More MLB Racism from Gary Sheffield's Mouthlps
Guzzo
8,611 Posts
basic synopsis Sheffield says there is too damn many of them latin-o'shttp://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/index.php?cl=2957967dudes a fucking idot/ foll, but I'm thinking he could of made for a great moder soul album cover
heres a ESPN/ AP story on his GQ nterviewSheffield says Latin players easier to control than blacks[/b]Updated: June 3, 2007, 4:17 PM ETThe percentage of African-Americans playing Major League Baseball is at an all-time low and Gary Sheffield says he has a theory why that's the case.In an interview with GQ magazine that's currently on newsstands, the typically outspoken Tigers designated hitter said Latin players have replaced African-Americans as baseball's most prevalent minority because they are easier to control."I called it years ago. What I called is that you're going to see more black faces, but there ain't no English going to be coming out. ??? [It's about] being able to tell [Latin players] what to do -- being able to control them," he told the magazine."Where I'm from, you can't control us. You might get a guy to do it that way for a while because he wants to benefit, but in the end, he is going to go back to being who he is. And that's a person that you're going to talk to with respect, you're going to talk to like a man."These are the things my race demands. So, if you're equally good as this Latin player, guess who's going to get sent home? I know a lot of players that are home now can outplay a lot of these guys."According to a 2005 report by the University of Central Florida Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, only 8.5 percent of major leaguers were African-American -- the lowest percentage since the report was initiated in the mid-1980s. By contrast, whites comprised 59.5 percent of the majors' player pool, Latinos 28.7 percent and Asians 2.5.The Associated Press contributed to this report.
heres a ESPN/ AP story on his GQ nterviewSheffield says Latin players easier to control than blacks[/b]Updated: June 3, 2007, 4:17 PM ETThe percentage of African-Americans playing Major League Baseball is at an all-time low and Gary Sheffield says he has a theory why that's the case.In an interview with GQ magazine that's currently on newsstands, the typically outspoken Tigers designated hitter said Latin players have replaced African-Americans as baseball's most prevalent minority because they are easier to control."I called it years ago. What I called is that you're going to see more black faces, but there ain't no English going to be coming out. ??? [It's about] being able to tell [Latin players] what to do -- being able to control them," he told the magazine."Where I'm from, you can't control us. You might get a guy to do it that way for a while because he wants to benefit, but in the end, he is going to go back to being who he is. And that's a person that you're going to talk to with respect, you're going to talk to like a man."These are the things my race demands. So, if you're equally good as this Latin player, guess who's going to get sent home? I know a lot of players that are home now can outplay a lot of these guys."According to a 2005 report by the University of Central Florida Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, only 8.5 percent of major leaguers were African-American -- the lowest percentage since the report was initiated in the mid-1980s. By contrast, whites comprised 59.5 percent of the majors' player pool, Latinos 28.7 percent and Asians 2.5.The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Comments
I don't buy it. I think the majors sign talent where they find it and are willing to pay for it if need be. No doubt Latino players in the minors get exploited. But that does not stop the teams from signing talent stateside.
I think African American youth (and schools which are the training grounds) have chosen to concentrate on basketball and football.
A journeyman baseball player will make more money and have a longer career (on average) than a journeyman basketball or football player.
not so ez to control
1. Can you explain why you believe Sheffield is "saying Blacks are better"? Because I don't think you know what you're talking about.
2. FYI - Your hero Stephen A. Smith agrees with Gary Sheffield.
let it shine through...
b/w my alma matter up in this piece:
It definitely sounds like this is less about race and more about Gary Sheffield's mouthlips deriding the notion of being a team player, and an employee. There's no Godzilla in team.
I don't follow baseball closely enough to agree or disagree with him, but I think the way so many members of the press have absolutely jumped down the guy's throat is telling.
My friend's dad liked to mispronounce his name as Walkin' Underwear.
I don't understand how is Sheffield saying that "Blacks are better". If anything he's saying that we are less likely to be pushed around by management because we have less to loose than Latinos by doing so. It's a matter of respect and economics.
See Carlos Guillen's recent comments:
"The control starts when Latin players are at their youngest and most vulnerable. The control starts when they sign. Latin players, if they get released, go back to their country with nothing," Guillen said. "Where are you going to work if you don't have baseball? You lose everything. You lose your life. You're done."
Read more: Latinos Back Sheffield
I'm not saying that I agree with Sheffield, but I don't doubt the validity of his standpoint.
Yeah, I've read the comments and I don't understand how he's supposedly saying that either--I don't think he is.
That stance is kind of obnoxious.
There was a time when performers and athletes were expected to take a stand on social issues.
