Friday, May 23, 2014

"My Skin is Against Me": Critical Race Theory & Baseball, Part III. D. Conclusion

D.  Conclusion
            Critical Race Theorists emphasize the importance of storytelling and developing a counter-narrative to oppose the dominate group narrative.  The current dominate narrative of baseball's greatest teams and players is supported by faulty "asterisks" and statistics.  Fan rankings, such as the EloRater, represent a widespread buying into the dominate narrative which tells of the superiority of  pre-integration players. 
            A proper counter-narrative disparages the dominate narrative by questioning both the objective and subjective aspects that support it.  By placing "asterisks" by the statistical records of pre-integration players, their lofty statistics are subjectively diminished.  Further, placing a "positive asterisk" by the statistics of African American players who were subjected to racial abuse emphasizes the difficulty of achieving such records.  Finally, a recalculation of advanced statistics that support the dominate group narrative, such as WAR, objectivity is given to the counter-narrative. 
            The story that emerges is one that properly tells the greatness of African American players in baseball's history.  Pre-integration white players are grouped with performance enhancing drug users in displaying that they were not playing in a fair game.  Racially-abused African American player records are shown to be even more remarkable than previously considered.  And even the great Babe Ruth's records are lessened, while it is objectively exhibited that Willie Mays and Hank Aaron were superior players. 





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