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Jose Canseco has made yet another move to out baseball and its doping with the intention on filing a class action lawsuit against Major League Baseball and his claim of “lost wages” and “defamation of character”.
Having tested positive for steroids in 2003 he is now being investigated for his Congress testimony in 2005. “Always, one individual has to make that stand, which is me,” Canseco said. “And then I’ll obviously speak to other players and other individuals, see how far they want to go,”specifically referring to players such as Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro.
With the feeling that he is being “blackballed”by the MLB because of his admitted steroid use it has caused lost opportunities for the retired player and stating, “Because I used steroids and I came out with a book, I was kicked out of the game, but I have not been inducted into the Hall of Fame.”
A Dissent from the Universal Casting of Shame and Blame on Kenesaw Mountain
Landis for Baseball’s Failure to Sign Black Players Before 1946
Norman L. Macht
brought to you by The SABR Office
This article is adapted from a research presentation given at the 2007 SABR annual convention.
AT SABR’s 2006 convention one speaker analyzed the commissioners of baseball and rated Judge Landis the best of all. In the questionand-answer session that followed, a member of the audience challenged the speaker: “How can you stand here in the year 2006 and praise Landis, who was so nstrumental in keeping blacks out of Major League Baseball?”
Had I been the presenter, I would have replied, “How do you know that Landis was so instrumental in barring blacks?” How do we know anything that we think we know? By what means do we know it? By taking somebody else’s word for it? By reading it in two or three or six places and concluding that it must be true? Or by researching and analyzing the pieces objectively and independently?
What we think we know about the past is laced with uncertainty. There’s very little we can be sure about. We must be open to challenging what we think we know when we come across contrary evidence, or across something that doesn’t quite fit. That’s not easy. Once we form an opinion or reach a conclusion, it’s natural to stop searching and therefore stop thinking. The mind stays closed and refuses to accept other findings that might discredit that opinion.
In medicine this is called confirmation bias: confirming what you expect to find in your research by selectively accepting this or ignoring that and clinging to a single explanation arrived at earlier without considering other possibilities.
Then I would have reminded the judge’s critic that, yes, it’s precisely because we are standing here in 2006, and Landis and baseball’s club owners were operating in a different time and a different society. A historian who judges a man in the context of today’s time and standards and not the standards and conditions of the time in which the subject lived commits a scholarly sin. The attempt to understand people in their context and on their terms requires that we temporarily suspend judgment. Understanding the America of the 1920s and ’30s and ’40s obliges us to make the effort of not judging it by the standards and values of today. Their values were their values, not necessarily ours. As Gibbon wrote of the Roman general Balisarius, “His vices were the vices of his time; his virtues were his own.” This forces us to remove the halo of thinking our values are eternal. They are not, and that can be troubling to us.
There is a vast, unbridgeable distance between what we like to believe we always were as a society and what we really were. Most of us never knew that pre–World War II society, never lived there. I ask you to join me now in trying to cross that bridge, leaving behind the baggage of your values and biases and what you think you know about other people inother times.
With Sheryl Crow headlining the MLB All-Star Game with a fundraising concert this weekend in St. Louis she sets to further back Major League Baseball’s prototion of President Barack Obama’s ‘United We Serve’ initiative as a part of a daylong celebration of baseball history.
“I’m from such an avid baseball-fan family, especially the Cardinals,” said Crow. “When we got asked to do it here, in St. Louis, that made it even more special. I have great memories of seeing summer bands under the arch. In fact, I was here in the ’70s when Elton John played under the Arch, and there was like 70,000 people here. So it’s an honor and a real privilege to get to do it for MLB and Stand Up To Cancer.”
The 2009 Major League Baseball All-Star Charity Concert is a free concert will be help under the St. Louis Gateway Arch on Saturday July, 11th which it is just one of many charitable events leading up to the All-Star game. During which the MLB will donate $1 million to Stand Up To Cancer.
Bud Selig has outlined terms in a June 19th memo that the remaining 30 Major League Baseball teams, aside from the New York Yankees and San Diego Padres, and have been sent specifying details for an in-market plan that allows teams to offer live streaming games and resolve the current local blackout issues.
Selig called the framework, “a fair and practical outcome to break what I have called the in-market streaming ‘logjam.’” Although the deal did outline a 50-50 revue split between the MLBAM and the local interests that could very well be adjusted as early as 2011 in order to “determine the fairness of the allocation and the impact upon industry economics.”
With the onset of the Yankees and Padres deals as well as MLB President Bob DuPuy’s expectations that “a majority” of the MLB teams will have similar local streaming deals as soon as next year but most teams may have been waiting to see just how lucrative the local streaming services would be before bartering a deal.
