[2022 has been a lot. A lot a lot. So for my annual Year in Review series, I wanted to focus mostly on somewhat lighter, pop culture kinds of topics, with just one much more serious exception. Here’s to a better year to come!]
On one
inspiring and one frustrating side of baseball’s diversity in 2022.
As I did
with the week’s first two posts, in lieu of an opening paragraph here I’m gonna
ask you to check out a prior post, this
one on Cuban and Japanese players in Major League Baseball. Then come on
back for today’s thoughts if you would!
Welcome
back! That diversification of the ranks of MLB players has been one of the most
striking American sports stories of the last few decades, and has continued
apace, with a particular emphasis in recent years on the prominence and to a
significant degree the dominance of Latin American (and specifically
Afro-Latin) players. No moment has ever exemplified (nor could more
powerfully exemplify) that trend than one from this season’s Roberto
Clemente Day (September 15th), when the Tampa Bay Rays fielded a
lineup in which all
nine hitters were born in Latin American countries (Cuba, the Dominican
Republic, Colombia, Venezuela, y Mexico). Given how difficult
and often painful it was for the early generations of Latin American stars
like Roberto Clemente to make their way to and become part of the Major
Leagues, that groundbreaking moment—apparently
a truly accidental one, which reflects quite clearly this central presence
of Latin American players—was a genuinely moving and important one, and makes
this lifelong baseball fan and DiverseAmericaStudier very happy indeed.
On the
other hand, a very different baseball story from less than two months later
made that same dude a lot less happy. As the 2022 World Series got underway in
early November, we learned that the two contending teams, the Houston Astros
and Philadelphia Phillies, had no
American-born Black players on their respective rosters. Obviously every
individual athlete has to make their own choices about their careers and
futures, and of course it’s impossible to separate a baseball story like that
one from (among other factors) the amazing breadth and depth of African
American athletes in the NBA and NFL. But at the same time, there’s no way to
tell the story of baseball (and thus, I would argue, the story of 20th
century America as a whole) without including both individual,
groundbreaking Black players and the overarching community of Black players, and so for both a
baseball fan and an AmericanStudier this was a really sad thing to learn about
the final two teams in this year’s season. I don’t know what the answers are
necessarily, but I know that until and unless Major League Baseball can feature
a lot more Black players again, it won’t be nearly as diverse nor as American
as it could or should be.
Last 2022
reflection tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Other parts of 2022 you’d reflect on?
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