Is Cochell a Racist?
Is Oklahoma baseball coach Larry Cochell a racist, or is he just ignorant? Probably a little of both.
Is Oklahoma baseball coach Larry Cochell a racist, or is he just ignorant? Probably a little of both.
It's hard to imagine that Duke guard J.J. Redick, possibly the best pure shooter on the planet, is only a junior. Can it really only have been three years that we've been watching him unconsciously sinking free throws and silencing opposing crowds with dagger-like three-pointers? If it seems like he's been at Duke forever, there's a simple explanation. He has.
As described in last week's Sports Illustrated, Redick is just the most recent in a long line of hated Blue Devils, a distinguished club of pretty boys who have relished in the role of public enemy number one. According to the article (I think you might have to be a subscriber to access the link), Redick embraces his role as the villain and most hated player in the ACC, but writer Grant Wahl raises an interesting point:
Yet there's something more at work here, something Redick is well aware of. Over time several Duke players have passed along the public-enemy title like a crown of thorns: Christian Laettner, Danny Ferry, Bobby Hurley, [Chris] Collins, Steve Wojciechowski. At the same time black Blue Devils stars such as Grant Hill, Jason Williams and Elton Brand have largely avoided becoming such targets. It may be un-PC to say so, but it's hard not to conclude that race is a factor.
This idea had never occurred to me before reading the article, but it makes some sense. Just off the top of my head, I came up with some of players that received the most abuse as they came through Maples Pavilion during my college days. Don McLean, UCLA. Matt Othick, Arizona. Steve Kerr, Arizona. All white.
What's the reason for this? First, there's the obvious racial stereotype that basketball is a black man's game. Blacks have outnumbered whites in the NBA for my entire life, and the idea has become so ingrained in our psyches that maybe it's gone from "blacks are better basketball players" to "white players don't belong."
The Duke players, especially the guards, all fit the same mold. Smart, tough, scrappy, hard-nosed players. Pains in the ass. Years ago these characteristics would've been glorified by racists in the press box and bleachers, implicitly or explicitly held up in direct contrast to the "natural talent" of the black players.
Now, however, everything's been flipped. It seems that those qualities are seen as negative. As a result, instead of acknowledging the brilliance of Redick's shooting stroke while cheering against him, opposing fans make sexual comments about his younger sister while wearing profane t-shirts bearing his name.
I recently had a discussion with a friend about how the traditional American values of hard work and perseverance have begun to disappear. Blue collar workers are scorned, union issues are trivialized, and the idea of slow and steady improvement seems as archaic as the Tortoise and the Hare.
If we look at basketball as a microcosm of our society, the scrappy Duke guards are clearly cast in the role of custodians working for a Forbes 500 company. (What, after all, is more blue collar than a jump shot, repeated thousands of times in the pursuit of perfection?) So what happens when your team is going up against Duke and the custodians are beating you? What does that say about your company?
And so just as a customer in a restaurant might look down upon the bus boy who clears away his dirty dishes, the college basketball fan sneers at these scrappy guards who have been foolish enough to work hard at their game. He curses them as they drain three-pointers, he yells mercilessly as they take charges, and he cries foul as they win games.
Aside from that, I don't have an answer. Do you?
It's been more than a week since Ron Artest and Stephen Jackson waded into the stands at the Palace in Auburn Hills, Michigan, swinging at anyone who breathed, and by now everyone who has seen the video footage has expressed an opinion.
In the minutes immediately following the melee, as the shocking clips were first spilling across the airwaves, ESPN's studio crew of Tim Legler, Greg Anthony, Steven A. Smith, and John Saunders took the suprizing opinion that the players had done nothing wrong. They were merely defending themselves.
Predictably, there was an immediate backlash. Rob Parker of the Detroit News criticized the players turned analysts, and labelled them as part of a new jockocracy -- players who have gained positions in the media based solely on their athletic experience as opposed to any journalistic training.
While Saunders, Smith, and the two jocks may have reacted a bit prematurely, they also missed a big part of the story since they were apparently reluctant to raise the issue of race. Allow me.
One of David Stern's great accomplishments has been his ability to sell the NBA to every corner of America. He had help, of course. Michael Jordan was a perfect ambassador -- that rare individual who cuts across all segments of society regardless of race, age, or gender. In recent years, however, Stern has had to deal with several other less savory players, people like Latrell Sprewell, Allen Iverson, and the recently besmirched Kobe Bryant.
As the league's popularity continues to fall amongst white fans, the last thing the league needed was what happened on the weekend before Thanksgiving. The incessantly spinning video has burned an image into our minds -- a group of enraged black men climbing into the stands to beat on some white folk. It could be argued that David Stern's suspensions were as excessive as they were because he needed to send two messages: one to the players, and one to the league's fans. Make no mistake, race is an issue here. Michael Wilbon even argues that the NBA's choice to embrace the hip-hop culture is partially to blame for all of this. (Of course, there are those who disagree.)
