Bye-Bye, Baseball
A long time ago in a Philadelphia now far, far away, a candy store stood across the street from a remarkable public educational institution, the Henry School in West Mt. Airy. A little kids’ size table sat out in front, with two little kid-size chairs, at which two little kids could sit and discuss affairs of the day over Cokes. I sat there one afternoon across from a Black schoolmate I hardly knew, so I asked him over Cokes that key kid-identification question we all used: “Do you root for the Phillies or the A’s?” His reply was so outside my own range of answers I recall it to this day, three-quarters of a century later. “I root,” he said, “for the Dodgers.” But even at that little-kid age, I understood where he was coming from, faster than you can say “Jackie Robinson.”
I knew that my schoolmate wasn’t alone. In my Henry School years, I would go with my Dad to Shibe Park, Twenty-first and Lehigh, to Phils’ games. Half the people in the half-empty ball park were Black, and, at Twenty-first and Lehigh in Philly, they rooted for Brooklyn. Robinson was a self-respect-generating hero for them, that in an analogous way Hank Greenberg – who’d put his arm around Jackie when they met at first base Hank’s last year at Pittsburgh – had been for American Jews at a time and place American Jews had really really needed a hero. That Pittsburgh moment was one of two minority groups’ mutual understanding I wish we had back today. We could be of help to each other.
By me, baseball died, not as a business, but as “America’s pastime” the day the Giants and Dodgers deserted New York. But if you don’t think that before then Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers had contributed mightily to Americans more closely attaining the just societal values toward which we strive, read Jackie Robinson’s book, Baseball Has Done It. It’s about the integration of baseball, yes, but more fully the impact baseball’s integration had on ending Jim Crow that had plagued America well into Jackie Robinson’s lifetime and mine. Three of my half-dozen American heroes are ball players, two of them Black – Greenberg, Robinson and Satchel Paige, by light-years the best pitcher ever and symbol of all that America lost through discriminating against Black Americans.
But that was then, as they say, and this is now. What brought back to my mind this week all of this “then” was one of my friend Alan Molod’s frequent emails. It was a brief video of what’s officially one of “The Top 100 Moments in Major League Baseball” of Chicago Cubs outfielder Rick Monday April 25, 1976, running in from center field to snatch from two attempted American flag burners who’d run onto the field that about-to-be-burned American flag. The scoreboard lit up “Rick Monday You Made a Great Play,” and the fans stood up and sang “God Bless America.” Seeing that video this week got to me.
What else has gotten to me recently is a ZOA report of Temple University Prof. Hill’s statement of the aims of the group Black Lives Matter, for which he’s an advocate. ZOA quoted Prof. Hill stating:
“… Black Lives Matter very explicitly is talking about the dismantling of, um, of the Zionist project, dismantling of a settler-colonial project and very explicitly embracing BDS on those grounds.”
It was that ZOA report of Prof. Hill on Black Live Matter’s ambition of “dismantling” our people’s “settler-colonial project” that precipitated BSMW #1056 two weeks ago. It summarized our people’s uninterrupted three-millennia homeland-claiming physical presence in our homeland of Israel, not just during biblical times but also during the eighteen hundred years of exclusively foreign empire rule between Roman destruction of ancient Jewish Judaea in CE 135 and Israel’s independence in 1948 as the land of Israel’s next native state. Historian Parkes credited that continued homeland presence, maintained “in spite of every discouragement,” with writing today’s Israelis’ “real title deeds.” Indeed, the biggest segment of Israel’s population is Mizrahi Jews, descendants of those who never left the Mideast. No nation on earth is further removed from being a “settler-colonial project” than my people’s three-millennia Jewish homeland of Israel.
ZOA’s response to Prof. Hill called that BLM Israel-dismantling aim what it is:
“The deliberate mischaracterization of Israel as a colonialist ‘settler’ state is part of an antisemitic smear used to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist. According to the ‘working definition of anti-Semitism’ provided by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) – a definition adopted and endorsed by the United States State Department under the Biden administration – this form of rhetoric is ‘denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination,’ an example of antisemitism. In addition, the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS) movement has been criticized by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), who have stated that ‘BDS advocates employ antisemitic rhetoric and narratives to isolate and demonize Israel.’” [emphasis added]
For more on “BLM’s Antisemitic Activities,” in depth, go to www.zoa.org, scroll down to “News” toward the home screen bottom, and click on “The BLM Organization Files.”
Major league baseball has endorsed Black Lives Matter. E.g., an April 3 New York Times article, “Activism was Unusual for Baseball, but Not for Sports,” said that at the start of the shortened season last year, major league baseball had
“provided Black Lives Matter shirts for players to wear, and teams were allowed to paint a BLM logo on the back of the pitcher’s mound – an unmistakable sign of solidarity for television viewers.”
Google “MLB BLM” to see how widespread and deep baseball’s involvement with Black Lives Matter has become.
I disagree that “systemic racism” – e.g., Jim Crow, “Separate but Equal” – still plagues America today. Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers played a major role in ending that terrible stain. I honor them for it. And it’s not MLB’s endorsement of BLM per se that drives me away from following the game. It’s MLB’s endorsement of a BLM that for whatever reason – antisemitism of its own, uncritical acceptance of anti-Jewish/anti-Jewish homeland propaganda, just-plain-bullying – seeks to “dismantle” my people’s three-millennia homeland as a “settler-colonial project” that drives me away. If BLM genuinely purges itself of that, MLB would cease to be an accessory to “dismantling” my people’s historic homeland – through verbal attack, economic embargo, potentially more. But of course I’m not holding my breath waiting for BLM to divest itself of “dismantling” Israel, or MLB to divest itself of BLM, before the Messiah comes. So, given that reality, which as Stu would say, sets my political position on this, all I can say right now is – Baseball, Bye-Bye.