Today if they take a stand on anything they will be vilified and marginalized. Unless you are a Bruce Willis or an Arnold Schwarzenegger the right will attack everything you say and do from your batting stance to your hair if you speak up.
I disagree with his analysis about why Latino players are selected. But he may be right and I may be wrong. He certainly is in a better position than I to know. I don't know why you call him a "fucking idot/ foll".
You must have misread the article. The synopsis is not "too damn many of them latin-o's"
Synopsis is that because Latino players have fewer options they easier for the management to control. Thus management chooses Latinos over Blacks. He may not be eloquent, but I wouldn't do a knee jerk rejection of his point.
As I said before, I think Blacks have largely chosen football and basketball over baseball. I think that is a mistake because there is more money for most players in baseball.
Yes it is all the fault of Fox News.
No. All the networks and major papers and magazines play into this. I think difference between today and 70s is the level of piling on. I may just be romantisizing the past. The Dixie Chicks had it better than Muhammad Ali, that's for sure. But Neil Young and Curtis Mayfield and Johnny Cash were able to say what they were thinking in the 70s with much less backlash than what Sheffield and Susan Sarrandon are getting today.
I called the fucking idot foll a idot/ foll because he is an idot/ foll and the comments he made were racist as fuck. I'm amazed that he's getting any sort of sympathy or understanding from the normally liberal race conscious soulstrutters.
What I'm getting from his words is that he beleives Latino people are easily controlled and unable to stand up for themselves. It's a bullshit statement that screams I think Latin people are subservient and not as strong as people of our race are.
If you look at yesterdays posts you'll see I made another post about how Ozzie Guillen spoke out against people coming down on latin players for steroid use. So that either makes Sheffields stance bullshit or means that Guillen just isn't as Latin as he should be
Calling Sheffield's comments racist is a simplistic argument. Basically, he's saying that Latino players are easily controlled because they don't have the upper hand in the situation. There's a difference.
It's not that Latinos are "subservient", it's that they're being taken advantage of by management in baseball. Black players ain't having that bullshit, but a team is more than happy to grab other Latin players to fill those spots.
I think you're fighting the wrong battle.
a/k/a "ass-hurt"
http://www.colorlines.com/article.php?ID=81
Almost all the Latino stars in baseball today--now 25 percent of major league rosters and growing--come from overwhelming poverty, a reality that Major League Baseball (MLB) avidly exploits. For example: The focal point of my book--Miguel Tejada, shortstop of the Oakland Athletics--came from a destitute barrio in the Dominican Republic with no running water and little electricity.
The Texas Rangers acquired Sammy Sosa's services in 1986 for $3,500--the exact amount the Brooklyn Dodgers paid to sign Jackie Robinson in 1946.
Knowing he had no alternatives, the Athletics acquired Tejada's considerable talent for a mere $2,000. By comparison, Tejada's white American teammate, Ben Grieve, received a $1.2 million signing bonus. Similarly, the Texas Rangers acquired Sammy Sosa's services in 1986 for $3,500--the exact amount the Brooklyn Dodgers paid to sign Jackie Robinson in 1946.
"Boatload Mentality"
Every team in Major League Baseball exploits Latino baseball players. Dick Balderson, vice-president of the Colorado Rockies, frankly calls this the "boatload mentality"--sign a "boatload" of Latinos for little money and if only a couple make it to the big leagues, teams still come out ahead. "Instead of signing four [American] guys at $25,000 each, you sign 20 [Dominican] guys for $5,000 each."
The justification for this "boatload mentality" used by baseball people is this: Tejada and other budding Latino players are fortunate that MLB affords them an opportunity to escape the third world poverty they grew up in. Baseball gives them a way out, a chance to get paid, eat regularly, sleep in clean beds, and, for the very best, a crack at fame and fortune.
After all, their reasoning goes, isn't Sammy Sosa--a former shoe shine boy like Tejada--a perfect example of the rags-to-riches life only MLB can confer on Latino kids otherwise bound for the sugar cane fields or worse?
The answer is yes. And there is a fundamental truth to the notion that baseball was the only way for Sosa and Tejada to pull themselves and their families out of poverty.
But does that make it right for MLB to sign Latino ballplayers--whose talent is paying huge dividends for big league teams--for next to nothing? It is, after all, the same justification used by U.S. employers for their pervasive mistreatment and exploitation of Latino immigrant workers.
According to Major League Baseball, 90 to 95 percent of Latino players signed to contracts never reach the big leagues. The vast majority never get a chance to play in the U.S., not even in the minor leagues. And all but a few of those brought to the U.S. are released without ever playing major league ball.
Most of these discarded Latino players stay in the U.S. as undocumented immigrants rather than return as "failures" to a country that offers them little future. The lives these young men lead are often dangerous, destitute, and sad. Many go to New York because they have friends or family in what is the largest concentration of Dominicans in the United States.
