I knew it. I predicted it. Today, as predicted, people are bending over backwards to characterize Sheffield’s remarks as anything other than what they are: racist hate speech. They are being spun and reworked on various media outlets. On XM radio, both last night and this morning, I heard these disgusting racist views being turned into a veritable doctoral dissertation on baseball economics.
Really? I didn’t know that Sheffield was that deep. I didn’t know that he cared so. Because when I read the remarks, I got the distinct impression that I was hearing the raw anger of a bigot. But now I find out that I’m wrong. Gary was misunderstood. I’m told the situation he was remarking about is “complex”.
He was commenting on the economics of baseball player development. Yea, apparently, it’s cheaper to “develop” players in the West Indies than in the American inner cities. And this pains Dr. Sheffield. Apparently he’s just “frustrated”. This twisted, second-guess, morning after logic says that racially insensitive Major League teams would rather “develop players” (whatever that means) overseas than “develop” them here in the USA, and while that doesn’t hurt the numbers of whites in the game, it somehow hurts AOAD. Ok, sure. Got it. And with that line of reasoning, does anyone care to comment that while 13.3% of America is AOAD, the NFL and NBA are way north of 60% AOAD? I guess Professor Sheffield will be coming out strong any day now, calling that “reverse racism”?
It’s funny, because I don’t see any of these deep socio-economic thoughts in his comments. But like a very Liberal judge “finding” things in the US Constitution that no one else can see or has ever seen, people keep “finding” these nuggets in the text while I can’t for the life of me, see them.
There’s an elephant in the room and he might just as well be wearing a white sheet and a pointy hat. But no one will go NEAR it. That’s a big problem for baseball and for America. This garbage has to stop. It’s NOT OK. This guy needs to apologize fully as well as any print or broadcast “journalist” types who are blowing smoke up our collective bippy on this item.
I don’t recall anyone bending over backwards for John Rocker or Jimmy the Greek or Al Campanis. Those situations weren’t viewed as “complex”. It was real simple. Those people were eviscerated and hounded out of jobs and careers overnight. No explanations. No second chances. They apologized, in some cases groveled. They apologized over and over and over and over, but it was NEVER enough. The Liberal media and disingenuous Liberals everywhere needed a scalp and they would stop at nothing until they got it. And you may like that brand of harsh, Old West justice. That’s great. Good for you. But then it should work both ways, no? And it CLEARLY doesn’t work both ways. And that’s wrong.
Ask yourself this question: If you made comments of this ilk, would you still have a job today? Would you have, at least, been called down to Human Resources for “further review”? Be honest.
One last thought: Why is it so important to your politics; your world view— that some people are allowed to talk like this and others are not? What greater good flows from that exactly? –fog
