Koufax, Stengel, and the power of delusion

Every day, I am greeted with requests to vote for such-and-such a site for a Koufax Award, so this is a reminder that--though I may like your site--I will not be voting in an election that, for me, makes Diebold look fair. Having been rudely trashed and eliminated from the competition for reasons that remain a mystery, I prefer to read The Heretik's permutations on baseball and blogging.

Which brings me to southpaw Casey Stengel, a witty, colorful man. Stengel said many memorable things, my favorite being "The key to being a good manager is keeping the people who hate me away from those who are still undecided."

Stengel also said "If you're so smart, let's see you get out of the Army." George W. Bush was 29 the year Stengel died, but his ability to get out of military service was a quiet, family affair, so Stengel never knew that getting out of the Army had nothing to do with being smart. Stengel also could not have foreseen that baseball, America's pastime, would later be synonymous with fueding, greed, and steroid use.

Sandy Koufax himself had to face anti-Semitism--the "subtle" kind that you are supposed to ignore because people "don't mean anything by it." As a culture, we focus on baseball's history of racial segregation, but players made remarks that must have hurt Koufax throughout much of his career. One player--I forget who--once said in an interview that the attitude of some players was that Koufax should not have been playing baseball, but should have been involved in intellectual pursuits or "whatever those people do."

Baseball is no longer America's pastime, but just one more thing that we have idealized beyond what it ever was. Consider, for example, Joe DiMaggio. When some very ugly truths about Joe DiMaggio's life finally came out, people refused to hear about them, and to this day, DiMaggio is considered an American "hero." I am not sure why he was a hero in the first place, but now we know that he was the opposite of one, yet that doesn't stop people from idolizing and idealizing him.

I grew up when baseball really was the national pastime. I watched it on TV with my father, and attended minor league games across town. When my mother learned that the local baseball Annie had befriended me, she forbade me to see her. Such was the unfairness of baseball, even for a young adolescent girl who just wanted to watch the local boys run the bases.

Violence and antisocial behavior in sports--the American way

A pro baseball manager hurls a chair after a game. A pro baseball player waves a bat menacingly in an umpire's face. A number of cyclists, including the world's top cyclists, are banned from the world's biggest race because of doping.

A pro football player is arrested for failing to stop at stop signs, playing very loud music, and hauling marijuana (and a gun, but that may have been legal) around in his car. A pro baseball coach calls a sports writer a "fag."

And a very significant number of players (from many countries) in the World Cup punch, kick, trip, tear the shirts of their opponents, and fake injuries in order to turn the fate of the game around.

These are some sports news items from the month of June, many of them from the last few days. In a nation where a man convicted of rape and multiple vicious assauts is still idolized by sports fans, it is no wonder that some days, you have to look carefully to distinguish the sports page from the crime section of the newspaper.

Multiple reports of both college and pro ballplayers sexually assaulting women, abusing substances and punching and/or threatening other players and fans are everywhere. Again--no surprise. America is a violent country. We love guns, fights, war, punishment, and hitting children. We tolerate violence against women. We torture millions of animals a day at labs and factory farms. We say that a man who loves peace is missing his testicles and that having testicles somehow equals courage.

A man who can run very fast or hit a ball hard or use a gun against an enemy is a "hero," but a man or woman who negotiates peace or produces breathtaking art or tells the truth about governmental shams is either not a household name or is a "traitor."

Sports are part of our lives. We like to play them, watch them and follow them. For many of us, the athletes we enjoy watching are probably not people with whom we would want to have a serious conversation (I know that's true in my case), but we also should not consider it acceptable when they are violent, threatening and lawless.

"Sports executives are not doing this for the ministry..."

The Colorado Rockies have changed their low-key "Christian Family Day" to "Faith Day,' and it is now an all-out promotion. "Sports executives are not doing this for the ministry," according to Brent High, president of Third Coast Sports, a Nashville, Tenn., company hired to host some of the Christian events. "They are doing it strictly for the business opportunity, to increase attendance and associated revenue."

The Rockies' Christian Family Day included giving church groups discounted tickets, presenting a pre-game show of Christian music, and providing Christian "testimonies" from players and coaches.

Though the event is now called "Faith Day," there is speculation that it will continue to be about Christians. High says that his company, Third Coast Sports, is effective in "driving fans to the stadium." "Christians," he says, "are a "powerful organized demographic" that can be courted without fear of alienating the fan base. High is oppposed to including other faiths in "faith days" because, he says:

People are tied to their beliefs, and the second we start celebrating the Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist faiths together, this idea will dry up and blow away. People are all for political correctness and for being unified. But there are still divisions, huge differences in beliefs, and to bring them together is not going to work. It's the same reason why all these people don't meet together on Sunday mornings.

Religious promotions have long been popular in the minor leagues, but have now crept into major league baseball. Baseball-loving Christians apparently do not mind being exploited for marketing purposes.

Alleged gang rapists go unprosecuted

It doesn't really surprise me that much that a state that would elect a sex criminal to be its governor would also decline to prosecute gang-rapists. A group of college baseball players in San Jose took turns raping a drunk 17-year girl. DNA samples have been obtained. There is an eyewitness. But the Santa Clara DA's office says there isn't enough evidence to charge the perpetrators.

"From the beginning, I kind of felt like it was a witch hunt and the De Anza players were victims, and not really this girl," pitcher Chris Knopf said. That is, of course, Duke-speak, and probably has something to do with the prosecutors' reluctance to do anything. That is, of course, about as obscene a miscarriage of justice imaginable. But then, California, as I said in my opening sentence, doesn't seem to care much at all these days about crimes against women and girls.