If we've learned one thing over the past several days, it's that the sporting world is not quite the meritocracy that it might seem. Consider:
• When New Mexico State University fired head football coach Tony Samuel last week, it brought the number of black head coaches at the Division I level down to three of 117 schools. (Tyrone Willingham, Notre Dame; Karl Dorrell, UCLA; and Slyvester Croom, Mississippi State.)
• Just a week previous to that firing, the University of Central Florida's Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport released a comprehensive study on minorities coaching in college football. The study found that most university presidents and athletic directors are white males, and that they tend to hire coaches who look like them.
• Even the recent controversy surrounding the "Desperate Housewives" skit leading into Monday Night Football last week had racial undertones. Indianapolis Colts head coach Tony Dungy criticized the spot for casting Terrell Owens in the stereotypical role of the black sexual predator along side Nicolette Sheridan. The interracial aspect of this can't be ignored, either. Josh has a nice take on this at UndertheBleachers.org.
Ten days have passed since the ugliness in Auburn Hills, but the effects will linger for quite some time. The players will obviously have to live with their decisions to take the fight to the fans, but it's up to the rest of us to decide whether or not we're willing to accept the current inequities in the sporting world.
Michael Sokolove is the author of the recent nonfiction book, The Ticket Out: Darryl Strawberry and the Boys of Crenshaw (click here for my review), as well as an earlier biography of Pete Rose, Hustle: The Myth, Life, and Lies of Pete Rose. Last week he was kind enough to talk with me for a while about Strawberry, Rose, and a few other things of interest. Here's part one of our conversation. Enjoy.
Continue reading "An Interview with Michael Sokolove, Part 1" »
Michael Sokolove is the author of the recent nonfiction book, The Ticket Out: Darryl Strawberry and the Boys of Crenshaw (click here for my review), as well as an earlier biography of Pete Rose, Hustle: The Myth, Life, and Lies of Pete Rose. Last week he was kind enough to talk with me for a while about Strawberry, Rose, and a few other things of interest. Here's part two of our conversation. Did you miss the first half? Click here for Part 1.
Continue reading "An Interview with Michael Sokolove, Part 2" »
When Darryl Strawberry was a seventeen-year-old outfielder for Crenshaw High School in Los Angeles, stardom was guaranteed. He was a boy who had everything -- a god-like physique, lightning quick hands, and even a name that seemed to be made for bold headlines. The New York Mets didn't hesitate to use their first overall pick in the 1980 amateur draft to select Strawberry, a player whom scouts compared to such legends as Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, and Ted Williams.
Early in his career, teammates, coaches, and managers predicted nothing but success for the young Strawberry, as they projected him into the Hall of Fame. Some felt he'd easily top five hundred homeruns, possibly even six hundred. He was thought to have the potential to be one of the greatest players ever to set foot on a baseball field.
Twenty years later, however, after multiple drug suspensions, numerous trips to rehab, a jail term, a cancer diagnosis, and enough disappointments to fill up the back of a baseball card, Darryl Strawberry's career can only be viewed in terms of what might have been, what we might have seen.
Strawberry is the hook that draws the reader into Michael Sokolove's insightful book, but there's a lot more here than just Darryl. Sokolove introduces the reader to a remarkable team, the 1979 Crenshaw Cougars, a group generally considered to be the most talented high school team ever assembled. Strawberry was the phenom who drew scouts and agents like flies, but in terms of actual performance, he was probably only the second or third best player on the team. Third baseman Chris Brown would eventually play for the San Franicsco Giants and join Strawberry in the 1986 All-Star game, quite an accomplishment for two high school teammates. In addition to Brown and Strawberry, more than half of the Crenshaw team would be drafted into professional baseball.
What separates Sokolove's book from more pedestrian sports profiles is his excellent research and reporting. He provides context for the story by both presenting historical background as well as painting a picture of the world inhabited by the Crenshaw players. He raises several important issues, including the impact of poverty and racism on these emotionally fragile players, the long odds against success for young black men in America, and the startling disappearance of black players from college and professional baseball. The title of the book refers to the strong emphasis the black community places on sports, and Sokolove discusses the pitfalls of viewing athletic talent as a "ticket out" of poverty and despair. He even devotes considerable time examining California's ridiculous Three Strikes Law and its effect on one of the Crenshaw players.
In the end, this is a book more about people than baseball players. Darryl Strawberry's trials and tribulations, the game-winning home runs as well as the drug arrests and suspensions, all played out in headlines and news updates for all to see, but his story is only a more public and extreme version of what happened to many of his teammates. The Ticket Out tells the stories of what has become of the Boys of Crenshaw, men who have struggled to find their way in a world without baseball. Some have found success, while others still haven't recovered from the loss of their dream. But even after twenty-five years, they all still share the bond that came from stepping on a baseball field as a unit and knowing that they couldn't be beaten, not by anyone.
