MLB and Civil Rights

Today Major League Baseball announced that it will host a "Civil Rights" exhibition game in Memphis between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Cleveland Indians at the start of the season.  There are few things I like more than civil rights and baseball, but . . .

in their announcement on Pravda (if you are a baseball fan you will understand), there were a number of things which struck me as off putting to this endeavor.  First was this paragraph:

Baseball has long been considered to have been in the forefront of that [civil rights] movement because the sport was integrated on April 15, 1947, when Jackie Robinson played his first game for the Brooklyn Dodgers. That act came nearly a decade before U.S. public schools were integrated and African-Americans were allowed to sit in the fronts of buses in the South or were admitted into what were then all-white universities.

Baseball was not at the forefront of the civil rights movement.  Professional baseball did not have a team in any segregated Southern state until the Braves moved to Atlanta in 1966.  Washington, DC was segregated until Bolling vs. Sharpe in 1952, only two years before the Senators played their first black player--Carlos Paula--who was from Cuba.  The Boston Red Sox didn't have an African American player until 1959!  This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the forefront of the civil rights movement.  Baseball was a racist institution and characterizing itself otherwise only belittles its efforts to put aside that past.  

They have commisioned Spike Lee to make a five minute documentary for the game:

Filmmaker Spike Lee has also been commissioned to produce a five-minute documentary to commemorate the efforts of legendary civil rights pioneers as well as MLB's role in supporting the rights of African-Americans. The film will debut during the Civil Rights Game festivities.  "The civil rights era and its pioneers are one of great importance and should not be forgotten," Lee said. "I am pleased to join Major League Baseball in celebrating and reflecting on the tremendous achievements that African-American players made as they changed the game of baseball and contributed to one of the most significant times of social change in our country."

Spike Lee is putting the emphasis in the right place: African-American players were the ones that changed the game of baseball not baseball.  The depth of talent in the Negro Leagues and their demands to play on an equal playing field led to these changes.

A second strange aspect of the game will be that one of the teams, the St. Louis Cardinals, have no African American players on their 25 man roster.  The Indians are not that much better with just C.C. Sabathia being a U.S. born black player.  Not to mention their team name and mascot.

While I applaud baseball's efforts to fight racism in our society today, this game seems disingenious and ill-conceived.