As a Kentuckian it is hard to avoid horse racing. And it was hard for anybody to avoid the news of this last weekend's Belmont Stakes, in which the Kentucky-bred horse American Pharoah became the first horse in thirty-seven years to win the Triple Crown, having also won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness.
What makes the Triple Crown different from any other sporting honor. Julia Yost has done about as well as I've seen anyone explain it:
The lack of partisan fandom in racing has something to do with the brevity of its stars’ careers. No sooner have you heard of the three-year-olds that run in the Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont, than they retire to the stud farm. So those of us who wanted to see a Triple Crown this year did not want it because we had grown up cheering for Zayat Stables’ American Pharoah (who was born practically yesterday). We wanted, this year as every year, to behold athletic greatness for its own sake.
Is it only my own impression or are readers of newspapers being pressured to pay more attention to women's sports? Every time you open a sports page, the coverage of women's althletics seem completely out of proportion to the actual interest in it. You feel like you should have an interest, even if you don't--that there's an implicit finger being wagged at you.
Well, turns out the coverage does appear to be out of alignment.
It's one thing to watch men sweat and grunt and spit, but another to watch women do it.
Another step in the decline of Western civilization: colleges must now accommodate "transgender" athletes:
Transgender is a broad term used to describe the experiences of people whose gender identity and expression do not match the sex they were assigned at birth. Some people transition to live as their preferred gender by changing their names and the pronouns they use to refer to themselves. They express their preferred gender through choice of clothes, hairstyles and other manifestations of gender expression and identity. Some transgender people undergo reconstructive surgery or take hormones to make their bodies more congruent with their internal sense of themselves. Others do not.
Since the increased visibility of a transgender rights movement in the 1980s and a school-based LGBT "safe schools" movement in the 1990s, more young people have the language and information they need to identify the gender dissonance they experience between the sex they were assigned at birth and the gender identity that they know to be true for them. They are increasingly identifying themselves as transgender and they are doing it at earlier ages.
...Many of these young people want to play on their schools' or colleges' sports teams. As a result, athletic directors and coaches increasingly find themselves unprepared to make decisions about what team a transgender student is eligible to play for. As the number of transgender students who want to play on school sports teams increases, school athletic leaders must identify effective and fair policies to ensure their right to participate.
So who is it that is mistakenly "assigning" their gender at birth? Nature? In the postmodernist world, we get to simply decide what we are. We are nothing by nature. We can decide whether we're male or female. Can we decide whether we're humans too? I mean if X and Y chromosomes are not determinative of gender, then why should we pay any attention to the DNA that tell us we're human?
Transhuman. I can see it now. Can I be a plant? I can think of some people that are not terribly unlike vegetables.
There's nothing to stop people from denying reality, but are the rest of us really obligated to play along?
Tim Tebow won't be playing for the national championship this year, but, then again, football is only his first priority, says Anthony Esolen:
He says that his four priorities are God, family, academics, and football, in that order. And because they are in that order, while he may not be the greatest football player graduating from college this year, he has certainly touched more lives than any other player has, by far; and not only touched the lives, but brought perhaps something infinitely more valuable than a national championship in football. He has -- I don't think this is an exaggeration -- been the means whereby they have been reminded of the holy; he has therefore brought them hope.
Now this is exactly what the secular world cannot do. It can, with some considerable inefficiency, bring people food and medicine. It can run families into the ground and destroy communities, replacing them with the wraiths called mass education and mass entertainment. It is very good at that. It cannot bring hope; in fact it is almost the definition of secularism, that there is no hope to bring, other than a modest amelioration in one's physical conditions, before death. It does not plunge into the worst of all slums, the dilapidated heart of a man or woman steeped in evil, to say, "You are of incomparable worth; I love you; we are brothers, because we have one Father." That is what Danny Wuerffel does. It is what Tim Tebow will likely go on to do. And note the power of one good young Christian -- who is the light whereby a stadium filled with strangers becomes, for a few fleeting moments, a society.
Fedor Emelienenko beat the larger by thirty pounds Brett Rogers with a smashing overhand right in the middle of the second round of a mixed martial arts fight on CBS Saturday night. The nationally televised fight was another indication of the rise in popularity of MMA.
It was a good fight for the public to have seen. Rogers was a little whiney, but, after all, he did lose. The Russian Fedor, who is for all practical purposes undefeated after almost thirty fights, graciously complimented his opponent, and then, having putting a wooden Eastern Orthodox cross around his neck, thanked his fans here in the U. S. But he saved most of his appreciation for "the Orthodox Russian people" back home. "His people."