A very good documentary

I admire Eve Ensler very much and consider her one of the most important feminists in the world. Last night, I saw a documentary on the preparation of her transgendered version of The Vagina Monologues. Beautiful Daughters, directed and produced by Josh Aronson and Ariel Orr Jordan, introduces us to the women who performed the groundbreaking script in West Hollywood in 2004. It is tragic, funny and memorable.

The saddest part, for me, was hearing one of the women describe how her partner was beaten to death in his sleep with baseball bats when his "friends" discovered the history of his girlfriend's sexual identity. Another woman said that what threatens men is "the feminine." I believe she is absolutely correct. If one man could have a woman lurking inside him, perhaps all men could, and what could be worse than finding out even some small part of you is a woman?

Knocking this post out of the park

I am sick to death of all discussions about everything being peppered with sports metaphors. It doesn't matter what someone on television or in the newspaper is talking or writing about: World leaders must "run the course," a new generation must "step up to the plate," "an opposing candidate delivers a "knock-out punch," a new product does well "straight out the gate," a new television program "strikes out" in its first season, a debater "scores a touchdown," with a rhetorical point, an enemy is "sent to the dugout."

What's even worse is that sports metaphors pepper discussions about sports, or at least, about tennis. This past two weeks of Wimbledon tennis is a perfect example. It isn't enough to talk about tennis--the metaphors must refer to other "more important" sports. "She was quick out of the blocks to break her opponent." "He's at the plate, waiting to serve." "He had him on the ropes by the third set."

Sports announcers in the U.S. drive me to distraction anyway, with their inane, sometimes offensive, often ignorant, remarks. But when they feel they have to refer to football, baseball, horse racing, and boxing in order to discuss tennis, I go over the edge.

Pro sports and the religious right--a symbiotic relationship

Salon has an interesting feature on the relationship between pro football and the religious right. More and more pro athletes thank God for their victories these days, and Salon writer Tom Krattenmaker says that is because the players are "coached" by members of the evangelical wing of the Christian right. Krattenmaker claims that these religious coaches are embedded inside each of the teams in the Big Three--baseball, football, and basketball. That, he says, is why so many players make speeches with religious content and make "seemingly nonstop religious gestures on and off the field."

(Continue reading at MoJo Blog)

Women's History Month: Honoring Effa Manley

Last year, The Dees Diversion honored Billie Jean King, Bette Davis, Sally Ride, and Patsy Mink during Women's History Month. This year, I will also be honoring a different woman every week.

My first memorable woman is Effa Manley, who recently became the first woman to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Effa Manley was unusual in that she was a white woman who passed as black, rather than the other way around. She may, in fact, be the only tangentially famous white person to ever pass. Like her mother, Hanley was married to a black man (Manley's father, however, was white), Abe Manley, and she was the co-founder, owner, and manager of the Newark Eagles, a Negro League team.

Manley took care of her team. The Eagles were the first Negro League team to have air-conditioned, Flexible Clipper bus, and Manley and her husband sponsored a team in the Puerto Rican winter leagues so that Eagles players would have employment in the off-season. She also served as treasurer of the Newark chapter of the NAACP. Under Manley's management, the Eagles won the Negro World Series in 1946.

Lesbian couple assaulted by bat-swinging woman in Kansas City

From Pam's House Blend comes the news of a violent attack on a lesbian couple in Kansas City, perpetrated by a crazy woman with a baseball bat, and unsolved at this time.

What is interesting about this, to me, is that everyone involved was female. We are accustomed to hearing about male-on-male gay-bashing, and male-on-male lesbian-hassling and lesbian-bashing, but I am wondering how many female-on-female gay hate crimes have gone unreported. It seems to be open season on gays in America, at a time when the right wing is screaming about how we have to blow up the world to protect "our freedoms."

Larry Cochell--there's no trailer trash in him

Would someone say that when talking about a white person? "You don't sweat much, for a fat girl" is an insult, no matter what kind of bow you put on it. And when University of Oklahoma head baseball coach Cochell said of Joe Dunigan Jr., "There's no nigger in him," it was an overtly racist statement. Cochell also said, "There are honkies and white people, and there are niggers and black people." Nice try, Larry, but "honkie" is to "nigger" what "flirt" is to "slut."

To make it even worse, Cochell added: "Dunigan is a good, black kid."

What is bothering me most of all is the converation that is going on at Shakespeare's Sister, where some commenters are saying that Cochell should not have resigned, that we can understand what he "meant," and that it's a pity he had to use the "n" word. Hairs are being split over "nigger" and "nigga."

Hello! Leave "nigger" out of it for a moment. What Cochell said, in essence, was "He's okay, even though he's black." That's what he said and that's what he meant, and that's as racist a statement as I can imagine. That people cannot see that that is what makes the statement racist is quite disturbing.

Every time someones says "some black guys were behind us on the way home," (why tell us their race unless you are implying something about their race?), "some woman detective questioned me" (what does her gender have to do with anything?), or "he's gay, but he's a good teacher" (why wouldn't he be?), s/he is expressing bigotry. To say that someone is good, even though he is black, is about as insulting as it gets.

The other thought that's nagging at me is that the university administration thought that the resignation was in line because of the "n" word and not because of the racist context of the entire statement. If that is the case--and it very well may be-- then no one learned anything.