"My Skin is Against Me": Critical Race Theory & Baseball, Part III. Telling Baseball's Stories

III.  Telling Baseball's Stories

            Critical Race Theorists emphasize the importance of storytelling for out-groups.[i]  These stories counteract the dominant group's own stories that reinforce the notion that their superior position is natural.[ii]  Counter-storytelling disrupts the prevailing mindset that whites belong on top and blacks on the bottom.[iii]  "Stories, parables, chronicles, and narratives are powerful means for destroying mind-set---the bundle of presuppositions, received wisdoms, and shared understandings against a background of which legal and political discourse takes place."[iv]  Whichever of the narratives that prevails constructs our social reality.[v] 

            Although Professor Delgado writes of legal and political stories, there are certainly "presuppositions, received wisdoms, and shared understandings" that permeate baseball lore:  

Is Babe Ruth the greatest player of all time?  Did the greatest players and teams play before integration?  What asterisks should be in the record books?  Can advanced statistical analysis properly evaluate players across generations?

The answers to these questions help to mold how fans and non-fans alike view baseball and its history.  Currently, the prevailing, dominant group story prevails.  A counter-story needs to be told.  By reexamining supposed objective statistics and the common integration narrative, a vastly different view of baseball emerges.

---

[i] Richard Delgado, Storytelling for Oppositionists and Others: A Plea for Narrative, 87 Mich. L. Rev. 2411 (1989).

[ii] Id.

[iii] Id. 

[iv] Id.

[v] Id.  

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

E.  Conclusion

            This examination of baseball's lack of African Americans in top offices displays how various tenets of Critical Race Theory apply to baseball.  First, baseball has been and currently is controlled by white elites.  Often these white elites allow minority progress only when it also serves their own needs, such as needing to appear diverse.  By purporting progress, racist hiring practices are masked. 

            Second, baseball has a socially created image of an African American's role in baseball.  This stereotype perpetuates that African Americans belong on the field due to their superior athleticism, but out of front office roles due to their perceived lack of leadership skills.  Despite evidence to the contrary, these stereotypes are represented in the abhorrently low number of general managers and owners in Major League Baseball.  

            Finally, institutional racism exists in baseball.  Although overt racism has slowly faded through the decades, baseball continues to hire whites, as opposed to African Americans for front office positions.   White executives simply feel more comfortable hiring other whites into front office roles, however sometimes hiring of minorities is necessitated.  But similar to corporations, minorities hired into front office roles in Major League Baseball frequently possess traits that reduce the likelihood of reducing negative stereotypes, mentoring junior African Americans, and increasing internal accountability of racial hiring practices.  Thus, many of the expected, positive "trickle-down" effects of hiring a minority do not occur.

"My Skin is Against Me": Critical Race Theory & Baseball, Part II. D. The Role of Minorities at the Top

D.  The Role of Minorities at the Top

          When a baseball club hires an African American to a significant front office role, an increased amount of scrutiny is placed on the team and individual.  A lack of success re-enforces the stereotype that African Americans are not effective leaders.[i]  On the other hand, it is assumed that success naturally leads other teams to hire more African Americans.  However, Critical Race Theorists posit that the latter is not the case.

            Devon Carbado and Mitu Gulati, Critical Race Theorists who focus on the area of employment law, have outlined the problems that face minorities[ii] when other minorities reach the top of a corporate hierarchy.[iii]  First, Carbado and Gulati identify many of the "advancement traits" that are inherent in climbers of the corporate ladder: overconfidence, substantial risk taking, and ethical plasticity.[iv]  Further, minorities who are hired into these positions are viewed as racially palatable and able to be molded by corporate culture.[v] 

            Next, Clabrado and Gulati identify some of the presumed group benefits that flow from first generation minority corporate success: reduction of negative stereotyping, creation of better mentorship opportunities, and enhancement of internal accountability on racial issues.[vi]  However, the aforementioned characteristics requisite for corporate ladder climbing disincentivises individuals from working to further these goals.[vii] 

            First,  negative stereotypes are not reduced because individuals are more likely to negate stereotypes associated with themselves as opposed to their minority group.[viii]  This leads to "racial exceptionalism", the notion that a successful minority is viewed as an exception from various racial stereotypes that continue to permeate.[ix]  Second, overconfidence and the need to continue to be a "team player" diminishes the likelihood that senior minorities mentor junior minorities within the corporation.[x]  Overconfidence causes the senior minority, who succeeded despite a lack of mentoring, to believe that other minorities do not, or should not, need mentoring.[xi]  Further, mentoring other minorities may present the senior minority as not being a "team player" due to a perceived special interest stemming from their association with fellow minorities.[xii]  Lastly, internal accountability is not enhanced because the requisite characteristics previously discussed have become an expectation for promotion and hiring of minorities and thus provides an answer for why minorities are not hired or promoted.[xiii]