I have received lectures from people of the feminine persuasion on why MMA should be outlawed. In fact, a lot of people have a problem with the primal nature of MMA. But these are contests of strength and skill involving two athletes who will wail on each other for three rounds and then, once the final horn has sounded, hug each other and shake hands out of respect. If these people have a problem with destructive behavior, they would do better monitoring the playgrounds of our schools where schoolgirls can be found humiliating each other and then refusing to speak. In the final scheme of things, that's a far worse problem.
The biggest problem MMA suffers is the tiresome bombast and bad sportsmanship of a few fighters. Fighters like B. J. Penn routinely taunt their opponents after winning. If MMA's critics were really concerned about destructive behavior, let them talk about that. I'm with 'em.
But what was striking about Saturday's fight was the support Fedor got from the Chicago crowd. Here you had a popular and well-liked American fighter, Brett Rogers (a man whose good reputation is well-deserved), fighting a Russian who doesn't even speak English. Who do they root for? The Russian. When did you think you would ever see that happen?
What is it about Fedor that people like? Here is the greatest heavyweight fighter in the world reacting humbly and appreciatively, and holding a cross--not like the pop stars who blurt out thanks to the Almighty after accepting an award for some piece of cultural trash they helped perpetrate on the public (Have we talked yet about things that are destructive yet?), but because he is grounded in the culture of his homeland and lives a genuinely devout Christian life there. Oh, and he's really good at what he does.
In a pre-game interview before last weekend's University of Kentucky football game with the University of Miami at Ohio, UK athletic director Mitch Barnhart went on and on about how important it is that coaches at the school be models of character.
Nevermind that this is the guy who hired Billy Gillespie, the more important point is that one wonders what Barnhart would have to say about U of L President James Ramsey's mishandling of the Rick Pitino scandal (after which you try to change the subject). In fact, the pink elephant in the room of the whole discussion was Pitino. And although it was Ramsey, not Barnhardt, who is to blame for the whole Pitino fiasco, it is hard to believe that winning isn't King at UK just like it is at U of L.
If Billy Gillespie had had the same record as Pitino, and had a DUI, what would Barnhart and Todd have done? If Gillespie had been successful at coaching and continued to avert an actual DUI charge because of the kind of legal leniency that traditionally seems to apply to successful big college coaches (and that was apparently applied to Gillespie in past encounters with state troopers), what would Barnhart and Todd do?
It's hard to believe they wouldn't do the same thing Ramsey did. But I'd love to be proved wrong.
First, The Basketball Coach That James Ramsey Won't Fire had his way with Karen Sypher. Then he had his way with James Ramsey. Now he wants to have his way with the media.
The Basketball Coach That James Ramsey Won't Fire is not only not contrite: he's giving lectures to the media on how to behave. He doesn't like the fact that the media is reporting on the prosecution of Karen Sypher. This is the same media that held the taped phone message for weeks until it publicly came out that The Basketball Coach Who James Ramsey Won't Fire had had an illicit relationship with Sypher.
You'd think he'd be appreciative.
One of the things he claimed to upset about was that his story was being broadcast on the day that everyone should have been honoring Ted Kennedy on his death. Wait a minute. Why is The Basketball Coach That James Ramsey Won't Fire mad at the media for this? Why shouldn't the rest of us be mad at him for it? Here are a whole bunch of people who would probably much rather be hearing about Kennedy's life, and instead they're having to endure watching Karen Sypher wax incomprehensible. Again.
He's the one who brought all this on himself. And guess what? If he had done the honorable thing and quit, we wouldn't all be plagued with it all right now.
He charged that television stations who played the tapes of Sypher speaking with the FBI were broadcasting "lies." This is the man whose attorney is claiming he paid Sypher $3,000 for "health insurance." Sypher should have remained quiet: Pitino appears to be the only philanderer who provides his bimbos with benefits.
The Basketball Coach That James Ramsey Won't Fire really seems to think he is too good for all this. And why not, with enablers like Ramsey giving him the impression that he's got carte blanche to do whatever he wants without actually being held accountable in any real way to his university?
His impromptu press conference seems to have caught everyone off guard, and it can't have come as good news over at the Scandal War Room over at U of L, which must now have to operate 24/7, and where Ramsey has probably now added staff who specialize in bimbo eruptions.
