George Kimball/America At Large: Now you might suppose the observation that black players are less susceptible to sunburn than their fairer-skinned colleagues was so obvious it wouldn't merit comment, but - as seemingly every headline-writer in America would remind you - Dusty Baker has been "feeling the heat" all week.
Last Saturday the Chicago Cubs manager engaged with reporters in an informal pre-game chat in the home-team dugout at Wrigley Field. In his first year on the job, Baker has his team in contention for the National League Central title, and when someone observed that the Cubs, who despite the recent introduction of lights to Wrigley play a disproportionate number of day games, seem to undergo an annual swoon concomitant with the arrival of the dog days of summer, his response was forthright if mildly disingenuous.
"I always enjoyed playing in the heat," said Baker, an African-American who played 19 Major League seasons in Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Oakland prior to a decade-long managerial run with the San Francisco Giants.
"It's easier for me," Baker explained. "It's easier for most Latin guys and it's easier for most minority people. Most of us come from the heat. You don't find too many brothers in New Hampshire and Maine and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, right? Weren't we brought over because we could take the heat? (Black players') skin colour is more conducive to heat than it is for light-skin people, right? You don't see brothers running around burnt, with white stuff on their ears and noses.
"Yeah," he concluded. "That's history. That's fact." Dusty's genetic analysis triggered alarm in PC Police precincts all over the country. Many who chose to accuse Baker of reverse racism likened his comments to those of the late Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder, Al Campanis, Marge Schott, and John Rocker.
Fifteen years ago Jimmy the Greek, an oddsmaker-turned-television-pundit, was fired by CBS after a bumbling attempt to defend his observation that blacks were genetically superior.
"The black is the better athlete," Jimmy had said. "He's bred to be the better athlete because this goes way back, to the slave period. The slave owner would breed this big black with this big black woman so he could have a big black kid. That's where it all started."
Campanis, an old-school administrator, was cashiered by the Los Angeles Dodgers after attempting to explain the dearth of minority Major League managers by claiming that blacks lacked "the necessities" for the position. In recent years Schott, the Hitler-worshipping owner of the Cincinnati Reds, and Rocker, who pitched for the Braves, have been suspended by MLB for making racially charged comments. Over the past few days a number of people, many of whom ought to know better, have called for Baker's head as well.
As a player Baker was a serviceable two-time All-Star outfielder who hit over .300 on three occasions. He was "Manager of the Year" three times during 10 tempestuous years with the Giants, though last season, when he took them to the seventh game of the World Series, was not one of them. A long-running feud with the front office came to a head, and by mutual consent he left.
He was hired by the Cubs days later, and as the season approaches its midpoint, a team that hasn't won a World Series since 1912 finds itself in contention. Baker has already endured one firestorm, when his star slugger Sammy Sosa was caught using an illegally corked bat, and found himself under fire on another front this week.
By virtue of having managed last year's pennant-winning team, Baker will skipper the National League entry in Tuesday night's All-Star game. In that capacity he exercised his prerogative when Colorado's Shawn Chacon was injured, naming one of his own players, pitcher Kerry Wood, to replace him, a move perceived as a snub of the more deserving Dontrelle Willis of the Marlins. In an age of 24-hour sports television, Baker's explanation that he'd never seen Willis pitch seemed a bit specious.
He saw him Tuesday night, anyway: in the Marlins' 4-3 win at Wrigley, Willis blanked the Cubs on two hits in the five innings he pitched before being lifted after a lengthy rain delay.
In any case, that Wood is white and Willis black tends to complicate the issue, since it won't do much to bolster the argument that Baker is operating from an agenda of reverse racism.
While we won't pretend to know him well, we've known Dusty Baker for many years and have never seen evidence of his harbouring a racist bone in his body, but under similar circumstances the inclination of the modern-day athlete (or athlete's manager) would usually be to wriggle out by claiming he had been misinterpreted. Baker's candour was thus particularly refreshing.
"That's what I said. I'm not going to take it back," he told journalists the very next day. "What I said to you guys is what I said to my team. I told my other team mates this a long time ago, too. When we talk about how hot it is, I told them my ancestors were brought over here for that reason. My mother was a black-American history teacher in Sacramento, and that's history.
"I stand by what I said. I wasn't talking about white people. I was talking about black people, and if I want to talk about African-American and black people, that's my prerogative.
"I can say stuff and call somebody of my colour stuff that you can't. And then you guys can call people, whether they're Jewish or Polish, or I've heard Italian people call Italian people stuff that I can't say. That's how it goes.
"If I say some of the stuff I've heard other people call people, man. And if you call some of the stuff I call some of my brothers, then y'all in trouble. Try saying some of the stuff that's said on some of those rap songs and see what happens.
"I was just saying the facts, Jack."