            These dynamics play out frequently in baseball front offices.  For example, the aforementioned Kenny Williams had to overcome claims that he was a "yes man" by taking significant risks.[xiv]  Further, his Stanford education could be perceived as racial exceptionalism, with other teams assuming his personal success as an African American general manager is an exception to the prevalent stereotypes.  Finally, this quote from Williams supports the notion that minorities at the top frequently feel compelled to dispel stereotypes associated with them personally, as opposed to their minority group:  "All I could do, was give it my best and let accomplishments speak for themselves.  The only way I could make it better for people who follow me was to win and do it with dignity".[xv]

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[i] See Supra Note II A.

[ii] This general discussion of minorities in corporate structure includes African Americans.

[iii] Devon W. Carbado & Mitu Gulati, Race to the Top of the Corporate Ladder: What Minorities Do When They Get There, 61 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 1645 (2004).

[iv] Id at 1645-1655 (Carbado and Gulati follow Don Langevoort in noting that the individual most likely to be promoted is the one who appears to be the most loyal, as opposed to actually being loyal).

[v] Id at 1658.

[vi] Id.

[vii] Id.

[viii] Id at 1682.

[ix] Id.

[x] Id at 1690.

[xi] Id.

[xii] Id at 1691.

[xiii] Id at 1685.

[xiv] Powell, 223-224.

[xv] Powell, at 225.

"My Skin is Against Me": Critical Race Theory & Baseball, Part II. C. "Color Blindness"

C. " Color Blindness"

            Color blindness does not solve this problem, it exacerbates it.  By baseball implementing "color blind" hiring practices, it ignores the underlying institutional racism.  When it comes time to hire a new commissioner, a list of 24 white names does not seem out of place.  These are all "qualified candidates", many of whom have worked alongside Bud Selig for years.  Even the "non-executive types" on Stark's list are white.  He  mentions Joe Torre and Tony La Russa as two possible candidates, calling them "the face of the sport" from the "icon division".[i] 

            Major League Baseball purports to have a "Selig Rule", an affirmative action policy that "requires clubs to consider minority candidates" for management and executive positions.[ii]  This policy, claimed to proceed the National Football League's "Rooney Rule", is credited with increasing women and minority employment in Major League Baseball front offices from three percent to eighteen percent over the past fourteen years.[iii]  The six-fold increase appears less impressive when considering that women and minorities represent roughly 70% of the United States population.[iv]

            Even if the "Selig Rule" is an effective non-color blind approach to front office hiring in baseball, the institutional racism still permeates.  After the hiring of an African American, cries of "reverse racism" ring throughout the sport.[v]  This forces the African American hire to try and outwork everyone else because his job and the hiring policy are on trial.[vi]  Failures of African American hires, although commonplace for white males, are  overly analyzed and then purported to vindicate the common practice of hiring white men. 

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[i] Id. 

[ii]Richard Justice, 'Selig Rule' first of its kind in sport, MLB.COM (Aug. 26, 2013, 9:33 PM), http://mlb.mlb.com/news/print.jsp?ymd=20130826&content_id=58500104&vkey=news_mlb&c_id=mlb.

[iii] Id. 

[iv] White American, Wikipeida, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_American, (Last visited March 3, 2014).

[v] Powell at 224

[vi] Id,  See Infra Note II D.

"My Skin is Against Me": Critical Race Theory & Baseball, Part II. B. General Managers and Ownership

B.  General Managers and Ownership

            This reluctance is grounded in negative stereotypes of African Americans in positions of leadership, as opposed to history.[i]  In the 1930s, when Major League Baseball was teetering on collapse, Negro Leagues were thriving.[ii]  Owners and executives of the Negro League teams crafted innovative promotions and fostered an exciting brand of baseball in order to keep fans coming to games.[iii]  Despite such examples, very few African Americans have been given the opportunity to be general managers in Major League Baseball.  With such a small sample size, success stories seem rare and thus advance the faulty stereotypes associated with African American general managers and owners .[iv]  However, in a recent, rare instance of opportunity, Kenny Williams, a young African American general manager, bucked the negative racial stereotype when his Chicago White Sox won the World Series in 2005.[v]  The World Series win was the first for the White Sox in decades and Ken Williams was the only African American general manager in Major League Baseball at the time.[vi]  Despite this, the story of Ken Williams was not featured prominently in the media.[vii]

