Baseball’s Warning Track: Blurred Lines and Bright Lights of Race by Wilfredo Gomez

Baseball’s Warning Track: Blurred Lines and Bright Lights of Race by Wilfredo Gomez | special to NewBlackMan (in Exile)
On the recent episode of Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, HBO continued to mark the 20th anniversary of the show by showcasing the talents and skills of an all-star cast of comics. In this most recent episode, Bryant Gumbel introduced a segment narrated by comedian Chris Rock who offered a poignant, thought provoking social commentary on why blacks have abandoned baseball and why it matters. From the outset of the segment, Rock posits an interesting proposition: the disappearance of the Black baseball fan. It is apparent and somewhat obvious that blackness is a proxy for African-American identity. Towards this end, Rock offers an outline of his central argument, by deploying his trademark routine that fuses humor and comedic timing with social commentary. In so doing, Rock laments the loss of the African-American baseball player by noting the lack of figures such as Dwight Gooden, Darryl Strawberry, Mookie Wilson, and Kevin Mitchell. Rock makes use of these figures to talk about pastimes passed and the cultural and cognitive disconnect between the presence of African-American ballplayers and the cultural imagination of an American pastime that exists at the crossroads of a history that is inherently both black and white America.
This makes sense given the fraught and violent history that Rock signifies upon brilliantly. He does so multiple times over, evoking the following: Emmett Till, the Ferguson police department, Blake Sheldon, a photo of the Stillman College baseball team (an HBCU whose baseball team is largely “white” by Rock’s reading. I counted 8 ethnically ambiguous faces in the photo), Howard University, antique stadiums, Ruth, DiMaggio, a throwback baseball tournament (where everyone dressed up like it was the 1860s), suppressed slave rebellion(s), Franklin, Tennessee, the Carnation Plantation, and even state senators and corrections officers. Rock’s critical engagement of baseball and the lack of black bodies present in the sport afford both a context and subtext that situates and fleshes out a racial paradigm along black and white lines.
What I found particularly thought provoking about Rock’s segment was his tackling the issue of paying to play. That is to say, that Rock pointed out that some argue that baseball’s dwindling number of African-American participants is directly impacted by the exorbitant expenses incurred to participate in the sport effectively. To this Rock juxtaposes the Black experience with the experiences of youth in the Dominican Republic. While video footage of Dominican boys plays, the voice of Rock can be heard saying: “This is a tiny third-world island and it dominates baseball…and the only equipment they have are twigs for bats, diapers for gloves, and Haitians for bases.” Not to be forgotten here is the juxtaposition of the Haitian experience with that of the Dominican Republic when the bodies exposed by the video footage is that of black bodies.
While I do not think that Rock intended to offer a critique of blackness per se, his narration had the unintended consequence of raising the questions “who is black?” and “blackness for whom?” Upon viewing the footage shown to viewers, it is readily apparent that the youth playing baseball are phenotypically black. With this in mind, I ask myself, is it possible for black baseball fans to have their faith in the sport restored and/or reframed by supporting the black “others” who dominate the contemporary landscape of America’s pastime?  Where do Afro-Latinos fit in this conversation?
It is in this context that I am trying to think through and challenge my own understanding of Afro-Latinidades and Latinidades vis-à-vis discourses of blackness and more importantly of diaspora(s). I am reminded of Tori Hunter’s comments circa 2010 when he noted that black Latino players in the major leagues were in fact “impostors.” When addressing a fellow ballplayer Hunter is reported to have said, “Hey, what color is Vladimir Guerrero? Is he a black player? I say come on, he’s Dominican, he’s not black…” Hunter later tried to revisit his controversial comments by noting that his word choice was inaccurate. He later alluded to cultural differences and roots in Latin America that ultimately point to a brotherhood on the field.
As I reflect on this comment within the context of Rock’s Real Sports segment, I am wrestling with this notion of presence, embodiment, performance, race, nationality, and authenticity. I raise this point in an attempt to critically interrogate the presence (or lack) of popular and public representations of Latinos/as more broadly. The vehicle used to tackle this topic is the sport of baseball, but the implications elsewhere are equally as thought provoking. With this in mind, I would like to pose a series of questions to my readers in the hopes that they spark a meaningful dialogue.
