“Baseball been berra, berra good to me”

“Baseball been berra, berra good to me”:
Where have all the African-American Ball Players Gone?
by Mark Anthony Neal

“Baseball been berry, berry good to me,” and thus were the words of “Chico Escuela”, a fictional Dominican Major League baseball player, who was one of the most popular characters performed by Garrett Morris during his run as the only black actor in the first cast of Saturday Night Live (SNL) in the late 1970s. At the time some understood “Chico Escuela” as a caricature of so-called “Latin” baseball players, who were presumed to be docile and accepting of their status as second-class citizens both within the league and the larger society. Morris, who is African-American, could apparently make light of the Latino presence in baseball at the time—some thirty-years after Jackie Robinson broke in with the Brooklyn Dodgers—because African-American ballplayers were some of the league’s great resources as players like Bobby Bonds (late father of Barry), Dave Parker, Jim Rice, Reggie Jackson, Willie Stargell, Dusty Baker, George Foster, Joe Morgan, Eddie Murray, J.R. Richards, Ken Griffey, Sr. and Dave Winfield were at or close to their professional peak.

30 years later Major Leagues Baseball’s most cherished assets are named Albert Pujols, Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, Carlos Beltran, Carlos Zambrano, David “Big Papi’ Ortiz, Johan Santana, Miguel Cabrera and Jose Reyes. Indeed the fact that the general manager of the National League’s best team, The New York Mets, is named Omar Minaya is reflective of the unprecedented influence of Latino baseball players and administrators in professional baseball. The irony is that this same period also gives witness to the eroding presence of African-American (as opposed to black, which folk like Reyes and Ortiz, most certainly are) baseball players. Recently when GQ Magazine pressed Gary Sheffield, one of the most prominent African-American players, about the increased Latino presence, he suggested that it was because Latino players were thought to be easier to control. Chico Escuela lives.

Only those who weren’t watching the game closely could actually believe that somehow the Latino players of two generations ago, let alone their contemporary sports progeny, were being subservient. Just watch tapes of Roberto Clemente’s machismo inspired gait or Luis Tiant, Jr.’s dramatic windup or for the real fans, the way marginal first baseman Willie Montanez would flip the bat to the side, while running out of the batter’s box.

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