Now Hear This: Saying things you might regret
Ever said anything you wish you hadn’t?
I remember two occasions quite well. I told my daddy, one time, I wasn’t going to do something. I only did that ONE time!
“See that girl over there,” I said to a college acquittance of mine at a University of Georgia fraternity party one night.
“I know for a fact she’s sleeping around.”
“That’s my sister!” he shot back.
I sure did wish I hadn’t said that!
It seems entertainers are best at saying things they shouldn’t. Right, Dixie Chicks.
Politicians are pretty good at it as well. Trent Lott knows what I’m talking about. Throw athletes in there too.
Running his mouth, like a busted sewage pipe, got pitcher John Rocker booted off the Atlanta Braves roster. And now for the latest sure-to-be-included in this year’s Hall of Shame comments.
“Black and Latino (baseball) players can handle the heat better, because of their skin color, than lighter skin people.” Those were the words uttered this week by Chicago Cubs manager Dusty Baker, that exploded across the nation, quicker than a Sammy Sosa corked bat!
Is Dusty Baker off his Rocker? Just whistling Dixie? Or is there a Lott more where that came from? (You can see I love playing around with names).
Maybe Baker is right about Black and Latino players being able to withstand the summer heat better than anybody else on planet earth. But if it’s true, that brings up this question. With global warming, are blacks and Latino players then going to take over the game entirely?
But hold on everybody! That’s not the real issue here is it? Lets look closer.
What we have are not one, but two swirling conflicts, as I see it. The first is purely medical or scientific. The other is Baker’s “political incorrectness,” that has everybody so lathered up. Could we change that to “social incorrectness,” please. It has nothing to do with politics.
I personally never considered Baker’s statement controversial in the first place. He’s a black man talking about black people. Who better?
Ah! But if Dusty Baker were a white manager, and said that, we would have a Jimmy The Greek howling controversy all over again. Do I need to elaborate?
It seems to me this whole thing has gone from a rather casual, mundane, lockeroom, off-the-cuff comment, into some kind of racial lightening rod, that has peeled off several layers of America’s social conscience exposing raw nerves of ethnic super-sensitivity.
Perhaps the only person that can speak to this black-white issue with any real degree of credibility is ? Michael Jackson. Think about it!
(Hope Hines is a television sports reporter and a Nashville personality.)