GARY SHEFFIELD Does Not Care About Non-English Speaking Black People That Play Professional Baseball…

SHEFF

Little does he know, but SHEFF has inspired generations of Dominicans with his Care Free Curl sartorial style.

Sixty years after JACKIE ROBINSON broke down major league baseball’s color barrier the debate of Blacks in baseball is revisited once again. This time it’s on the back side of remarks made by a current Black major leaguer on why young Black boys no longer seem interested in America’s pastime. GARY SHEFFIELD said that the new Black faces in baseball wouldn’t be speaking the english language. He remarked that African Americans were too expensive an investment for MLB clubs to procure. Latin players were less expensive to develop and the return for that investment was also greater.

All the sports related news programs claimed that SHEFFIELD was race baiting with his comments, but I could instantly recognize that the MLB sent out the memo to discredit GARY. Think about this… The Caribbean and South America are inexpensive to establish an infrastructure that develops players on a year round basis. The cost of doing this in the states would be out of the roof. Baseball owners know how to maximize their profits on $6 dollar soda sales as well as anyone in the capitalism game.

JOSE REYES is a product of this system and proof positive of SHEFFIELD’s comments that there will be Black faces in baseball but they won’t be speaking any english. JOSE REYES singlehandely kicked the Yankees azzes last night too. Comprende?!?

reyes

11 Responses to “GARY SHEFFIELD Does Not Care About Non-English Speaking Black People That Play Professional Baseball…”

  1. Eloheem * says:

    Sheffield with all his faults is one of my favorite players. Mostly cause he speaks his mind and is unapolegetic. I don’t think thats the only reason why more African American faces are not playing de beisbol though.

  2. Sangano says:

    while not COMPLETELY off base it’s hardly the full explanation dallas, you know as well as i do that of the 3 major american sports baseball offers the least bling bling factor, street cred and swagger that appeal to today’s urban american youth.

    By and large that’s really why baseball’s not captivating the minds and hearts of young african americans across the nation, fuck infrastructure and cost accounting if the interest and passion existed and were perpetuated by black media (BET) like And 1 basketball is baseball diamonds across citys would be packed…..anyway…its just to easy to blame the white man….

  3. the_dallas says:

    Secada,
    When I talk about infrastructure I am talking about shit like summer camps and tourneys that foster and develop the competition. It’s easy for some to say that fields don’t exist in the ‘hood, but the truth is that there is no support system for the youth. No CYO, no PAL, no YMCA (nullus).

    This is mostly to avoid the Brien Taylors from being drafted and broken.

  4. Tony says:

    I was waiting, hoping, praying for your take on this Sheffield shit Dallas.

    I agree with you 100% that this has the look of an organized smear campaign by the MLB.

    However, what folks are missing is the nuts and bolts (no homo) of an honest discussion about race and culture in this country . . . Sheffield wasn’t race baiting, IMHO he was expressing a bit of cultural elitism that is commonplace among the middle and lower classes in the Black community – Sadly there is a cultural battle and sense of antipathy that exists between the Latino and Black community . . . The extent of this disconnect is largely overplayed by the media but it would be too optimistic to say it isn’t there at some level.

    Put simply, Black and Latino communities do face some level of competition given that Latinos now outnumber Black people as this nation’s largest minority. However, I’ve always believed that looking at the situation solely from this viewpoint was a trick that “supremacists” (to use your term that I like) invoke in order to get people fighting over crumbs and looking away from the top 1% of the population that pretty much owns everything.

    Stories like the Latino vs. Black gang war in L.A. of earlier this Spring support this kind of “race war” sentiment – rather than simply looking at the drama as gang vs. gang violence, it was framed as a racial conflict when both minority communities would gladly have been rid of the criminals in their midst. In reality, a more productive way to regard the growing number of Latinos, Asians and minority numbers overall is to see a greater cultural diversity coming to this country and a truly American (and urban) identity taking hold in all of these ethic groups – But sadly, that’s not the popular view. And in the root cultures of many Latinos, “memin penguin” provides a perfect example that there is a more than enough bigotry on the Latino side of this cultural gulf as well. . .

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8410111/

    Anyway, the point here is that a great number of the baseball players coming from Latin America ARE, IN FACT, BLACK – in terms of African Ancestry at least. In reality, Sheffield was expressing his distaste for Latino culture . . . On this topic he was wrong as well given that stereotypes about hard work, submissiveness and whatever are at the end of the day nothing more than just that: STEREOTYPES.

    Therefore, Sheffield’s comments are mislabeled as “race-baiting” but really more accurately described as cultural elitism.