Now Rick is all over the news again, and the chief subject of talk show discussions.
Could it be that Ramsey is now thinking that maybe he should have cut Rick loose after all?
University of Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari is coming under public scrutiny because of NCAA sanctions against the University of Memphis basketball team for violations that occurred while he was coach, making it the second time a team he has coached that has been sanctioned in such a way.
Calipari himself has not been implicated in the investigations, but if the blame does end up falling on him, he may be forced to go out to a local restaurant, pick up a floozy, and pay for her abortion in order to return himself to the good graces of university officials.
One U of L recruit says he's staying despite Pitino's problems: "Yo I ain't leaving," said Peyton Siva on his Twitter page, "Rick('s) personal life is his life. He's here to coach me and is the best teach of hoop to me! So like the fans say, 'Go Cards.'"
So now we know that U of L's standards are as high as those of a teenage boy. It's a high mark to aspire to. Let's hope President James Ramsey's university is up to the task.
While Jeremy Jarmon was kicked off of the University of Kentucky football team for inadvertently taking the wrong dietary supplements bought from a health food store, Rick Pitino is keeping his coaching at the University of Louisville with any penalty after paying for an abortion to cover up a sexual liason.
Here are a couple of news articles I was quoted in on this story:
In a blog yesterday, Martin Cothran, a lobbyist for the Family Foundation of Kentucky who has in the past advocated against abortion and same-sex marriage, called for the university to fire Pitino.There are “two issues here,” Cothran said in an interview. “One is, are we holding Rick Pitino to a lower moral standard than we do student athletes? ... We suspend people from teams for bar fights. We fire high school coaches for unintentionally causing the deaths of others. What we have in this case is somebody who intentionally acted to end a human life.”
Martin Cothran, a senior policy analyst for the Family Foundation of Kentucky, a conservative think tank, called for Pitino’s firing on his personal blog.
In an interview Wednesday, he said the latest revelations obviously show the hypocrisy factor of a Catholic family man who may have paid for his mistress’s abortion. “Add to that the fact he’s in a position of moral leadership, he’s ‘Coach,’ he’s supposed to be modeling good behavior for students,” Cothran said.
As Page One Kentucky Aptly put it, "It's not going away." If the James Ramsey's scandal-plagued university was really looking for the best thing to do for Rick Pitino (not to mention everyone else), he would have pulled the plug on this weeks ago. As it is, Pitino's whole private life is now going to be dragged out into public view.
A student pro-life group at the University of Louisville is calling for the dismissal of basketball coach Rick Pitino:
“Rick Pitino will always be considered a great basketball coach, but just because he knows basketball does not mean the University of Louisville community should hold up this man as a role model and hero,” Lisa Just, president of Cardinals for Life, said in a news release.
From Christine Brennan, USA Today sports columnist:
After all this, how does Rick Pitino ever again go into a recruit's home, look his mother in the eye and tell her with a straight face he'll watch over her son's education and moral well-being?
How does Pitino ever punish a player for violating a team rule? How does he offer life lessons to his players? How does he walk onto a stage to give one of his patented motivational speeches without being laughed right off of it?
Basically, how does Rick Pitino continue being Rick Pitino, especially when we're not entirely certain just who that person is anymore?
Episode I: Rick consolidates his position as basketball coach by winning lots of games Episode II: Rick is the object of an extortion attempt by a woman Episode III: Rick decides that $10 million is too much to pay for the woman's silence, although this particular woman's silence would be beneficial to everyone, including herself. Episode IV: When Rick reports the extortion attempt to the FBI, it comes out in the press that Rick had met the strange woman (who turns out to be strange in more ways than one) at a local Italian restaurant owned by his close friend Tim "the Facilitator" Coury, and that he had had what the two joking call an "indiscretion" at the restaurant while Rick's driver Vinnie waited in the restaurant. Episode V: University president James "the Bungler" Ramsey meets with his veteran damage control team to discuss what to do. When Ramsey begins explaining how he thinks they should deal with fraud and mismanagement issues at the university, aides quickly remind him that that particular scandal is over and that they are dealing with a new one now. The episode ends with Ramsey getting lost as he tries to find his way home. Episode VI: An intrepid reporter finds the police report in which Rick admits his sexual affair with the strange woman and also that he had paid her $3,000 to have an abortion. Rick's lawyer, Steve "the Handler" Pence, tries to explain that the money was not for an abortion, but for "health insurance" for the strange woman. According to the police report, the line Rick used when introducing himself to her at Porcini was, "Hey baby, how's your health insurance plan?" Pence disclosed that he gave her the $3,000 for her first year's premium, but offered to perform the mammograms himself. Episode VII: A public outcry over the affair and the abortion forces university officials to quickly paper things over with a press conference in which Rick invokes 9/11 to explain his actions, although no one appears to understand what in the world 9/11 has to do with a sexual liason or paying for an abortion. University president Ramsey tells the press that his university is not a degree mill and that the charges are "anonymous crap." Aides briefly take him aside and remind him that the Deasy and Felner scandals have already been put to bed and that they are talking about Pitino now. Ramsey leans into the microphone and says, "Never mind." Episode VIII: University damage control team members high five each other after their press conference snows everyone into thinking that the whole thing is over. The season's final show ends at Porcini, where Rick is introducing himself to another strange woman who looks like she needs health care insurance.
