Don't Look Back, Something Might Be Gainin'

In America, it's often said, the past is prologue. What could be more American, then, than the forward thrust of Satchell Paige's life?

The former Negro Leagues baseball star who made his debut in the (for-too-long-all-white) major leagues at age 42, offered a signature saying: Don't Look Back, Something Might Be Gainin'.

When one delves into the details of Paige's life, the multivalent meanings of that slogan become evident.

It's not just that he sought to shroud his birthdate in mystery - a completely understandable strategy for an aging athlete competing against kids half his age. Brett Favre, for better or worse, does not have that option.

It's also the fact that, as his Negro Leagues Baseball Museum profile relates, he had considerable - well (pun intended) - baggage to overcome from his early life. His given name was LeRoy, with "Satchell" becoming his moniker after an early job carrying suitcases (satchells) at the train station for tips. He eventually tried to steal one of those, and later spent time in reform school.

This backstory does not diminish Satchell Paige's accomplishments; it only enhances them. Born in poverty, one of 12 children, he had to fend for himself. But he kept on keeping on - all the way to the Hall of Fame.

A Tip of Satchel Paige's Cap

"Which team's cap did Satchell Paige wear for his Hall of Fame plaque, dad?" asked my 9-year-old son, Micah. He's been discovering major league baseball lore in immersion mode, just as I did at that age - and bringing his 7-year-old brother, Luke, along for the ride. Anna Quindlen got it exactly right when she said recently that being a parent allows you to reexperience your childhood on a much deeper, richer level.

To be sure, there is considerable change amid the continuity of the game. It's all very much digitally enhanced now. We didn't have MLB 2K 2010 on Wii back in the day or constant access to ESPN. Newspapers, radio, and NBC's Game of the Week on Saturday afternoons comprised my introduction to The Show, along with occasional trips to the old Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington with my dad and brother.

Another difference is that my boys are growing up in a much more racially diverse America than I did. I came of age in a virtually lilly white setting, at a time when all of the MLB teams had finally become integrated. The weight of the historical injustices that kept people of color down and out for so long did not weigh on me.

So when Micah asked his question, I had to stop and think. Though I knew Satchel Paige had been inducted at Cooperstown, I also knew that his real fame was as a Negro Leagues player. He didn't make his MLB debut until age 42, and a check of his lifetime stats there shows an indifferent 28-32 record that is obviously at odds with his legend. Did he enter the hallowed hall as a Kansas City Monarch, perhaps - honoring the Negro League team for which he starred?

Micah went online, to the Hall of Fame website, to find the answer. Satchel Paige's plaque does not even show a team's cap; the cap is tilted off his head jauntily, so that its front remains unseen. A fitting resolution, it seems to me, for the recognition of a man who, along with other pioneers, bridged the gap between segregated America and the new multiracial kaleidoscope of 2010.

Confederate History Month and BJS Data

Racism is not only pernicious in the present. It tends to perpetuate itself into the future, with lingering collateral damage.

I'm reminded of a quotation from Karl Marx: "The tradition of all dead generations weighs like an incubus on the brains of the living." Marx was not speaking specifically of racial prejudice. Yet clearly the evil spirit animating centuries of nightmarish slavery remains alive to oppress the living.

Consider a case in point: The governor of Virginia issued a lengthy statement proclaiming Confederate History Month, but omitted any mention of slavery. Only after a national outcry did he amend it to add a mention of our heritage of human bondage.

The statistics lay out the current reality very starkly. Nearly 150 years after slavery was abolished, African Americans are incarcerated at almost six times the rate of whites. Nearly one in six black men has been in prison According to 2007 data, about 900,000 of the 2.2 million people in American jails and prisons were black.

Has Gov. Robert McDonnell ever looked at data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics on how racial minorities are so disproportionately present in those behind bars? In his state of Virginia, in 2005, blacks were incarcerated at a rate of 2,331 per 10,000 population, compared to 396 for whites.