    For some this is a small point but I think it’s worth mentioning given that increasing numbers of people of color in this country will make these distinctions even more important. At its heart, the debate focusing on race vs. culture presents an opportunity for Latinos and Black people in the U.S. to either find common ground or a battlefield to argue over differences.

    Brazil offers both a model and warning as to how racial/ethnic/cultural distinctions come into play.

    In one breath Brazil is either a racial democray
    http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/719134.stm

    Or a hopelessly fractious glimpse into the future of race relations in the U.S.:
    http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1077/is_n4_v46/ai_9329550

    Personally, I think all people of color (even the so called Asian “model minority”) have some kind of shared experience in the U.S. and as a Latino who was educated at private schools, likes Yacht rock and almost exclusively dates white women (YEAH!!!) I think that I know what it’s like to bridge cultures as most Latin Americans of African decent are forced to do.

    This reminds of a post you did long ago Dallas that gives a quick hat tip to the true complexity of any racial, cultural discussion between Black and Latinos.

    http://dallaspenn.com/weblog/?p=404

    Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for sharing your take on the subject and express my hope that (to paraphrase Chris Rock) we can all, one day work together for a world where we all look like Tiger Woods . . . But still have the opportunity to marry Swedish models.

  5. the_dallas says:

    Tony,
    The question that was proffered to Sheffield was why aren’t there more Blacks in baseball? Shefield said, “There are plenty of Blacks in baseball, but they don’t speak english.”

    I didn’t find Sheffield’s remarks to have a tinge of cultural elitism in them, but the honest truth. The last people that you want to remind of their African legacy are Latin Americans. Their cultural I.D. is tightly wound around the language they speak more than the color of their skin. On my visits to San Juan and Cancun I found that my use of Spanish endeared me to the local people more than my use of english. That’s the power of language.

    I can see that Sheffield’s remarks of control and manipulation strike you as elitist but again he is speaking on the power of the dollar to allow access and entre to players that would require way more money were they in the states. It is the very nature of outsourcing that so many other labor dependent business models practice.

  6. Sheffield’s comments may not be PC, but from a cold capitalist mindset it seems to make sense to prioritize the Carribean latino countries for hunting talent, eg Dom Rep & Puerto Rico. The majority of these dudes in DR & PR happen to have African ancestry

    1 costs are cheaper than USA – coaches, construction costs to make & maintains a baseball diamond, etc

    2 year-round sunny hot weather, unlike much of the USA

    3 beisbol is the top sport there, unlike USA as other commenters mentioned.

    In other sectors of the US economy, US blue & white collar workers are getting offshored on factor #1/cost alone.

  7. the_dallas says:

    E.G.C.,
    That’s ultimately Sheff’s point. Kids in the USA are priced out except in the states that are warm annually. It cosgts too damn much to develop talent stateside.

    It’s not that it cost too much, but it cuts into the bottomline of the capitalist machinery.

  8. spider says:

    i know this is a little off topic, but when seeing that pic on top, my mind automatically flashed to rico tubbs.

    on the subject though, business is business no matter what’s at hand. in a sense, sheff’s opinion might be used to bait a gullible person into extreme views on the immigration bill which was passed during the paris fiasco

  9. Omega says:

    I gotta say that while he may not have been elequent to the level of a Cornell West, I got the jist of what Sheff was trying to say. I thought that Shef was not only on point, but his comments help to shed light on the lack of militant pan-african identity within Spanish speaking Latin America.

    Economics may be the thin vinir that is apparently visible to all, but we must remember economics was the also the outter layer that framed the discussion of African slavery 160 years ago. White supremacy also plays a major role here beneath the surface, and on that point Sheff is right on. Castillian speaking blacks from Latin America especially from the Dominican Republic are easier to control than blacks in the USA. There has never been a major civil rights movement there and never a militant pan-african movement. The Dominican Republic was actually formed out of a pro-white counter-revolution and many blacks within its borders do not will identify as anything but black. They also lived under dictators for almost 40 years, so militancy especally pro-black militancy is out of the question. Self-hate is the order of the day and has been for 163 years and that has to effect self-esteem even more than economics.

    Sheff just exposed something that was long overdue and he just scratched the surface yall. Underneath lie the mysteries from the inspirations for the Ku Klux Klans formation to the major reasons that the African slave trade began. Now that the shovel is in, start digging.

    -Mega

  10. After faculty, she started religiously following all the eating rules in Oxygen Journal, a publication devoted to scrub consuming” for female bodybuilders.

  11. Best10 says:

    After checking out a handful of the articles on your web site, I truly like your technique of writing a blog. I book marked it to my bookmark website list and will be checking back soon. Please check out my website too and let me know your opinion.Best10

Leave a Reply for the_dallas