The Louisville Courier-Journal today on the big rug they've got over at the University of Louisville under which they sweep things:
Similarly distressing was the initial reaction of UofL president James Ramsey and athletics director Tom Jurich. The latter said Mr. Pitino had been truthful with the university and that “we stand by him.” Mr. Ramsey said the new details were “surprising,” but also sounded supportive and added Wednesday only that he will meet with Mr. Jurich. That didn't sound like a no-nonsense, get-to-the-bottom-of-this response from officials whose top priority must be the integrity of the university and its sports programs.
The university and a gaggle of lawyers can argue about whether Mr. Pitino violated terms of his contract that stipulate that he can be fired for causing “disparaging media publicity of a material nature that damages the good name and reputation” of the university and for “acts of moral depravity.”
On two matters, however, there can be little argument. One is that Mr. Pitino and the university would be expected to take harsh measures against any player or staff member who had behaved as their coach did.
The locus of responsibility in the Rick Pitino scandal has shifted several times. The first was Pitino's encounter with Karen Sypher, in which both Coach Pitino and Sypher were complicit. Then it shifted again when Sypher tried to extort Pitino, in which Sypher proved what kind of person she was. It shifted again when Pitino went to the police to report the extortion.
What this latter action says about Pitino is hard to determine. His choice was between being extorted and not having his dirty laundry aired out in public, and not being extorted and having people finding out about what he did. He chose the latter. Whether he chose it because it was the cheaper alternative (she was demanding $10 million) or because it was the right thing to do is hard to tell. But let's give him the benefit of the doubt.
The locus of responsibility shifted once again when the police report came out yesterday in which it was revealed that Pitino did indeed have a sexual encounter with Sypher, and that, in addition, when she called and told him she was pregnant, he gave her $3,000 for an abortion. At this point, the responsibility shifted to the University of Louisville, specifically, to the ethically challenged James Ramsey, the university's president.
Sypher certainly didn't acquit herself well when she had it. Pitino failed his first test and passed the second only because we are stipulating that he did. How did Ramsey fare?
This isn't Ramsey's first test.
His first test was during the controversy over domestic partner benefits at his university, in which he lied to a legislative committee about whether U of L was paying for health benefits of its employees live-in partners. He was caught red-handed when it was discovered that U of L had been subsidizing the benefits for several months.
When ruse was made public by Yours Truly, Ramsey had to go back to Frankfort to smooth things over with the legislators he had lied to. Word has it that Ramsey or one of U of L's lobbyists was raked over the coals by at least one legislative leader for his behavior. Ramsey never publicly fessed up, and he continued to dissemble about it for weeks afterward. He even followed up his original lie with lies to his alumni.
And then there was the matter of the U of L Board closing ranks to protect him.
About a year later, Ramsey was faced with another opportunity to do the right thing, from which he backed down once again. After numerous complaints from staff about Education Dean Robert Felner about personal bullying and sexual harrassment, to which Ramsey and Provost Shirley Willinganz repeatedly turned a blind eye, it was revealed that Felner, who one former employee referred to as a "psychopath," was defrauding the University (and the federal government) of tens of thousands of dollars in grant money.
This was a man who "bragged openly at faculty meetings that he had the full support of the Provost and President," according to a letter signed by twenty-one former faculty members.
