From the Empty Gesture Department…
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 done for 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, that 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 live.
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 stupid idea. It’s a social cock-tease, like masturbating without the payoff. Here’s a novel idea which may actually would make a positive change:
Major League Baseball could draft actual African-American players in their real amateur draft. And they could also 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 is 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. Stop patronizing the few fans you have left. 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 level with African-American and White players born in this country.