It is official, in an announcement made by the White house, President Obama will be in route to St. Louis to throw the first pitch kicking off the Major League Baseball All-Star Game on July 14th.
“Major League Baseball is truly honored that President Obama will be in attendance to throw out the first pitch at the 80th All-Star Game on July 14 in St. Louis,” MLB Commissioner Bud Selig said.
Being just the fourth president to have held this honor during an MLB All-Star game including Kennedy, Nixon and Ford Obama looks to use this opportunity for more then just an appearance. He reportedly plans to use this face time to inform fans of his “United We Serve” initiative.
After a quarter-century as executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, Fehr is being tagged the one lenient source that enabled the degradation of baseball through steroid use. A position that enabled him to run the MLBPA in away that allowed him “to get to do what you think is the right thing to do.” as an executive director that ran the MLB into the ground perhpas, “as long as you make a reasonable case for doing what you think is the right thing to do,” Fehr said.
Just like a school boy of today’s age, not knowing is a formidable response, or at least one that moved onto the next question as fair stated in regards to the steroid use in baseball, “If we, I, had known or understood what the circumstances were a little better, then perhaps we would have moved sooner”.
Moreover Bud Selig did have these words to say about Fehr’s ‘influence on Baseball, “for more than 25 years, Don has represented his constituency with passion, loyalty and great diligence . . . We have worked together to find a common ground for the betterment of the game, which will have resulted in 16 years of unprecedented labour peace by the end of our collective bargaining agreement”.
With Bob Green’s words, Vin Mazzaro’s career begun, as Geren called to the bench announcing “The future, is now.” With the young pitcher off on the right foot in his MLB debut win against the Chicago White Sox after two innings of loosening the butterflies and settling into the rotation. He had thrown 105 pitches, 60 of which were strikes and only walking four batters.
However his second debut was not so picturesque. Despite striking out 8 batters rookie pitcher Vin Mazzaro continued Oakland Athletics’ five game losing streak and Rockies first sweep of the A’s.
We’re swinging it pretty well, the ball’s just not dropping,” Mazzaro said after Oakland out-hit Colorado 11-9 at the Coliseum. “We’ve just got to go out and keep hacking.”
MLB president Bob DuPuy confirmed the leagues cooperation with the DEA investigation. Federal investigation into how Manny Ramirez obtained hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) which became a banned substance from the MLB last year because of the masking effects it has on detecting steroid use.
Allegedly doctor Pedro Publio Bosch and his son Anthony Bosch, said to be the middle man between the doctor and Ramirez, are the focus of the investigation and whether or not Dr. Bosch is the source of other illegally obtained prescriptions.
With most teams looking for more ways to bring the fans to the staduim, the Yankees make a bold move by offering local streamed online games.
“We know there’s a demand” for streamed New York Yankees games, Bob Bowman, the chief executive of MLB Advanced Media, said in a conference call. “The No. 1 e-mail issue we receive is the out-of-market blackouts.”
Current available options for the service by the YES Network through service provider Cablevision at either a $19.95 a month or $49.95 price point, for the rest of the current season, giving fans streaming Yankees game coverage. The concept is laid out but how much convenience does the TV experience bring to a baseball viewer? I would say that on the job streaming may in fact be the ticket with so many computer related working professionals. However with the games only being streamed to New York Yankees fans in the local New York area, the reach may be slightly minimal for the time being.
“Baseball led the nation, integrating ten months before Harry Truman became the first president to send a civil-rights message to Congress, a year before integration of the armed forces, three years before the first black player was taken in the NBA draft, and way ahead of the nation’s political mood. Washington was still sharply segregated. Throughout Jackie Robinson’s first year with the Dodgers, there was not a single mention in any Washington newspaper of any statement by any congressman – from anywhere- that was critical of segregation policies still in effect in the capital. Baseball….deserves recognition for leading-dragging-the rest of America a little closer to the ultimate goal of equality and opportunity,” Reported Mike Bauman from the civil rights game.
The MLB civil rights game was a commemorative celebration honoring racial equalities integration into society and the importance of civil rights. With the integration of the Negro league into the MLB in 1947 it marked a vital event in the civil rights movement and a show of equality.
The civil rights game also featured a speech from former president Bill Clinton and his words of wisdom in recognition of baseballs part, “Baseball is a social institution with very important social responsibilities, and on behalf of baseball I am proud to honor those who fight for civil rights and improve our society. I’m proud of the role baseball has played in giving people of all creeds, races and colors the chance to enjoy the life that freedom brings.”