Jos?? Santana was a Houston Astros prospect until he was released in 1995. Now he mops floors in a Brooklyn bodega and plays semi-pro on the weekends, all the while frantically placing calls to an American agent who once filled his head with dollar signs, but now can't be bothered. Tony McDonald is a former minor league star who had the misfortune of being a third baseman in the Philadelphia Phillies organization at the same time Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt was in his prime. Today, McDonald works in a warehouse. These castoffs represent the underside of the Sammy Sosa story, the rule rather than the exception in the high-stakes recruitment of ball players from Latin America and the Caribbean.
Here are some articles on the issue:
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0430-23.htm
Sheffield is right. It is much easier and cheaper to exploit a player from a Latin American country than from the USA. His saying so does not make him racist.
Good God man. Here is the quote again. Please don't try to restate it as per what some dude trying to make a logical report based on money and prospects said years ago, rather lets stay with the shit thats coming out of Sheffields mouth, to make it easier I'll put the sections that I feel address it in bold[/b]
"I called it years ago. What I called is that you're going to see more black faces, but there ain't no English going to be coming out. ??? [It's about] being able to tell [Latin players] what to do -- being able to control them[/b]," he told the magazine.
"Where I'm from, you can't control us. You might get a guy to do it that way for a while because he wants to benefit, but in the end, he is going to go back to being who he is. And that's a person that you're going to talk to with respect, you're going to talk to like a man.
"These are the things my race demands. So, if you're equally good as this Latin player, guess who's going to get sent home? [/b] I know a lot of players that are home now can outplay a lot of these guys."
he is not talking about area so much, unless his dumb ass really assumes that all latin players, as a race, demand less. Seriously, I hope you can see the distinction between the two; not every latino grew up on a Dominican plantation and to go ahead and group every person of latin decent into some idea that they are all poor people who are easily controlled is a complete stereotype of a race.
So no, I wouldn't say that Sheffield is right, and frankly I'm surprised you would.
There are a lot of Latino mega millionaires in MLB, how do you explain them, maybe they have black Representatives? Or then again us Jews are good with money maybe we somehow got involved, I'll ask at the next meeting
So what you see is him saying all Latinos are exploited and all Blacks are unexpliotable. I guess I don't see him saying that. If I did I guess I would agree with you.
As I said, I disagree with him that the Exploitation of Latin players means the non-hiring of Black players. But i disagree with you that, his saying it makes him a racist idot foll.
How do I explain megamillionaire Latin players? They are superstars. As the thing I posted noted they were not initially signed to huge contracts and did not get huge signing bonuses. The teams sign lots of players. Most go to the minors and never make it out. High school kids from the states who never pan out get million dollar signing bonuses out of high school every year. Players from Latin American countries don't. I know that, you know that and Sheffield knows that. The sports writers don't want other people to know that so they make Sheffield out to be a racist fool.
Ok, I think I understand where we are seeing differently I'm taking Sheffields words as only meaning those in MLB. I don't think for a second that any business/ business man is going to spend money on prospects if they don't have to. Perhaps a smarter business man will see tha if he drops another zero on the offer for a potential player people will be more eager to sign, but until then its all about saving a buck for these guys on top. Is it exploitative? it's debatable after all if a prospect does pan out he is living pretty well. Sosa's $3,500 initial signing is peanuts compared to what he's making this year as an aged, cork swinging, steroid filled powerhitter.
But that doesn't take away from his words saying that he knows there are sub par, easily controlled guys playing baseball and he attributes it to their race
Since the 60's there has been an attitude held by some baseball players, executives and fans that you can't win with two Latin stars on your team.(This has been debunked more than once, most recently by the BoSox)
The stereotype has been that their macho heritage/culture made it difficult for two alpha male stars to co-exist.
Latin players have been portrayed in books and movies as being "uncontrollable"(Pedro from Major League comes to mind).
There is one reason why there are a lot of Latin players in MLB today and that is that they are the best players......period.
Claiming that MLB, a league that currently employs one Elijah Dukes, can, or even tries to "control" players is absurd.
There are more Asian players in MLB today than there were 20 years ago too.
Why?
Because they are fucking good.
The world is catching up athletically in the three major U.S. sports.
Cuba & Japan has surpassed the U.S. in baseball (Ironically, Japanese baseball and it's fans see American baseball players as "undisciplined and uncontrollable")
There are 10 Non-U.S. players out of 24 in the current NBA Finals.
I think what Sheffield's comments might really be saying is....These damn foriegners are coming here and taking our jobs....sounds familar.
Sheffield commenting on "controlling players" is comedy just based on the fact that his uncle was one of the most uncontrollable players of all time!!