For instance, when thinking about the Puerto Rican community, what comes to mind first, the images of Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin or the images of Roberto Clemente and Arturo Schomburg? Do American public and American media outlets possess the kind of sensitivity, education, and wherewithal to differentiate a community that includes Dominicans, Venezuelans, Cubans, Peruvians, Hondurans, Guatemalans, Argentineans, Chileans, and Puerto Ricans, amongst other ethnic groups? Moreover, given the shift towards acknowledging, raising awareness, and self-identifying as Afro-Latino/a, what does it mean to be Afro-Latino/a? I say this acknowledging the fact that the visual is privileged in our understanding of race. What does it mean for those whose bodies may not be read as “black” to self-identify as black? Does the right to self-identification detract from the qualitative experience(s) of Latinos who happen to be Black Latinos/as? Do we celebrate and embrace black Latinidades the same way? Where do we locate the spaces for intervention regarding black diasporic bodies?
Years ago my friend and mentor James Braxton Peterson delivered a keynote address in which he offered a framework from which to understand notions he termed technical blackness and Technicolor blackness. Although his remarks were societal in scope, the terms of conversation are helpful in framing this discussion. They may also help explain the racial paradigm that Rock is operating under when making his comments. Through the idea of technical blackness, Peterson highlighted static notions of viewing identity and race. The latter, Technicolor blackness, offered a multi-dimensional and multi-purposeful deployment of language, its visible and not-so visible meanings to bring nuance and careful analysis to bear on the ways in which we characterize, define, and outline parameters of blackness and diasporic subjects. Such a language, of technical and Technicolor blackness, affords us a lens from which to situate gradations of color that transcend cultural and spatial boundaries, even language.
This language may prove helpful in reframing and reassessing Rock’s argument. In reinforcing his framework and by extension bringing attention to critical media literacies and the ways in which race may materialize in popular mediums, Peterson eloquently used the language of the Wu-Tang Clan and their song “C.R.E.A.M.” to revisit the gamut of blackness such that its manifestation included both, a Puerto Rican who doesn’t quite qualify as a “butta pecan Puerto Rican” (this writer-who was characterized as being more “French Vanilla”) and a colleague who was read as “chocolate deluxe.” In his text The Hip Hop Underground and African American Culture: Beneath the Surface, James Braxton Peterson engages the ideological dilemmas of racial authenticity by highlighting the following:
The crux of the problem, or system of problems, lies (at least partially) in the fact that American blackness is a fluid category. Moreover, the distinctive historical relationship between Black cultural production and American mainstream appropriation and commodification forces the discussion into a type of stasis that perpetuates the notion that the most oppressed Black people (the folk or vernacular culture) are already the most authentic black people. Literary, cultural studies scholars and social scientists from Dubois and Hurston, to Kwame Toure and Charles Hamilton, to Joyce Joyce, Houston Baker, Skip Gates, to Imani Perry, John L. Jackson, and Michael P. Jeffries are for the most part consistently insistent on the limitations of authenticity discourses and racial identity. In some ways definitions of authenticity in music/art are less convoluted than those definitions that attempt to arrive at some form of authentic blackness (35).  
Given the kind of historical and contemporary backdrop of Rock’s comments it is noteworthy to highlight the deterioration of progress in race relations post-Obama. The experiences of black folks and blackness, be they experienced in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, or Cuba is strikingly similar. Much like the news coverage surrounding the Protests and riots in Baltimore, the fact of blackness and its surveillance comes at the expense of its cheapening dismissal via the deployment of coded language that circulates in the media. This effectively masks the structural and institutional push and pull factors that diverge attention and accountability away from state-sanctioned violence and the overstepping of boundaries by police forces nationally. It is that which is black that is demonized and pathologized in the eyes of the popular imagination.
Globally, irrespective of cultural differences and migration, the fact of blackness remains, a proxy for that which is cool, but one that has been historically transformed into an extremely inequitable type of social contract which has lead to blacks having surrendered a greater portion of their freedoms as they have been relegated to second-class citizenship. As my brilliant colleague Odilia Rivera-Santos points out, when dealing with the police department, whether in Brooklyn, Puerto Rico, or Major League baseball, “people don’t see culture, they see race.” They also do not see class (socio-economic status). Look at how many times Rock himself has been pulled over while “driving while black.” Furthermore, it should be pointed out that what is missing from Rock’s piece is the obvious: distinctions having to do with race, ethnicity, or nationality is collapsed when folks arrive in America. The American racial paradigm is simple: either you are white or you are black. There is a premium placed on the physical and what we see. No amount of wealth and fame would preclude any of the athletes mentioned below from being the victim of discriminatory practices, prejudices, or behaviors. Basketball player Thabo Sefolosha found this out recently when encountering the New York Police Department after a night out with some teammates. Someone should remind Chris Rock of this.