            Normally, young general managers in baseball who have any amount of success are branded as gutsy, innovative geniuses.  In fact, when Sports Illustrated released their top 10 general manager/executives of 2000-2010, both Theo Epstein and Billy Beane made the list.[viii]  Absent from the list (and the "honorable mentions") is Kenny Williams.[ix]  Despite not winning a World Series or even a pennant, Billy Beane came in 10th on the list.[x]  In fact, Billy Beane's successes with a limited payroll were deemed special enough to have a book and Oscar-nominated movie made about his executive managerial style and philosophy.[xi]    

            Even in the 21st century, Kenny Williams and other African Americans are viewed differently in baseball circles due to the color of their skin.  The foundational idea of Critical Race Theory is that racism is normal in everyday society.[xii]  This racism is embedded in our culture and seems natural.[xiii]  "Colorblind" laws and policies that treat whites and blacks equally do not cure societal racism that lies beneath the surface.[xiv]  It is presumed that racism no longer exists in America because instances of overt racism are rare and therefore societal racism proceeds as usual.[xv] 

            Similar institutional racism has existed in baseball for many decades.  Shaun Powell explains institutional racism creating a "cement ceiling" for African Americans in leadership positions in sports.[xvi]  First, Powell notes that blatant racism is not the reason for blacks holding so few positions of power in sports.[xvii]  Like Critical Race Theory explains, society no longer tolerates blatant racism, but is blind to institutional racism.[xviii]  There are not company-wide memos advising against hiring African Americans.  Stated differently, "There's no Oz wearing a white hood, hiding behind a curtain, preventing black folks from all the good jobs."[xix] 

            Powell describes a "buddy-buddy system" wherein whites in power hire other whites whom they know and trust.[xx]  Because of racial divides growing up and concurrent advancing through the ranks of a baseball organization, white executives are more likely to hire other whites they know as coaches and executives.[xxi]  In this vein, the white executive is not overtly discriminating based on race.[xxii]  However, due to a history of whites hiring other whites because of familiarity or a supposed "limited pool" of qualified minorities, African American candidates are passed over and a cycle develops.[xxiii] 

---

[i] Shropshire, supra, at 24.

[ii] Baseball: A Film by Ken Burns (Hereinafter "Baseball"): 6th Inning (PBS television broadcast 1994).

[iii] Id.

[iv] Powell, supra 221-222.

[v] Id.

[vi] Id.

[vii] Id. 

[viii] 2000s: Top 10 GMS/Executives, SI.COM, (Dec. 22, 2009 12:15 PM), http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/magazine/specials/2000s/12/19/top.executives/index.html.

[ix] Id. 

[x] Id.

[xi] Moneyball, IMDB.com, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1210166/?ref_=nv_sr_1 (last visited March 1, 2014).

[xii] Critical, 3.

[xiii] Id. 

[xiv] Id. 

[xv] Id. 

[xvi] Powell, at 207.

[xvii] Id. at 211.

[xviii] Critical, 3.

[xix] Powell, at 212.

[xx] Id. at 214

[xxi] Id. at 212

[xxii] Id. 

[xxiii] Id.  See Infra, Note II D. 

"My Skin is Against Me": Critical Race Theory & Baseball, Part II. A. The Commissionership

A.  The Commissionership

            Major League Baseball has never had an African American commissioner.[i]  In fact, no one other than a white man has ever served as commissioner.[ii]  And unlike the United States, who finally elected an African American president in 2008, Major League Baseball seems to be content with another white male replacing Bud Selig at the end of his commissionership tenure in 2014.

            Jayson Stark, a popular baseball writer for ESPN, speculated as to who he believes will be in contention to serve as  Major League Baseball's next commissioner.[iii]  The list of 24 names ranges from current general managers to former president George W. Bush.[iv]  However, the otherwise encompassing list lacks the name of a single African American.[v]  Here, two tenets of Critical Race Theory become entangled with baseball and its history. 

