Baker, in his first year as Cubs manager, delved into heat and skin color when talking to reporters Saturday, saying black and Hispanic players hold up better under the summer sun and heat.
“It’s easier for most Latin guys and it’s easier for most minority people because most of us come from heat. You don’t find too many brothers in New Hampshire and Maine and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Right?” he said with a chuckle.
“We were brought over here for the heat, right? Isn’t that history? Weren’t we brought over because we could take the heat?”
“Your skin color is more conducive to heat than it is to the lighter-skinned people. I don’t see brothers running around burnt,” Baker said before the Cubs beat St. Louis at Wrigley. “That’s a fact. I’m not making this up. I’m not seeing some brothers walking around with some white stuff on their ears and noses.”
These comments were made Sunday. Comments like these have gotten people fired from jobs and been the cause of public outrage. “Non-politically correct” comments from people such as John Rocker have turned athletes into hated bigots and racists, despite any prior actions. So, is Baker on the hotseat? Is his job in jeopardy? Is this even a major news story? Not at all, simply because Baker is black. Society has deemed it appropriate for pig-headed and insensitive comments to be acceptable if the person making the comments is making them about his or her own race, creed, or conviction. John Rocker makes negative comments about New Yorkers, people with AIDS, and unwed mothers and he’s in a press conference the next day begging for forgiveness about things he may or may not really have even meant (I have my own theories about that.) However, it’s doubtful that anything will be done in reaction to Baker’s comments (Rocker was originally suspended for the entire length of spring training and the first four weeks of the regular season, with a $20,000 fine, but that was later reduced). Outside of discussion on some radio talk shows, the story is pretty much dead.
The little bit of irony/coincidence mixed into this whole story is how the name Al Campanis plays into it. Campanis, who himself was a player, was the general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers from 1968-1987, where during the course of his tenure with the club, he traded for one Dusty Baker. Campanis, who spent almost half his life working in baseball in some aspect, saw his career come to an end one night after making comments on an episode of ABC’s “Nightline”. Campanis, being asked why he felt there were so few black people as managers and executives in baseball, stated that he felt that black people “lacked the necessities” to be able to be successful managers and executives. These comments, deemed racist, caused a PR nightmare for the Dodgers, who immediately fired their general manager of the last twenty years.
While Baker’s comments aren’t insulting like Campanis’ and Rocker’s comments, they all share something in common: stupidity. Baker’s implication that black (and Latino) people are better than white players dealing with heat implies that blacks and Latinos are somehow genetically different than whites, which is an implication that people have been trying to overcome for hundreds of years. And while Baker may stand behind his statements all he likes, it still doesn’t change the fact that if a white manager had made the exact same comment, it’d be front page news, and they’d be asking for his head on a platter.
Equality is great my friends, but the good has to be taken with the bad. Equality isn’t getting rid of all the negatives of being “different” while keeping all the positives. Equality is exactly what it is; treating everyone like everyone else, regardless of what they look like, where they come from, and what they worship.
And that, apparently, will never happen, because people don’t want to make sacrifices for the greater good. Sad, really.