Here was Ramsey's response:
That's right "anonymous crap." Sheeez. Ramsey finally apologized, but only after making a complete fool of himself and having no choice. Ramsey first understated the severity of the abuse of grant money, then, after five years of verbal abuse by Felner, Ramsey added insult to injury by verbally abusing them himself, calling their complaints "anonymous crap." Not only were they not crap, but, it turns out, they weren't all anonymous. And, of course, there were no consequences for those in administration--Ramsey himself and Willinganz--who mishandled the whole situation.
Then, just three days after the belated apology, it was revealed that John Deasy, a superintendent in California and one of Robert Felner's cronies, received a PhD from the University after completing only 9 units of coursework never completing any residency, opening the university up to charges of being the equivalent of a degree mill. Again, it was swept under the rug and Ramsey looked like a bungling idiot.
Not only has Ramsey demonstrated a decided lack of ability to deal competently with administrative problems and public scandals at the university, he apparently has a tin ear when it comes to the political and public relations issues that these problems have caused.
Now the University has a coach on its hands who has not only committed behavior that is a public embarrassment to the University, but is more morally reprehensible than anything it has ever expelled a student athlete over.
Here's Ramsey's lame statement over the matter:
Rick Pitino is the University of Louisville's basketball coach. He has been a role model for countless young people and a positive influence on this community.
Regardless of the truth or falsehood of specific actions that have been attributed to the coach, he's clearly made errors in judgment that have come under intense public scrutiny. We can't ignore these errors in judgment, and they have saddened and disappointed me. As we try to teach our students, when you make a mistake, you admit it and right it as best you can. Coach has done that today.
It's not an easy thing to come before the university community and all of you to admit mistakes and commit to do better. I know this has been difficult on the coach, it's been difficult on me, and difficult for our university. But as Coach Pitino and I discussed earlier today, this was the right thing for him to do.
We hope this closes this chapter; we're all ready to move on. Our university is recovering from a flood that shut down a large portion of our campus, preparing for the start of classes on August 24th, and getting ready to welcome the most academically talented freshman class in our history. We need to get back to our job of educating the next generation of Kentucky's leaders.
This is utterly absurd bureaucratic cant. "Regardless of the truth or falsehood of particular actions"? What kind of mealy-mouthed talk is that? We know what happened. And "errors in judgment"? Is that what ethically challenged university bureaucrats call paying for the destruction of a human life?
Before we get "back to our job of educating the next generation of Kentucky's leaders" we need to have leaders now that know how to actually engage in leadership. And James Ramsey is not one them.
The Louisville Courier-Journalhas published the morality clause in basketball coach Rick Pitino's contract:
It also allows him to be terminated for generating disparaging media publicity, if it is caused by his “willful conduct that could objectively be determined to bring (the) employee into public dispute or scandal, or which tends to greatly offend the public.”
Let's see if the ethically challenged administration at U of L, which has a very big rug under which it sweeps scandals, actually does anything.
The University of Louisville should act quickly to terminate Rick Pitino as the university's basketball coach. Why? To prevent sports commentators like Lachlan McLean from further embarrassing themselves by saying completely idiotic things.
This must happen now, before these people completely ruin their credibility and drive away the sensible people from their audience.
It was revealed late Tuesday that Pitino had had a sexual relationship with Karen Sypher, a woman who had tried to extort money from him, and who, when the extortion attempt was reported by Pitino to the FBI, charged that Pitino had had forced her into involuntary sex. Little was said about what Pitino actually did until the Courier-Journal revealed that, according to the police report, Pitino admitted to police of having had "consensual sex" with Sypher at Porcini's Restaurant. Sypher later told Pitino she was going to have an abortion but didn't have health insurance. So Pitino paid her $3,000 to have the abortion.
Porcini's?!!! I've been to Porcini's. In fact, not only have I been there, but I walk right by the place two or three times a week. Now think about this: a famous coach somehow has an intimate sexual encounter at a public restaurant. Where is everyone while all this is going on? Where are his assistants? Well, we know that one:
Vinnie Tatum, an executive assistant to Pitino, told the FBI that he didn't see what happened but heard “only the sounds of two people that seemed to be enjoying themselves during a sexual encounter,” according to Abbott's report.
And where was this taking place? In the main serving area? We're thinking not. There are a lot of windows around. The kitchen? Ick. Where were the cooks? Where were the dishwashers? Where were the waitresses? Where was the owner? Just how many people did Pitino compromise? Maybe the man is a good customer and just let him have the run of the place. Maybe when the last shift has ended they leave him with the key and tell him to lock the doors when he leaves.
