Greed, Racism and Stupidity
Because of
COVID-19, Major League Baseball shut down in mid-March, about a week before the
regular season was to begin. Now, in
early June, the owners and players are bickering about financial arrangements
for a shortened season. The general
public scorns both sides equally: “billionaires squabbling with
millionaires.” More attentive baseball
fans realize the story is more complicated than that. Most baseball players are minor leaguers,
unrepresented by the major league players association. The millionaires (MLBPA) don’t defend the
interests of minor league players against the billionaires (the owners). So the owners are using the excuse of
pandemic to greatly reduce the draft while eliminating a quarter of all
affiliated minor league teams. There’ll
still be a few big signing bonuses for a few dozen top draft picks, but overall
there will be fewer players in the system, and they will be paid less.
One might
think such greed on the part of the billionaires would be self-defeating. After all, the quality of a baseball team
depends on the talents of its players, and the cheapest way to develop and
control baseball talent is to stock and train minor league teams. The owners are betting that baseball talent
will develop on its own through youth leagues and college teams and that they
can still control the best players by drafting only the cream of the crop. It may work.
After all, there are still lots of families willing to pay for the
advanced youth leagues, camps, and all-star games where 17-20 year-olds pursue
the dream.
Unfortunately,
American families able to pay for the baseball dream are mostly while,
suburban, and middle-class. Over the
last three decades, fewer and fewer African Americans have made it to the big
leagues. Major League Baseball does have
lots of minority players, but most of them are international players,
especially from Latin America. These
players do not come into professional baseball through the draft. Instead, teams sponsor baseball academies in
the Dominican Republic and other countries, where they collect and develop
talented players at far less cost than in minor league baseball in the United
States.
Until 1947,
when Jackie Robinson joined the Dodgers, major league baseball discriminated
openly against black players. Now the
discrimination is subtler, and the owners almost certainly don’t recognize it
as discrimination. Every owner would
insist vehemently that he wants the best possible players on his team, and the
major leagues sponsor programs to promote baseball in African American
neighborhoods in many American cities.
(I speak of the “owner” for simplicity’s sake, when in fact many teams
are owned by ownership groups.)
The owners’
protestations are true, but they miss the point. By cutting back on minor league baseball and
reducing the draft, organized baseball saves money, but it pushes the cost of
developing baseball talent onto families.
On average, African American families have lower incomes (and much lower
wealth) than white Americans. Organized
baseball’s cost saving measure links up with America’s economic stratification
to keep blacks out of baseball. The
owners don’t intend to discriminate against African Americans, but their policy
has that effect.
A week ago,
on Memorial Day weekend, a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd by
kneeling on his neck on a Minneapolis street.
Mr. Floyd had already been handcuffed and was not resisting, but the
officer kneeling on his neck for almost nine minutes. The murder was recorded on cell phones by
observers, who can be heard asking the officer to stop. Mr. Floyd said that he couldn’t breathe and
asked for mercy. The police officer
continued to kneel on Floyd’s neck for more than two minutes after Mr. Floyd
ceased speaking.
Floyd was
black; the officer is white. Three other
officers were present and did nothing to stop the murder. Two of them are white; one is Asian. The officer who killed Floyd has been charged
with murder and manslaughter; the other three have not yet been charged.
Almost all
Americans are outraged and saddened by the killing of George Floyd. But like major league baseball owners, many
white Americans can’t see that their policies contribute to racist results. Every year police in America kill unarmed
African American men, lots of them. No
one knows exactly how many, because few killings are recorded on cell phones,
and sometimes police officers lie. They
say the victim was armed when he wasn’t.
Protests
against police racism have erupted in scores of American cities, day after day,
since the murder of George Floyd.
Hundreds of thousands of people have cried out for justice and for
change. People want real change. They want police to treat black Americans the
same way they treat white Americans.
Unfortunately,
hundreds of thousands of peaceful protesters give effective cover to thousands
of rioters and looters. In city after
city, peaceful protests have been hijacked by criminals; they bomb police cars,
smash businesses, steal merchandise, and commit assaults and murders. George Floyd’s family has called for the
violence to stop, for the three unindicted officers to be arrested, and for
people to go home.
President Trump has derided
governors who are “weak” for not “dominating” the protesters.
The
protests coincide with COVID-19.
Thousands of demonstrators, mostly young adults, have been screaming
their frustration and anger while marching in massed groups. Other than singing in a choir in a closed
space like a church or shouting in a packed crowd at a baseball game, there is
probably no better way to spread the corona virus than these protests. Young adults may survive the upsurge in
COVID-19 cases we expect. More likely,
the protests will kill the protesters’ grandparents.
Stupidity
reigns in the White House and on the street.
