A series of Washington Post articles features the stories of black baseball players, both then and now, in examining the issue of why the number of black baseball players has declined. For some reason, this has Matt Philbin, the Media Research Center’s managing editor for culture, to have a meltdown, because he has apparently decided that blacks shouldn’t be encouraged to play baseball:
The Washington Post has “spent this baseball season examining the experiences of nine African American ballplayers, from a 90-year-old icon to an 18-year-old prospect,” according to an introduction to it’s series of articles called “The Nine.” It’s an exercise that’s supposed to tell readers important things “about this game and this country.”
It tells us more about the race-obsessed progressives who write for the Post than anything else. The central theme of the nine long articles is that, after an arduous, often painful integration era and a black heyday in the 1970s and 80s, there have been fewer and fewer black major leaguers. More than 16% of MLB players in 1989 were black. Today it’s less than 7%.
As you can guess, this is baseball’s fault.
In a free society, people self-select. They gravitate to the professions, diversions and social circles that suit them. Young black athletes gravitate towards basketball and football. Not coincidentally, blacks are a majority in the NBA and the NFL. But the Post isn’t publishing think pieces about those sports.
Because according to the new woke orthodoxy, any sphere not dominated by [your preferred minority group here] is suspect and must be exclusionary or systemically racist.
[…]Baseball integrated more than 70 years ago. Black players overcame racism to become some of the game’s legendary figures. As “The Nine” itself proves, MLB is open to black players. Indeed, it’s been doing outreach to black communities for at least 30 years.
Baseball allows black players to play! Isn’t that enough? Indeed, Philbin goes on to whine thatthe Post pointed out that baseball is a bit of a “stodgy” sport that gives few opportunities for players to express themselves:
But the real problem with baseball not being black enough seems to be that baseball isn’t, you know, black enough. The game is “stodgy,” permeated by a “personality-suppressing culture.” (That might be surprising to Babe Ruth, Yogi Berra or Keith Hernandez.) The “contrived and archaic ‘right way’” to play ball “has been code for the ‘White way’ for decades.”
The Post says “Recently, baseball has been at war with itself, promoting ‘Let the kids play’ to push its product while some players flash fun-police badges with inside fastballs.”
No question which side the Post takes.
Philbin concluded by sneering that the Post’s “focus is raceball.” But “raceball” is exactly what Philbin is playing by freaking out over players of color in the game and arguing against more black players in baseball. That’ the “culture” the MRC is paying Philbin to write about.