This isn't to say that the professionals who administer the justice system are racists individually. One must acknowledge, however, the burden of history, and existence of structural racism. That recognition is an absolutely necessary step on the path to overcoming it.

How about Racial Disparity Awareness Month, governor?

Power Dynamics: Foucault and the NLBM

In his chapter on torture in Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault writes of the body as enmeshed in a societal "system of subjugation." He seeks to describe the "micro-physics of power," his term for complicated, dynamic power relations that are always in tension, never fixed. There is indubitably a dominant class, in his view, but its power is "excercised rather than possessed."

Reading this, I couldn't help but think of my recent visit to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City. The NLBM tells the story of how the dominant white society systematically kept African Americans off of white professional teams for roughly half a century. The exclusion ran from the mid-1890s (around the time of the Supreme Court's infamous "separate but equal" decision in Plessy v. Ferguson) until 1947 and beyond. Many teams did not add black players until well into the 1950s (around the time the Supreme Court overruled Plessy in Brown v. Board of Education).

The most fascinating exhibit at the museum for me was a video documenting how the black/white power relations differed between the American League and the National League. Following Jackie Robinson's debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers, National League owners were much quicker to integrate black players into their teams. American League owners, particularly those of the Yankees and the Red Sox, were much slower. Amazingly, the Red Sox did not even field a black player until 1959, and the Yankees were not much better.

The result of the American League's foot-dragging was an undeniable talent differential between the leagues that continued into the 1970s. Watching video of Willie Ways, Henry Aaron, Frank Robinson, Lou Brock and others transforming the style of play in the NL, I suddenly realized that the National League's dominance in the All-Star Game for over a decade was completely understandable. Growing up a Twins fan in the 70s, the American League's futility in those games had always been inexpliable to me. Now I realize that it had something to do with Foucauldian power dynamics.

Welcome Back, Big Mac

"Grace under pressure" is a well-worn phrase, and I do not use it lightly. But those are the three words that come to mind when I recall Henry Aaron's pursuit of Babe Ruth's career homerun record.

In 1973, as Aaron approached the record, Newsweek ran a cover story on the racial insults he endured. As a 13-year-old white boy in a small northern town who had never interacted with African Americans, it was jarring to read of the torrent of abuse streaming into Hammerin' Hank's mailbox. To this day, I remember that one of letters began simply with the words "Dear Nigger" - as if Henry Aaron were not even a person, but just an embodiment of a perceived threat to white supremacy.

Aaron passed the Babe in April 1974 and added forty more homeruns before retiring. Today, at 76, he remains one of the game's greatest ambassadors.

This week, Aaron made news by affirming Mark McGwire's admission that he used performance-enhancing drugs as a player. In 1998, McGwire's pursuit of Roger Maris's single-season homerun record, with Sammy Sosa right behind, had thrilled the nation - and provided balm in baseball Gilead after the painful players' strike resulted in cancellation of the World Series in 1994.

McGwire retired under a steriods cloud in 2001 and fumbled his way awkwardly through a congressional hearing in 2005. This season, however, he's back in baseball, as the St. Louis Cardinal's hitting coach, hired by his former manager, Tony LaRussa.

In endorsing McGwire's conscience-clearing statement, Aaron used the language of forgiveness.

"[T]his is the most forgiving country in the world. If you come through and tell the truth, then you're going to be forgiven."

So Big Mac is back - and as Hammerin' Hank says, that's a good thing. More players should follow McGwire's lead and come clean about their own use of banned substances.

Number one on the in-need-of-confession list is of course the man who passed Aaron for the most career homeruns and McGwire for the most in a single season. Barry Bonds still faces charges of lying to a federal grand jury, after testifying in 2003 he never knowingly used steroids.

Aaron did not mention Bonds in his statement. Instead, he answered with humility and humor when reporters suggested that many people still refer to him as as the homerun king.

"Regardless of what happened, I'm not going to hit another home run. Not in this world. I may do it somewhere else. I don't think I can hit anybody deep. I think my deep is over with. The only thing I can hit is a golf ball — all over the place."