This, perhaps, is the truth that Sokolove set out to find. Regardless of what has happened to these players, no matter what mistakes they've made or what obstacles life has set before them, one constant remains. They are still teammates. They are still the Boys of Crenshaw.
Over the past few years there have been more than a few articles decrying the steady decline of the number of blacks in major league baseball. Not surprizingly, the same trend can be seen in the college game. There's an interesting article in the Sunday Los Angeles Times about the issue. Featured in the article are interviews with San Diego State head coach (and former Padre) Tony Gwynn and Miami Hurricane Brian Barton, one of only thirteen black players on the eight teams in this year's College World Series. (You'll have to register with LATimes.com to view the article, but it's worth the sixty seconds it'll take.)
Numerous possible reasons for the decline are given, most of which you've probably heard. Today's urban playgrounds are dominated by basketball and football, and the lack of black stars in the major leagues pushes black youths farther from America's pastime.
There are economic factors as well. An asphalt blacktop takes only a fraction of the real estate necessary for a ball field, and it will last for years without maintenance. Long after the painted lines have faded, the asphalt has cracked, and the goals have bent, a basketball court lives on. The baseball field, however, must be mowed and watered and can be expected to deteriorate within just a few years.
There are other problems with baseball. To play it right, you need at least 12 or 14 players, preferably 18, and you need a bat and enough gloves for those who are in the field. With basketball, the game is essentially the same whether you're playing one-on-one or five-on-five, and all you need is one ball.
The article addresses each of these concerns, in addition to the strong economic pull of basketball's quicker payday, but there's an even more disturbing issue I read recently. Baseball has always been a game passed down from fathers to sons, but in the black community today, a vast majority of the young boys are growing up without fathers, perhaps as many as seventy percent. Simply put, there's no one to have a catch with on Sunday afternoon, no one who will wrap his arms around your shoulders to guide your early swings, no one who will show you the Willie Mays basket catch, no one to take you to the Stadium to see the greenest grass in the world. No one.
Think about that for a minute, then take your son or daughter out into the backyard and have a catch.
Boxing fans have spent the last few decades searching in vain for the Great White Hope, the white boxer who would someday rise up and reclaim the heavyweight championship, but it hasn't happened. (If memory serves, Gerry Cooney was the last legitimate white contender, but Larry Holmes disposed of him easily in 1981.) On the one hand, you can call this racism -- why should the color of the heavyweight champion of the world be important? But on the other hand, it's perfectly natural. We identify with our heroes because we see something of ourselves in them: you might admire a particular player's work ethic because it reminds you of your father, or you might follow another player because you went to the same high school. Or you might be drawn to someone whose skin is the same color as yours.
Which brings us to the case of Larry Bird, NBA Hall of Famer and self-proclaimed hick from South Lick (the town in Indiana where he grew up). In an interview to be aired Thursday evening on ESPN, reporter Jim Gray sat down with Bird, along with Magic Johnson, LeBron James, and Carmelo Anthony. ESPN's idea was to have these four players, two legends and two legends in the making, sit down with each other and casually discuss basketball and some of the issues confronting the NBA. A nice puff-piece for basketball fans to watch before flipping over to ABC for Game 3 of the NBA Finals.
As it turned out, ESPN got more than it bargained for. Apparently without being aware that he might be jumping headfirst into a controversy, Bird made several interesting comments. First he said that the league needed more white stars, a statement which surely raised a few eyebrows. His reasoning, however, seemed sound. "I think it's good for a fan base because, as we all know, the majority of fans are white America. And if you just had a couple of white guys in there, you might get them a little excited."
I can let that slide, but he continued down the slippery slope, saying "...it is a black man's game, and it will be forever. I mean, the greatest athletes in the world are African-American." Hmm. Are the best mathematicians all Asian? The best cooks women? Are the best leaders white? Has Larry been hanging out with Paul Hornung and Reggie White recently? Imagine Spike Lee saying that all the best film-makers are white. Picture Condoleezza Rice admitting that global diplomacy is a man's domain. But wait, things get stranger.
Bird went on to drop this bombshell: "The one thing that always bothered me when I played in the NBA was... when they put a white (defender) on me." He would go on to say that it made him feel disrespected.
So one thing seems clear. Larry Bird, who happens to be white, doesn't think that white people are good at basketball, so white guys didn't have any business trying to guard him. Or at least I think that's what he said; I'm having trouble following Larry's logic.
