When I’m not slaving over columns for the Long Island Press, I’m an editorial producer for MLB.com, the official Web presence of Major League Baseball. I consume more baseball than any healthy zealot of the game should, often times covering news of teams I wouldn’t otherwise follow in such excruciating detail.
This week, I produced two Nats-Cubs games, which, in addition to the wretchedness of dealing with Washington, left me editing a pair of stories about embattled Chicago outfielder Milton Bradley — one each on Tuesday and Thursday.
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A player whose injuries and on- and off-field travails have seen him kick around the league far more than his talents should allow, Bradley has evolved into a caricature befitting his unfortunate birth name.
To name just a few of his knucklehead moments, Bradley tore his ACL arguing with an umpire in 2007, tried to attack a Royals broadcaster during a game in 2008 for what he felt was unfair criticism (Bradley was DH’ing and heard the comments while watching the game between at-bats), and heaved a live ball into the bleachers at Wrigley Field this season, thinking he had just secured the final out of the inning.
As my editor duly noted recently, the North Siders’ season has gone horribly awry in August, rendering them on the fringes of the Wild Card race — a big-market train wreck second only to the disaster that is the 2009 edition of the Mets. Derailed by injuries, age and ineffectiveness, the Cubs will go home in October, and like their New York counterparts, Chicago fans are out for blood.
And what better scapegoat than the thin-skinned Bradley, a free-agent signee who inked for three years and $30 million this offseason. The switch-hitting outfielder has endured a miserable season, hitting just .255 with 11 homers, 35 RBIs and an OPS of .788.
As a result, unsurprisingly, Bradley has been the target of some rather hearty boos this season, which is fine and acceptable, but he also implied this week that he’s been the victim of racism, which is disconcerting, at best.
Asked to expound on what he described as “hatred” directed his way at Wrigley Field this season, Bradley said Wednesday, “I’m talking about hatred, period. … All I’m saying is I pray the game is nine innings, so I can go out there the least amount of time possible and go home.”
Bradley was booed mercilessly after making the final out of the Cubs’ loss to the Nationals on Thursday, and again he held court with Chicago media following the game.
“Stand out in right field one day and maybe you’ll see it,” Bradley said. “Put on my Jordans one day and maybe you’ll see. Walk around and see the world from my eyes, but you can’t do that.”
Bradley is not the first to speak of racism at the supposedly Friendly Confines. Former Cubs LaTroy Hawkins, Jacque Jones and Dusty Baker, and current first baseman Derrek Lee have had similar experiences.
“Unfortunately, there are ignorant people out there,” Lee said Thursday. “Like I’ve told Milton, the best thing to do is let it go, because it’s not indicative of his character, it’s indicative of their character. Let them be foolish and ignorant, and it shouldn’t bother us.”
Incidents this extreme are certainly the exception, but the media does its part to stoke even detached racism. Anecdotally, I can share an unsettling experience from this year’s All-Star Game. Charged with editing a covering reporter’s copy, I was disappointed to discover the scribe marveling ad infinitum at the “athleticism” of an all-black American League outfield of Carl Crawford, Curtis Granderson and Adam Jones. I brought it to the attention of my supervisor, who shook his head and simply told me to axe the entire paragraph.
And, in a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black (pun recognized, not intended), Bradley was sent home by manager Lou Piniella during the sixth inning of a June game after throwing a tanturm. Bradley had thrown his helmet, attacked a water cooler and exchanged words with Piniella before his dismissal.
“I don’t like those things to happen, but I’m just tired of watching it,” Piniella said after the incident. “This has been a common occurrence, and I’ve looked the other way a lot, and I’m tired. I’m not into discipline, I’m really not. I’m going to put his name in the lineup tomorrow, and that’s it.”
Piniella, of course, has been lauded for his short fuse — he’s been painted a fiery leader who’s not afraid to give umpires an earful, even if it means his ejection. Similarly, former Yankees great Paul O’Neill, another frequent water-cooler batterer, was praised for his intensity, dubbed a “warrior” by George Steinbrenner.
Desperate to avert negative publicity, the Cubs foolishly planted goons in the bleachers for Thursday’s game, who were instructed to eject Bradley’s hecklers. Most fans reported no racial slurs being hurled at Bradley, but several were tossed for saying “Bradley sucks” or some variation of it. Admirable as their intentions were, the Cubs were fighting an uphill battle, treating a symptom of a problem that no number of security guards could remedy.
Baseball has long crowed about its role in kicking off the Civil Rights movement with Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in 1947, but sadly, it has come along the slowest of the major sports since that benchmark moment. The dwindling number of blacks in baseball was all the rage two years ago, Robinson’s 60th anniversary. Less than 10 percent of Major Leaguers were black in 2006, a precipitous drop-off from the historical high of 27 percent in 1975, according to the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport.
There are a handful of explanations for this, the most popular among them the game’s slow pace and the relative difficulty in reaching its highest level (as opposed to the NFL and NBA, in which players are drafted directly to the bigs). But it’s time to consider a simpler, more malignant explanation: Baseball is owned by white men, played by white and Latino men, consumed by white and Latino fans, and covered by a white media.
By all accounts, Bradley is a headache, emotionally unstable and hypersensitive to criticism. Booing is part of the game, and he needs to understand it comes with the territory. But the dehumanizing treatment to which he’s been subjected probably would have outreached the imagination of even Robinson, who bore that cross over 60 years ago so men like Bradley wouldn’t have to.
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