[As I’ve
done each of the
last couple years, an Opening Day series—this time focused on
AmericanStudying some particularly interesting baseball identities. Leading up
to a special Guest Post on a particularly important baseball life!]
What the three
distinct and even contradictory stages of John Rocker’s public disintegration
reveal about contemporary American sports and society.
As a lifelong
Atlanta Braves fan, I was, in the fall of 1999, a John Rocker fan as
well—Rocker was the young relief pitcher with the near-100 mph fastball who had
blazed onto the scene during that season, helping the Braves reach the World
Series in the process, and it was hard not to like the kid (despite, or perhaps
even partly because of, his over-exuberant mound presence and antics). And then
came the December
1999 Sports Illustrated profile piece,
an article on Rocker’s extreme personality and perspective that included some of
the most bigoted and disgusting quotes (about New York City, about one of
Rocker’s own Caribbean American teammates, and more) I’ve seen outside of an
anonymous internet comments thread. The article tore away any pretense that
sports or America were free of old-school bigotry and hatred (such as that
faced by the subjects of Monday’s post, Hank Greenberg and Jackie Robinson) at
the turn of the new millennium.
Rocker was
suspended by the Braves for a good bit of the next (2000) season, but during
that same period a second, very different and even contradictory set of stories
and narratives about Rocker began to emerge. The
stories focused in particular on his parents and home, and on their
experiences taking in fellow minor leaguers of multiple races and ethnicities
to live with John and his family during his time in the minors. Inspired in
large part by those stories, prominent local African American leaders like Andrew
Young (a Civil Rights hero and generally inspiring American) intervened on
Rocker’s behalf with the media and the Braves, and helped get him both
reinstated from his suspension and (to a degree) more balanced news coverage. Both
the stories of Rocker’s family and the efforts of men like Young suggested new,
cross-cultural communal relationships and identities in America, ones that
might indeed represent changes from the kinds of divided pasts that Rocker’s
comments had so echoed.
Rocker went on
to a brief and undistinguished career with the Braves and a couple subsequent
teams, but the real third stage of his American sports life and narrative has unfolded
in the years since his retirement. With a book on not just his career but also his
social and political views (seriously) to publicize, Rocker
has begun speaking out again, and in so doing has admitted not only to
using steroids in the 1999 and 2000 seasons, but to Major League Baseball
having tested him and known about (and thus covered up) his steroid use. The
story indicates in part that Rocker has not learned from his prior experiences
the value of holding back, although I suppose this time his honesty is at least
as self-critical as it is generally belligerent (not expecting to say the same
about Rocker’s book,
Scars & Strikes [2011], if I
ever have the time and desire to read it, but I’ll try to keep an open mind). But
this third stage in Rocker’s baseball life also reminds sports fans that the
true outrages of baseball at the turn of the 21st century were not
the bigoted beliefs of individual athletes, but the widespread
and dangerous deceptions in which even far more well-spoken and
admirable players played an equal role.
Next baseball
life tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Baseball lives or stories you’d highlight?
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