I offer these vignettes, interlocutors, and arguments in an attempt to tackle Rock’s characterization and deployment of blackness (read as an African-American) alongside the blurred scripts of approximated blackness that somehow white-out the presence of Afro-Latinos. Reflecting on the most recent World Series, Rock states that the San Francisco Giants “won it all without any black guys on the team.” Thinking back to that World Series, the MVP was awarded to Pablo Sandoval, a Venezuelan. Are there any instances where Pablo Sandoval’s body may be read as black? This question is posed in lieu of Rock’s statistics suggesting that five out of six baseball viewers are white men in their 50s. Thinking through Peterson’s argument, is it possible that Pablo Sandoval could be technically black? Where and under what contexts might Sandoval’s body be read under the guise of Technicolor Blackness? Can the black fan that operates under the paradigm of technical blackness see through a Technicolor lens to celebrate the contributions of Afro-Latinos?
Revisiting the World Baseball Classic, we have players such as Jose Reyes and Fernando Rodney representing the Dominican Republic. Rodney is from Samana, Dominican Republic, known for its community of Dominicans who are of African-American descent, freed people who relocated beginning in 1824 to the Samana Peninsula in Hispanola. Players such Irving Falu and Hiram Burgos (who attended Bethune-Cookman, a historically black college/university) represented Puerto Rico. How do we view major leaguers such as Yasiel Puig and Yoenis Cespedes? What about former MVP and Triple Crown Winner Miguel Cabrera? It is possible that these figures think about their blackness and self-identify in ways that challenge America’s conceptualization of both blackness and whiteness.
As someone interested in popular culture more broadly I can’t help but think through how the issues raised by Chris Rock materialize(s) elsewhere. Is former Kentucky Center Karl-Anthony Towns Black, Afro-Latino, or both? Towns, a projected top two pick in the upcoming NBA Draft, played for the Dominican National Team, being born to an African-American father and a Dominican mother. What about music artists such as Miguel and Fashawn, who are both Mexican and African-American, or rap artists, AZ or Fabolous, who are Dominican and African-American? Curiously, where does their ability or inability to speak Spanish play into discourses of identity and authenticity? Would Romeo Santos, who recently wowed thousands of fans on the TODAY show, be read as black or Afro-Latino given his Puerto Rican and Dominican roots?
To conclude, I agree with Rock that baseball would benefit tremendously from more African-Americans participating in the sport. I also have to ask myself whether or not Rock’s comments are unique to baseball, given the significant participation of African-Americans in the NBA and the NFL. Maybe Rock has a point: Baseball may be an archaic or boring sport that lacks the luster of basketball or football.  The February 13, 2015 article appearing in The Players’ Tribune penned by Pittsburgh Pirates center fielder and 2013 National League Most Valuable Player, Andrew McCutchen offers a different story. In his article “Left Out” McCutchen cites the financial costs associated with having exposure to baseball tournaments and travelling to be seen as barriers towards participation. Lack of exposure, low socio-economic status, and mentorship were factors that McCutchen highlights explaining why youths from the inner-city and working-classes might struggle to make it in the sport (Jose Bautista, in a response entitled “The Cycle” cites a lack of structured education, professional and language skills as barriers to Dominicans chasing their baseball dreams). Most importantly, he highlighted the ever-present nature of paying dues in the minor leagues and the institutional support mechanisms in place that allow baseball players in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico to thrive, where those opportunities were not available to him as an African-American playing baseball.
While I myself am not a baseball aficionado (Ken Griffey, Jr. was my favorite player. His swing of the bat was something poetic to marvel at), baseball seems to lack a transcendent African-American star like the Lebron James, Kevin Durant, or Stephen Curry’s of the (NBA) world. If the death of baseball is eminent, its revival could lie in a shift from coverage through that which is technically black towards coverage that is more consistent with Technicolor blackness. Let us not forget the contributions of the Yasiel Puig’s alongside those of the Andrew McCutchen’s of the baseball world. Successfully doing so might remind us (and Chris Rock) that blacks have not abandoned baseball and that matters.
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Wilfredo Gomez is an independent researcher and scholar who can reached via Twitter at @BazookaGomez84 or via email at gomez.wilfredo@gmail.com. He is a contributor to NewBlackMan (in Exile).