Baseball’s greatest day was April 15, 1947. It was the day when Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s infamous color line to become the first Black player ever to play in a major league game.
Finally, after centuries of racial discrimination, there was a sense that merit, not skin pigment, was what was to be valued in America’s life. Because baseball was America’s game.
What has been baseball’s worst day?
Just last week, when the corporate suits of Major League Baseball stripped Atlanta of this year’s All-Star Game. Why? They caved to the racial demagoguery of the most powerful man in the world:
Joe Biden, president of the United States.
He’s the president who pushed baseball into taking the All-Star Game from Atlanta because Georgia’s politics offend him. He poured his own politics into sport, something that should unite us all. He politicized something that should not be politicized.
Biden’s legacy?
He’s the president who poisoned baseball.
Just months before, as major league teams were preparing for spring training, Biden made that speech at his inauguration promising to end America’s “uncivil war” pitting red states against blue states.
Remember?
“We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural … versus urban, conservative versus liberal,” Biden told the nation. “We can do this if we open our souls instead of hardening our hearts. If we show a little tolerance and humility, and if we are willing to stand in the other person’s shoes — as my mom would say — just for a moment, stand in their shoes.”
But the other day, Biden opened his baseball soul on ESPN and a demagogue came out.
There was nothing remotely civil, tolerant or humble about the president falsely and repeatedly using the race card to attack Georgia’s new election integrity voter law by comparing it to the horrors of the apartheid Jim Crow South.
Even the rabidly pro-Democrat and pro-Biden Washington Post gave Biden four Pinocchios for lying about Georgia.
Georgia’s new election integrity law expands voting and isn’t as restrictive as Democrats insist. Other states, including Democratic New York, headquarters of Major League Baseball, and Biden’s own Delaware, are in some ways more restrictive. And Democrats say nothing. Are these racist states?
Georgia did strengthen requirements for voter identification, but is that racist when we’re all required to show ID to get on a plane or buy liquor?
What’s poisonous is that Biden used the weight of the presidency to pressure baseball into punishing the people of Georgia for deciding on their own election laws according to the Constitution.
Once he said he’d “strongly support” a move to strip Atlanta of hosting the All-Star Game, it was done.
“The very people who are victimized the most are the people who are the leaders in these various sports,” Biden said on ESPN just before opening day. “And it’s just not right. This is Jim Crow on steroids, what they’re doing in Georgia and 40 other states.”
Biden and many Democratic allies in media continue to compare voter integrity laws to Jim Crow, even though they know it’s not true.
We may reasonably disagree on the critical need for election integrity in America. But I don’t think we can reasonably disagree on this:
The Georgia voter law isn’t remotely Jim Crow. And those who use that language are demagogues.
Under Jim Crow apartheid, schools were separated by race, with separate washrooms and separate water fountains and no service for Blacks at restaurant lunch counters. Blacks were lynched.
This is not that. If so, then New York and Biden’s Delaware are Jim Crow states.
Jackie Robinson was baseball’s answer to much of that hate. His excellence and courage in the face of all that forced white Americans to deal with what was happening to Black Americans.
Atlanta is a majority Black city and stands to lose at $100 million as a result of moving the game to majority white Denver, and many Atlanta businesses are Black-owned.
Notice that Biden isn’t demanding that the Masters Tournament at Georgia’s Augusta National be moved.
Baseball is a game for families that buy cheap seats and plan summers around those $1-a-hot dog bargain days. The Masters is for the masters, the wealthy elite, such as the commissioner of baseball and Washington lobbyists.
Asked Tuesday if the Masters should be moved out of Georgia, Biden punted:
“I think that’s up to the Masters,” he said. “Look, you know, it is reassuring to see that for-profit operations and businesses are speaking up about how these new Jim Crow laws are just antithetical to who we are.”
As the Biden-driven all-star boycott of Georgia took shape, as panicked corporations sided with the president and against Georgia lest they themselves be shamed by the media as racists, an odd thing happened:
Georgia’s failed Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacy Abrams began panicking, calling for a stop to boycotts, saying minorities in the state would be hurt. Abrams doesn’t want to wear the jacket for Black business owners losing out on that $100 million.
But she will. It suits her.
Years ago, America was in love with those church-of-baseball movies. One of the most popular was “Field of Dreams.”
“America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers,” said James Earl Jones. “It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time.”
Now Biden, Democrats and the woke corporations caving to woke activists have rolled over the game.
They’ve left their mark. And Biden has his legacy.
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