I'm thinking that Porcini's is just a little less attractive as a dining destination now that we know that U of L coaches are conducting sexual trysts there. On the other hand, if the restaurant is like a lot of the storefronts along Frankfort Road, it has a sign in the window that says, "Keep Louisville weird." Maybe it will improve their business. It's a crazy world.
The extortion attempt has been public knowledge for some time, and no one has had any illusions about Sypher's character. But this is the first time Pitino's role in the whole illicit thing has been reported. So what was McLean's reaction? To go on a tirade about Sypher's lack of credibility and lament the fact that Pitino's name has been dragged through the mud.
I normally like Lachlan McLean, but I am having trouble figuring out why you would go on a tirade about this woman's credibility when the mud that was just revealed was of Pitino's own making. In fact, forget the lovefest at Porcini's, Tuesday night's Sports Talk 84 spun off into a ridiculous orgy of excuse making, complete with laments about "Poor Rick" for having to go through all this.
Poor Rick?
Yes, Poor Rick. You know who we mean: The guy who suffers under a $2,500,000 annual salary (plus bonuses). The guy who has to endure public adulation from basketball fans on a daily basis. The guy who can't even find a private place to have his sexual encounters.
That Poor Rick.
This is the kind of nonsense that McLean would normally be ridiculing for the whole three hours of his nightly show. So, please, can we just cut the guy a big check and send him packing before we have to endure more of this? Pitino, I mean, not Lach.
Oh, and did we mention the other reason why Pitino should be fired? Has anyone noticed the kinds of actions that constitute grounds for disciplinary action of college athletes?
College athletes are suspended, temporarily or indefinitely, and kicked off teams for their behavior off the field on a regular basis. Most of these result from unnamed "violations of team rules," while others are made public. The infractions that constitute grounds for these actions include behavior such as failing drug tests (Ryan Perrilloux, LeMarcus Coker), credit card fraud (Jamal Hornsby), marijuana possession (Ty Erving, Jack Johnson, Gerald Jones, Ahmad Page), possession of alcohol (Fred Munzenmaier), underage drinking (Steve Garcia, Heath Bachelor, Zachary Brindise), bar fights (Brick Lewis, Dorian Davis, Antonio Wardlow), disorderly conduct (Mike Newton, Anthony Parker), and carrying a concealed weapon (Preston Parker).
These are the standards we apply to student athletes. Should the standards for the coaches we hire and pay to lead these athletes be higher or lower?
So here's the questions for the supporters of "Poor Rick": Are any of the infractions we routinely employ as grounds for kicking student athletes off the team as reprehensible as bankrolling the termination of the life of a child you helped bring into the world in the first place in order that you wouldn't be publicly embarrassed?
I didn't think so.
U of L Athletic Director Rick Jurich has already said Pitino's job is not in danger. And isn't this what we've come to expect from U of L? President James Ramsey was caught lying to a legislative committee two years ago and suffered no consequences. Ramsey and Provost Shirley Willinganz presided over the theft of tens of thousands of dollars in federal grant money in the education department chairman James Ramsey case and never even got their hands slapped.
How can Pitino have any credibility when it comes to team discipline when the university has let him off the hook for a far great offense than any of them will likely ever commit?
Jeremy Beer on the "most annoying day on the Major League Baseball schedule":
There’s some truth to all of this. And Jackie Robinson really was personally heroic, besides being a fantastic second baseman. But not only will Jackie’s influence be comically overstated, it is hard to take historical analysis seriously from players who likely couldn’t date the assassination of Malcolm X within a decade, and who surely don’t know a single thing about Jackie’s pre-National League days or the Negro Leagues from which he came. Nor is it possible to take seriously the pious moral intonations of a league whose motives are so transparently self-serving. Yes sir, ring up the points for racial enlightenment and diversity celebration on April 15! (And push those pesky steroid stories off the front pages for a few days.)
Aside from all the cant, though, one of the really unfortunate consequences of MLB’s single-minded focus on Robinson is that it pushes the other great black players of the pre-integration era — and at least a handful of them were not only better players than Robinson, but quite as good men — far into the recesses of the public consciousness. The effect is to prevent us from enjoying the personalities and talents of some of the best athletes America has ever produced. Satchel Paige is the only one of these players to be nearly a household name. Josh Gibson, Judy Johnson, Turkey Stearns, and Cool Papa Bell? Much less so. And perhaps the most obscure of the Negro League greats was arguably the best player of them all: Oscar Charleston-the Hoosier Comet.