That's so true about golf. Indeed, Sam Snead told Ted Williams that it's harder than baseball, because you have to play your foul balls. But this is an apples and oranges comparison, because a golf ball doesn't come at you at nearly 100 mph, as a MLB fastball does.

Pride in the Name

A decade ago, a friend gave me a one-year subscription to Mars Hill Review, a journal for thoughtful reflection on issues of faith. Flipping through one of those issues recently − as part of a project to cull my collection − I came across an essay by William Edgar entitled ‘Why Love Can’t Wait: The Lonely Social Ethic of Martin Luther King, Jr." Mars Hill Review 16: 33-39 (2000).

What was “lonely” about Dr. King’s social ethic? In large part, Edgar argues, it was because so many white Christians lacked the commitment to justice work to join King on his journey. MLK was deeply disappointed at this, particularly by the unwillingness of white clergy to confront racism and lead their congregations toward positive change. His most widely read text, “Letter from Birmingham City Jail,” is directed primarily at those clergy.

Dr. King wrote his open letter on April 16, 1963. Less than five years later, he was assassinated. Rather inexplicably, U2’s moving song “Pride in the Name of Love” puts the time the shots rang out as early morning on April 4. As a colleague pointed out to me today, it was actually late afternoon.



Today, we honor King’s legacy and gather strength to complete the journey toward a truly inclusive society for all. There's still a long way to go, but I know many white clergy who refuse to let social inequities go unchallenged. In fact, I'm married to one.

The Metrodome as a Forum for Recognizing Jackie

As a baseball stadium, the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome was notorious for its appallingly poor aesthetics. Built more for football than baseball, it featured a right field fence known as “the baggie” − a plastic wall that looked like a garbage bag. Most Twins fans, including me, look forward to the move next year to Target Field, an outdoor stadium made possible by a sales tax increase in Hennepin County.

The Vikings, meanwhile, continue on at the Dome, still pushing the ball uphill like Sisyphus in their quest to find funding for their own new stadium.

Before the Dome fades into history as a baseball venue, there is one exceptional element in its otherwise flatly functional design that I’d like to record. Among the huge portraits of Twins players hanging high beyond the outfield walls − signature players like Harmon Killebrew, Rod Carew, and Tony Oliva − there was one non-Twin: Jackie Robinson.

In 1947, when the Twins were still the Washington Senators and Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court’s ruling striking down racial segregation in schools, was still seven years away, Jackie Robinson was the African-American man who broke major league baseball’s color barrier. Brooklyn Dodgers’ owner Branch Rickey made it possible, defying other team owners by bringing a black man to his team. But it was Robinson who carried the endeavor through, enduring racial taunts and persevering with dignity, determination, and grace under pressure.

To its credit, MLB has recognized Robinson’s legacy more and more in recent years. His uniform number, 42, has been permanently retired by all teams, and is worn annually on April 15 by many in a Jackie Robinson Day tribute.

Note to self: Be sure to catch the Twins, at least on radio, on April 15. Get your taxes in early and be ready to recognize a laudable American who continues to inspire.

From the Margins to the Manger

Shepherds were ritually unclean under Rabbinic law and could not testify in a court of law. But in the Gospel of Luke, it was they, along with the angels, who gave the first testimony to the birth of Jesus.

For it isn't to the palace that the Christ child comes
But to shepherds and street people, hookers and bums.
- Bruce Cockburn, "Cry of a Tiny Babe"

African Americans, like shepherds, have often been relegated to the margins of society, and an affinity between the two groups is readily apparent in Langston Hughes's Black Nativity. In one version of the play, now in its eleventh year at the Lorraine Hansbery Theatre in San Francisco, wayward shepherds find their way to the baby Jesus singing songs of musicians who have died in the last year.

This year, the shepherds made sure to include songs by Michael Jackson, the King of Pop. Way to go, shepherds! A nice combination of sacred and secular, paying respects to the King of Pop while on the way to honoring the King of Kings!