Goshay: Baseball often reflects where we are – Bluffton Today

Charita Goshay| Bluffton Today

This is the time of year when were reminded that no matter what else is happening in the country, we always have baseball. The sight of green fields and the crack of a bat always fills us anew with optimism.

Theres been criticism over Major League Baseballs plans to relocate the All-Star Game out of Georgia in response to a controversial voting-rights bill.

Viewed by some as a check-swing that went too far, the announcement was met with howls of threats to boycott the league for caving to political correctness and liberalism run amok.

Its resulted in lamentations about how even Americas quintessential game has been poisoned by politics.

You have to wonder where such people have been living.

The intrusion of politics into sports wasnt invented by Colin Kaepernick. Look no further than baseballs first commissioner, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who upheld collusion among team owners to keep Black players out of the game.

It meant that most fans never got the chance to see James Cool Papa Bell outrun light itself, or cheer as Josh Gibson crushed one of the hundreds of home runs that never reached the MLB record books until 2020 when the league added statistics from the Negro Leagues.

It took Ohios Branch Rickey, a team owner compelled by his faith, to dismantle the impasse by signing Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers. In his Major League debut against the Boston Braves on April 14, 1947, Robinson scored a run but got no hits in three at-bats.

It didnt matter because, at that moment, Americans found themselves witnesses to change and history.

Landis, who was hired to mitigate the leagues 1919 Black Sox gambling scandal, has a plaque in the Baseball Hall of Fame for, we must suppose, saving the game, but frankly, he shouldnt.

He willfully helped to impede progress in a league that could have led the country toward inclusion decades before it actually did.

Baseball has always been Americas mirror, for better or worse.

Even after the league was integrated, Hank Greenberg and Sandy Koufax were threatened for refusing to play during the Jewish High Holy Days.

In recent years, various players have refused to visit the White House, depending on whos president.

Prior toits home opener, Clevelands front office announced that no baseball fans would be permitted to wear war paint or feather headdresses.

After years of being begged, petitioned and even picketed by Native Americans, Cleveland finally made the change because the country has changed and because as Maya Angelou so brilliantly put it, When you know better, you do better.

If management doesnt stop clipping coupons, the only thing fans will want to wear is a paper bag.

Yet, when in your life did you ever imagine that a Black basketball player from Akron, Ohio,would own a piece of the Boston Red Sox, the last MLB team to integrate?

Its a story that can happen only in America.

While America appears to be in the throes of the terribletwos, as someone recently noted, change is a constant factor of life and an endemic part of a healthy democracy. Baseball is the one thing we think never changes but in reality has led it.

Charita Goshay is a columnist for Gannett. She can be reached atcharita.goshay@cantonrep.com.

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Goshay: Baseball often reflects where we are - Bluffton Today