal Torriente, Roberto Clemente and Francisco “Pancho” Coimbre, along with numerous others, paved the way for the modern Latino ballers who today comprise more than a quarter of current MLB rosters. They endured racial slurs, inadequate pay and the prohibition of their native language to be spoken in their own clubhouses. They were forced to learn English, live with white families and shun their heritage. They endured numerous death threats and the ire of many of their own fans and at times teammates.
In his book Playing America’s Game, Adrian Burgos Jr. outlines the numerous hurdles Latinos endured throughout baseball’s history and brings forth many misconceptions about Latino’s role in the game, like the fact that very few players of Latin heritage participated in the Bigs before 1947. Since most Latinos were considered “colored” in the first place, their only opportunities to play the game came in the Jim Crow Negro leagues at the early part of the century.
Writing in Far From Home: Latino Baseball Players in America, Tim Wendell describes the day to day struggles Latinos faced just to have a chance to be a part of baseball.
“For all the racism and discomfiture that African-American ballplayers endured in the years following Jackie Robinson’s debut in 1947, Latino players had it even worse. In addition to discrimination based on the color of their skin, there was also, in many cases, a language barrier. Black players, at least, plied their trade on home soil, but Latinos not only had to acclimate to a new geography, they were also thrust into the middle of an often perplexing cultural environment. Something as simple as ordering food could pose a challenge. Hall of Famer Orlando Cepeda has often spoken about how the San Francisco Giants tried to prevent the team’s Latino players from speaking Spanish at the ballpark. Similarly, the media in Pittsburgh embarrassed Pirates superstar Roberto Clemente by publishing his interviews in “dialect.””
Most of us under the age of 70 have little memory of such history. We immediately think of Robinson and other black torchbearers when it comes to the game and racial barriers. But make no mistake, Latinos are the ones who truly endured the indignation and fury of baseball’s color line.
Now: Economic exploitation of Hispanic players
The exploitation hasn’t gotten much better in recent years, even for now well known Latino players. In 1993, the Oakland Athletics acquired the considerable talents of a 17-year-old named Miguel Tejada for a mere $2,000. Tejada, born in the miserable barrio of Bani in the Dominican Republic, quit school to work full-time at the age of 11. That decision came after nearly five years of he and his family hopping from homeless shelter to homeless shelter. His work career began at the age of five when he shined shoes at a local market. He never received any formal education prior to his arrival at the Athletics baseball camp in the Dominican.
Compare Tejada’s $2,000 to that of Ben Grieve, Tejada’s white American teammate, who received a $1.2 million signing bonus from the Athletics in the same year. Not to knock Grieve, who won the American League (AL) rookie of the year award in 1998, but he’s had a far less impact on the game than that of Tejada, who’s still going strong at the age of 36 with his recent trade to the AL central leading White Sox. Tejada’s won numerous awards of his own. In 2002, he was awarded the AL MVP award, and he was the MVP of the 2005 All-Star Game. Those pale in comparison to what I consider his most important accomplishment — 1,152 consecutive games played between 1997 and 2007.
Tejada’s route to the Majors isn’t unique. Major League Baseball has a number of Central and South American baseball camps, as well as Caribbean camps, that mostly operate under the radar. These camps recruit poor, uneducated youths who display talent at playing the game. Prospects are expected to leave their families and attend camp, where they are drilled all day long in the fundamentals of hitting, catching and throwing. The sad thing is these kids jump at the chance to be enslaved. That’s how bad their lives were before.
Some might call this a road to prosperity, but it should more accurately be understood as exploitation. The Texas Rangers acquired Sammy Sosa in 1986 for a mere $3,500. True, it’s more than Tejada’s two grand, but look at it this way, $3,500 is the exact same amount the Brooklyn Dodgers paid to sign Jackie Robinson in 1946. All it’s taken is forty years for non-native Hispanic players to reach the economic exploitation of Jim Crow era blacks.
(Big picture sidenote: When compared to that of the average immigrant worker, $2000 and $3500 must seem like a fortune, for these workers risk their life to get here and immediately seek work, only to arrive at the desk of an American employer who enslaves them in a system that neither recognizes their humanity, nor pays a fair wage for their efforts. Unsurprisingly, nationally many immigrant workers are paid half or less of the standard minimum wage of $7.25 nationally. Now back to baseball.)
There are no hard figures to convey what Sosa and Tejada, as well as many other Latinos, have brought to their respective teams in terms of revenues, nor to the MLB as a whole. But most any baseball fan can remember the thrilling home run race between Mark McGwire and Sosa in 1998. The two single handedly saved what at the time was, in many sports lovers minds, a floundering and irrelevant game.
Four short years earlier the MLB shut down for 232 days in 1994 and 95. Many fans gave up on baseball, tired of yet another strike, the eighth in the leagues history. It’s not a stretch in my mind to say MLB owes Sosa and the other 28 percent of Latinos like Albert Pujols, Adrian Gonzalez and Udaldo Jimenez, who thrill fans nightly, a whole hell of a lot more than the audacity to support such a bogus and erroneous bill.
Baseball in Arizona
Currently, half of MLB hold their training camps in Arizona, known as the Cactus League. This means that a good portion of players coming to Arizona for the time-honored tradition of spring ball may stand a reasonable chance of getting pulled over simply on the basis of their skin color.