This isn't racism, but it's still problematic. Bird thinks what he thinks, and the NBA is certainly predominantly made up of black players, but the perpetuation of stereotypes is dangerous nonetheless. A casual comment claiming that the best athletes are all black diminishes the effort and accomplishments of non-white athletes and contributes to a racist perception that blacks are more athletic than academic. Half way into the first decade of the twenty-first century, it's time we all realized that.
Beginning in 1930 with his debut with the Homestead Grays and extending through a career which featured several years with the Pittsburgh Crawfords and stints with various winter league teams in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico, Josh Gibson was quite simply the greatest hitter of his era. While he is often referred to as the black Babe Ruth, the black press and fans of the Negro Leagues during the 1930's called Ruth the white Josh Gibson. Though records are sketchy, Gibson is reported to have hit as many as 70 homeruns in a single season and it can safely be assumed that he hit more than 800 round trippers in his career. There are stories indicating that Gibson actually hit a homerun completely out of Yankee Stadium, a feat no major leaguer has accomplished, and although Brashler's research disputes this claim, there are countless other tales of tape-measure blasts. There was a 525-foot homerun that landed in a Puerto Rico prison, a one-handed homerun in Indianapolis, and a doubtful claim of a 700-foot blast out of Chicago's Wrigley Field. Whether or not the stories are believed, the overall perception cannot be ignored. As the most imposing hitter of the 1930's and 40's, Josh Gibson was larger than life. He was posthumously inducted into baseball's Hall of Fame in 1972.
Most baseball fans are familiar with the legend of Josh Gibson, but Brashler brings readers behind the stories of one of the greatest hitters of all-time. Along with the glory accorded a player of such talent, there were disappointments as well. The death of his first wife and the subsequent abandonment of his children haunted Gibson throughout his playing career, and he often felt overshadowed by the showmanship of Satchel Paige. These concerns, combined with the disappointment of not being able to play in the major leagues, likely led him to alcohol when his body began to break down late in his career. When he died in 1947 at the age of thirty-five, months after Jackie Robinson broke in with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Gibson was buried in an unmarked grave. His family couldn't afford a gravestone.
Brashler's biography of Gibson is complete and honest in its approach to Gibson's character and accomplishments. In addition to Gibson, he briefly profiles his peers, men like Satchel Paige, Oscar Peterson, Judy Johnson, Jimmy Crutchfield, Cool Papa Bell, and others. There can be no discussion of the Negro Leagues without comment on the discrimination which made them necessary, but Brashler avoids the trap of becoming overly sentimental, focusing instead on the facts. For a more complete picture of the players and teams mentioned by Brashler, try Only the Ball Was White, Robert Peterson's comprehensive history of the Negro Leagues.
Even back in the old days, before the current era in which the best basketball players in the country (most of whom are black) routinely leave school for the NBA without their college degrees, there was a perception that basketball players were athletes first, students second. In response to this, the NCAA and their network partners suddenly began referring to players as "student-athletes," as if to remind viewers that these players weren't just biding their time until the NBA called. They were students who happened to play a little basketball on the side. Not too many people believed this.
Around this time, driven mainly by the words of a handful of vocal coaches such as Georgetown's John Thompson, the other side of the coin was revealed. According to Thompson and others, these young men weren't exploiting their universities, but vice versa. Once their athletic eligibility was exhausted, their existence on campus was no longer necessary; their progress towards graduation was no longer important. As a result, players in basketball programs at otherwise respectable universities were winning championships and varsity letters without earning diplomas. During a time period in the 1990's, the University of Cincinnati, under the watchful eye of Coach Bob Huggins, graduated 0% of its male basketball players. Zero. In defense of Mr. Huggins, the small numbers of a basketball team are dangerously vulnerable to statistical extremes, but zero percent? Wouldn't someone have graduated at least by accident? Not according to the NCAA.
But when this problem refused to go away, the NCAA did a curious thing. Rather than bring this issue into the light, or punish those universities with poor graduation rates, especially those who were specifically unsuccessful in graduating black basketball players, the NCAA decided to stop revealing graduation statistics for mens basketball. They cite privacy issues, which are a real concern. If, for instance, they report that Big State University graduated 50% of the black players who enrolled on scholarship in 1998, and there were only two black players who enrolled in 1998, it isn't difficult to figure out who graduated and who didn't. There are many ways around this problem, however. First, the NCAA could combine basketball and football, two sports with similar graduation issues. The larger number of football scholarships would help to protect the anonymity of non-graduating players. A second choice would be to group the statistics in five- or ten-year periods. A report indicating that Big State had graduated 33% of its players from 1985-1995 would protect privacy while pointing out a troubling trend.
Personal privacy is certainly a huge issue, but the NCAA is not being genuine. In hiding behind their supposed concerns about privacy, they are burying their heads in the sand and showing a lack of concern for the student-athlete.