            First,  Critical Race Theorists believe race is socially, as opposed to biologically, constructed.[vi]  Ian Haney Lopez, a leading voice of the Critical Race Theory movement, explains the lack of biological evidence of race:

"There are no genetic characteristics possessed by all blacks but not by nonblacks, similarly, there is no gene or cluster of genes common to all whites but not to nonwhites.  One's race is not determined by a single gene or gene cluster, as is, for example, sickle-cell anemia.  Nor are races marked by important differences in gene frequencies, the rates of appearances in certain gene types.  The data compiled by various scientists demonstrate, contrary to popular opinion, that intragroup differences exceed intergroup differences.  That is, greater genetic variations exists within the populations typically labeled black and white than between these populations.  This finding refutes the supposition that racial divisions reflect fundamental genetic differences."[vii] 

           

            Because of the lack of biological race attributes, racial stereotypes are created, molded, and changed over time as society sees fit.[viii]  These stereotypes are molded by negative images in society.[ix]  For example, during Reconstruction, society conveyed blacks as scary, primitive, and powerful.[x]  Whereas, during slavery blacks were portrayed as docile and content.[xi]  These stark differences in the images of certain time periods reflect not only that society creates racial stereotypes, but that society changes them when needed.[xii]

            Baseball has created and molded a stereotype of the African American athlete with no genetic basis whatsoever.  The socially-created African American in baseball , like in many other sports,  is a fantastic athlete on the field but limited in terms of leadership positions.[xiii]    The stereotype persists that African Americans are not organized or intelligent enough to make the tough decisions that leaders need to make.[xiv]  Such ideals are often not seen as blatant racism and are thus allowed to perpetuate the stereotypes attributed to the socially created African American sportsman.[xv]

             Kenneth Shropshire outlines three examples of prominent sports people expounding this stereotype.[xvi]  In each example the speaker assumes that they are professing a color blind fact that listeners know to be true, when in fact they are exhibiting deeply held racism.[xvii]  Additionally, each speaker implies, incorrectly, there is a biological fact underlying each racist statement, thus the social construction of African Americans in sports is further exemplified.

            First, Al Campanis, at the time a Dodgers executive, explained that it was not prejudice to say that blacks lacked the necessities to be managers, either on the field or off.[xviii]  Then, in an attempt to clear things up, Campanis described blacks as being "wonderful people", "gifted with great musculature", and "fleet of foot".[xix]          Second, Jimmy "the Greek" Snyder attempted to explain African American's athletic success as biological:

"The difference between blacks and whites goes all the way back to the Civil War when, during the slave period, the slave owner would breed his big black [man] with his big [black] woman so that he could have a big black kid--that's where it all started.  The black is a better athlete to begin with because he's been bred to be that way because of his thigh size and big size. [They] jump higher and run faster.

All the players are black; the only thing that the whites control is the coaching jobs."[xx]

Shropshire notes that many commentators defended Snyder's comments.[xxi]  Finally, Marge Schott's vile, purposeful, and openly racist comments are quoted, compared, and contrasted against those of Campanis and Snyder.[xxii]  Although Schott's comments are more extreme than the others, they share commonality in that the speaker believes the listener to be of the same mind set.[xxiii]

            Although comments such as these are seen as overtly racist today, a glance at the current power structure of baseball reinforces their core message, that many believe African Americans to be incapable of properly owning or running professional baseball organizations.  In addition to the lack of a prospective African American commissioner[xxiv], there are currently zero African American general managers  in Major League Baseball.[xxv]  Further, there is not a single African American principal owner of a Major League Baseball club.[xxvi]  These facts provide evidence that whites control baseball's front offices and that they are reluctant to hire African American general managers or sell clubs to African American owners.

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[i] The Commissionership: A Historical Perspective, MLB.COM, http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/history/mlb_history_people.jsp?story=com (last visited March 1, 2014).

[ii] Id. 

[iii] Jayson Stark, MLB's next commissioner?, ESPN.COM (May 8, 2013, 2:23 PM), http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/9236590/mlb-next-commissioner.

[iv] Id. 

[v] Id. 

[vi] Ian F. Haney Lopez, The Social Construction of Race: Some Observations on Illusion, Fabrication and Choice, 29 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. 1 (1994).

[vii] Id. 

[viii] Id. at 245.

[ix] Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, Images of the Outsider in American Law and Culture: Can Free Expression Remedy Systemic Societal Ills?, 77 Cornell L. Rev. 1258 (1992).

[x] Id.  See also, W. E. B.  DuBois, Black Reconstruction in America (1935).

[xi] Id. 

[xii] Id. 

[xiii] Shaun Powell, Souled Out? How Blacks Are Winning and Losing in Sports, 210 (2008).

[xiv] Id. at 222.

[xv] Shropshire, supra, 21-24.

[xvi] Id.

[xvii] Id.

[xviii] Id. at 22.

[xix] Id.

[xx] Id. at 23.

[xxi] Id.

[xxii] Id. at 24.

[xxiii] Id.

[xxiv] See Supra, note II. 

[xxv] List of Major League Baseball General Managers, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_general_managers (last visited April 13, 2014).

[xxvi] List of Major League Baseball Principal Owners, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_principal_owners (last visited April 13, 2014).