And if that isn‘t appalling enough, Arizona is scheduled to host next year’s All Star game at Chase Field, home of the Arizona Diamondbacks. If this year is any indication, the game could feature as many as 40 percent of its players of Latino heritage. Adding to the fire, Commissioner Bud Selig has stated that he has “no intentions” of moving next years All Star game out of Chase Field.
“Apparently all the people around and in minority communities think we’re doing OK. That’s the issue, and that’s the answer,” he said in an Associated Press interview in May. “I told the clubs today: ‘Be proud of what we’ve done.’ They are. We should. And that’s our answer. We control our own fate, and we’ve done very well.”
If by well you mean you–MLB, owners, commissioners–have done well from years of exploiting Latinos, then yes, Commissioner, you have done quite the job of reaping record profits over the last three decades.
But Arizona’s role in baseball goes far beyond the All Star game and spring league play. The Arizona Diamondbacks team owner, Ken Kendrick, has been reported in The Nation and New York Times as supporting SB 1070 in full. He’s even went so far as to schedule a fund raiser for State Senator Jonathon Patton, a major cog in the introduction and implementation of the bill, at Chase Field¾a stadium built with $250 million in public tax payer dollars.
Gonzalez and Guillen, as well as Latinos inside and outside baseball, should be outraged. They have every right to boycott the 2011 All Star game. Who could blame them? I wouldn’t want to go somewhere I wasn’t wanted, much less a place where I was constantly demonized and relegated to less than human status. The racist Arizona bill and the changing demographics of today’s baseball players, in effect, have combined to do something that rarely happens in sports: they’ve drawn traditionally apolitical sports into the arenas of politics, social justice, and human rights.
Baseball and human rights
Of course, as a multi-billion dollar enterprise, Major League Baseball has never existed as an apolitical entity. Guillen was spot on when he commented on league policies that assign Japanese players translators when they come to the U.S. to play pro ball, but do not assign them for Latinos who likewise immigrate to the U.S. to chase the Big League dream.
“Why do we have Japanese interpreters and we don’t have a Spanish one. I always say that. Why do they have that privilege and we don’t?” asked Guillen. “Don’t take this wrong, but they take advantage of us. We bring a Japanese player and they are very good and they bring all these privileges to them. We bring a Dominican kid … go to the minor leagues, good luck. Good luck. And it’s always going to be like that. It’s never going to change. But that’s the way it is.”
Guillen, a native Venezuelan, knows full well how unfair it is for young Latinos entering the league. He’s seen it first hand as he worked his way up the coaching ladder. Unlike other Latino coaches he simply is not scared to say it.
Of course, Guillen has not been the only baseball manager to speak his mind. Earlier this summer St. Louis Cardinal Manager, Tony LaRussa, came out in direct support of SB1070. Here’s what he said as reported by Dave Zirin in his E of S Nation column.
“I’m actually a supporter of what Arizona is doing. If the national government doesn’t fix your problem, you’ve got a problem. You’ve got to fix it yourself. That’s just part of the American way.” After which he praised the handful of Tea Partiers who attended that week’s Cardinals/Diamondbacks game with banners and signs in support of SB 1070.
LaRussa manages superstar Latino ballers Pujols and Yadier Molina. And what was Pujols and Molina’s response? No comment. There are repercussions for a Latino when he speaks his mind. Guillen’s comments regularly land him in baseball’s dog house. Most recently White Sox management went so far as to issue a statement refuting Guillen’s above quote and his perception of MLB’s bias against Latin American players. To the extent that Guillen can speak his mind, it’s mostly because he has the privilege of being a coach with a recent World Series title to his credit.
Guillen isn’t the only Hispanic player or coach to have stepped up to the plate over the years. Baseball great, consummate social advocate, Latino activist and hall of famer, Roberto Clemente, said it best in his response to his friend and fellow Latino baller, Vic Power, then with the Kansas City Athletics, who was being dragged off his team’s bus by Florida authorities during the Jim Crow era for buying a Coke from a whites-only gas station.
“They say, ‘Roberto, you better keep your mouth shut because they will ship you back.’ [But] this is something that from the first day, I said to myself: ‘I am in the minority group. I am from the poor people. I represent the poor people. I represent the common people of America. So I am going to be treated like a human being. I don’t want to be treated like a Puerto Rican, or a black, or nothing like that. I want to be treated like any person that comes for a job.’”
I don’t blame any Latino or anyone else for that matter for boycotting the 2011 All Star game. I plan to boycott it myself. And that’s a huge step for me because I love the game. I watch baseball all the time, despite my Washington Nationals historically horrific history. But larger forces are at work here that I simply cannot ignore. These forces piss me off and are leading me to reconsider how I view sports outside the lines of competition.
I work in the food service industry. Most all of the back of house employees (cooks, dish washers, etc.) are Latino immigrants, many of whom can’t speak a word of English. Most are poorly educated. They are paid nothing. They work like dogs. They never complain. And they are a drop in the bucket of Latino employees who daily undertake the types of jobs whites and blacks now deem beneath them.
I’d love to interview Guillen, Gonzalez or Pujols to get their take on baseball’s response so far and living as brown bodies in the United States. Unfortunately, there are geographical hurdles making such a request all but impossible.
But that doesn’t mean I’m without options. I think I’ll begin locally with the more than 10 players on the Lexington Legends Single A baseball team who have ties to Hispanic speaking countries. I’ll ask them what it’s truly like for a young Latino breaking into the game. I wonder what they think of baseball’s treatment of Latinos and specifically, SB1070’s role in baseball‘s future. And I’ll get back to you. Stay tuned.
Leave a Reply