Major League Baseball has announced a special draft of surviving Negro League veterans. Teams will draft survivors, pay their expenses to Disney World (honestly), and give them a stipend. The idea is to symbolically make amends for that bit of unpleasantness which denied African-Americans the right to play in the big leagues until 1947.
For those of you keeping score at home, the Negro League was pretty much over in 1951, which would make an eighteen year old rookie from that season 75 years old and most veterans in their 80's. A spokesman for MLB said, presumably with a straight face, they did not know how many Negro League players were still around. I just hope they are careful with their research and don't draft anyone who isn't.
I can see the Pirates drafting Josh Gibson only to find out he's dead, or the Orioles getting the first pick and selecting someone nobody ever heard of because they want to sign their player as cheaply as possible.
As gestures go it's a novel idea. But there are better ones which actually would make a positive change.
Start with this. Major League Baseball could draft actual African-American players in their real amateur draft. And they could make Latin American players subject to the same draft as those born in the United States.
Players born outside the US are not subject to the draft. Teams can sign them as free agents. Native born players have to go through a draft, which establishes a relative value level on their talent and drives up their signing bonus.
Given a choice between an African-American player (or any US player for that matter) and a Latin American of comparable talent, the choice will be to avoid the higher paid drafted player in favor of a lower paid free agent. A player from the Carribean with a less talented agent (if any), and greater hunger to sign a contract (or in some cases actual physical hunger), is a low cost alternative who may well keep African-American athletes from getting signed.
Baseball (as Gary Sheffield infamously pointed out) is having none of that. Why take positive action when you can substitute positive PR?
Remember Buck O'Neill? He was literally the face of Negro League Baseball, the man whose tireless efforts kept the memories alive for future generations. O'Neill should have been a lock for the Hall of Fame. Instead, the Hall put together a committee to make a grand gesture of putting 17 players and officials associated with the Negro Leagues in the Hall at one fell swoop.
The height of this nutty gesture was to induct Effa Manley into the Hall. Manley was a white woman whose co-owned the Neward Eagles with her husband. O'Neill? He didn't make it then and passed away later the same year.
Bud Selig could have used his influence with the HoF to get the greatest living Negro League player inducted but he didn't. Seventeen inductees was the big story. The positive act of getting Buck O'Neill in the Hall didn't have the weight to baseball of what was, essentially, a publicity stunt.
You get the idea baseball wrestles with the past but doesn't learn from it. Nobody in today's front offices kept Negro League players from playing. And baseball has invested alot of money in inner city baseball programs and has reached out to improve opportunities in the front office. So why keep going to the well with gestures that really don't do much other than call attention to what baseball did not do right in the past?
To Bud Selig and the owners I would say this. Put up or shut up. Push your silly draft idea chips out onto the table. I'll call that and raise you Latin American players going into the draft to compete for contracts on the same basis with African-American players in this country.
What? Are you telling me Bud Selig isn't sincere and is only concerned about the look of the cover but not the make-up of the whole package. Unbelievable. Wait...that Bud Selig...more than believable! Of coure, you know he is really busy doing...well...being...well...hopin g Barry Bonds comes back so his life will have some meaning again! Nice job, Dudski.
if they want to level the field, they should get rid of the draft altogether, make everybody a free agent. Anyway, giving a ton of money to a 17 year old kid, (wheter he is from South America or South Central Los Angeles) dont make much sense; that way there would be no bonuses but the players could choose who they play for...
Very well done. How could MLB patronize these poor men in that way? Oh that's right, because that big stupid dummy (boy there's a million other names I'd REALLY like to use) Bud Selig is in charge. Add this to the long list of things exhibiting that baseball and Selig have no clue.
Last edited by JCScheffres on May 8th at 11:50 AM.
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Anytime that Selig has a choice between doing the right thing (making sure O'Neil got into the HOF) or doing that thing that would get him the most publicity, guess which one he is going to chose. Too late publicity wins. The problem with that publicity is why wasnt there more of an outcry by all of the baseball writers at the same time. There were writers who wanted to know why O'Neil was being left out but not enough.
The Baseball Writers Association that votes people into the hall? Why would they say or do anything right. These are the same people that put Bill Mazeroski in the HOF for one HR he hit, so why bother asking them. They couldnt get it right if they had a hundred shots at it.
He said they need to draft Bingo Long (the great Lando for those who don't know). I hear Monty Brewster is still alive too. He had a hell of a fast ball.
Well put dnash. Selig has to go down as THE worst commish of all time. He turned his back on the steriod issue when he was the owner of the Brewers because he was busy lining his pockets. Guys like him have sold out the game of baseball in the name of finance.
I didn't know Whitlock wrote blogs too. All joking aside, get over it and be thankful they want to do anything for them. MLB doesn't have to do anything, it's charity for them to give them a trip, even if it's to DisneyLand instead of the Denny's early bird special.
Regarding the "need" for more African-American baseball players to be developed in the US, I have a question. Are we working from the assumption that black athletes are naturally more talented than their white counterparts?
