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Whitewashing Sports History
by J.B. Cash
20 April 2005
Revising history is one of the favorite tactics of people that would like to see classic American culture destroyed. It is apparent in the new additions of history textbooks maligning former American heroes such as Thomas Jefferson and George Washington as mere slave owners, or dismissing Daniel Boone and Davey Crockett as violent gun-toting anti-Indian/-Mexican white men. Nearly all white men of accomplishment from America's past are under attack from the new paradigm ruling American culture.
Sports heroes are not immune from this trend. Recently there has been a movement in the media and among sympathetic fans to stain the memories of some great white athletes of the past. Attempts are made to impugn their character and their achievements. It is important for Caste Football fans to fight this propaganda and refute it at every turn.
Many present-day athletic accomplishments are tainted by the scandal of steroid use. It is conceivable that nearly all newer Olympic track and field records, especially in sprinting, and many baseball records, especially home runs, have been achieved by athletes who have increased their natural performance capabilities through the use of performance-enhancing drugs.
Since nearly all of these "records" have been set by black athletes there is a great push to discredit the white athletes who previously held the records. This is supposed to, in some way, give cover to the current cheaters by indicating that those former white athletes were in some way "bad" too.
Since there were no performance-enhancing drugs in the golden age of American sports the historical revisionists have taken to trying to discredit the great white athletes of the past by falsely accusing them of abusing the only drug available at the time: alcohol. Thus players like Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle have suddenly become legendary boozers. We are now told to believe that they were drunks and are not worthy of the honors bestowed upon them.
Forget for a moment that alcohol use would certainly tend to DECREASE their performance and thus whatever they accomplished was despite their use of alcohol. Therefore what they achieved is less than they were capable of and so in reality they should be considered even better then their records. But neither Ruth nor Mantle were drunks in any sense of the word. There have been plenty of drunks in the history of baseball. It was well known that there were guys that drank before or even during games. Barry Bonds' father, Bobby Bonds, was, ironically, one of those players.
But no one considered Ruth or Mantle drunks at the time they played. Sure they may have drank some after games but it probably had little effect on their play. They played in the time of day baseball so players had plenty of time to drink at night and get a good night's sleep before the next day's game. It was normal in those days for men to drink after work. It is also normal today judging by the number of men in a bar at 6:00 p.m.
Mantle especially was made to feel guilty about his drinking. He constantly beat himself up about how he didn't take care of himself as people criticized him for somehow not being even greater then he was. Unquestionably Mantle's drinking caught up with him later in life but at least he knew what he was putting in his body. Barry Bonds has stated under oath that he did not even know the drugs he was taking were steroids.
Another attempt to revise history is to discredit achievements made before the wide-scale integration of sports. Bonds himself has promoted this revisionist history attempt by indicating Ruth's home run records are in some way illegitimate because they occurred before black players were allowed to play Major League baseball. The media has picked this up and repeated it over and over without any critical thinking about the issue. The claim is absolutely ridiculous and should anyone repeat it they should be challenged immediately.
First, the only black presence that would have affected Ruth's home run records would have occurred if there were black pitchers. Other players would not have made a difference to Ruth's career stats unless you figure that there would have been some "Barry Bonds" types of outfielders butchering easy plays and adding extra base hits to Ruth's already prodigious numbers.
The presence of black pitchers affecting Ruth's career totals is laughable! Who would that have been? There have been very few good black pitchers in the nearly 60 years since the sport was integrated. Quick, name the five best black baseball pitchers in the history of baseball � Bob Gibson, Ferguson Jenkins, Vida Blue, Don Newcombe and who? Satchel Paige? Okay, say Satchel Paige managed to get Ruth out a few times. That would mean that Ruth could clean up against the likes of Dontrelle Willis and any other black pitchers that would have somehow made their way to the big leagues.
Thus if there had been more black pitchers during Ruth's career, and since black pitchers are not historically very good, we can assume once again that Ruth's offensive stats would be greater then they are. Humorously, one can also say that Barry Bonds has benefited from not having to face black pitchers. What really good black pitchers has he had to face? By this logic Bonds' records should be suspect because there are so few American blacks playing Major League Baseball. What difference does it make if blacks are barred from the game due to segregation or don?t play the game due to disinterest � the result is the same � none of all those (supposedly) superior black pitchers that would have deflated offensive stats.
Some would say that the absence of hispanic players is also a cause of inflated stats since there are at lease SOME good hispanic pitchers. Not in 1930 however. The areas that produce hispanic players were lightly populated and were dirt poor. This is another feature of the ridiculousness of revisionist history � expecting present day circumstances to be the same in the long ago past. Perhaps one day a race of aliens will come to earth and be good at baseball. Will that change the validity of Barry Bonds' records?
The conspicuous lack of quality black pitchers puts in question another dubious aspect of revisionist history ?- the Negro Leagues. We are constantly bombarded by tales of the greatness of Negro League players. Today, any remaining living players from that era are treated like heroes and we end up with players of dubious talent being welcomed into the Hall of Fame on a periodic basis.
The real truth of the Negro Leagues is so embarrassing that it is amazing that revisionists even bring it up. It is only through the fear of modern pro-black forces that the history of the Negro Leagues can even be taken seriously. Josh Gibson: 800 homers. Sure. Why not 1,000? Who will ever know? Most of the games he played in were basically exhibitions against the local team. No one kept any serious statistics. Teams came and went. Players changed teams during the game. It was a joke by any standard of the word "league." Baseball vaudeville would be more accurate. But who in the media can risk speaking the truth without the racial police destroying his career?
So we have to endure tall tales of the Negro Leagues in which they were a black version of the National League and not what they really were, a black version of a softball beer league. Compare this to the stats for the pre-1900 professional baseball leagues. There is a box score for every one of those games. Complete stats can be found on players from the National Association from over 120 years ago! I can tell you to the number how many homeruns Jim O'Rourke hit in 1880 (6). We have no idea how many homeruns Josh Gibson hit in 1941. Of course to criticize blacks for sloppy record keeping is getting too close to other sensitive issues about African Americans so that discussion is off the table also and instead we have to treat the propaganda as truth instead of the pure fabrication it really is.
There are many other examples. Olympic records, pre-Negro, basketball pre-Negro, football pre-Negro, all derided as inferior because the caste system that fills those events with blacks was not in existence 60 years ago. Thus everything that was all white or nearly so is re-written as inferior, everything that is nearly all black, or nearly so, is considered better. We hear it every day: that the ruinous culture that we must wade through today is somehow better then the gleaming, glittering America of the early to mid-1900's. Only in America can the bad be made into good and the good be considered bad. Welcome to the 21st century!
J.B. CASH
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Mr. Cash writes for Caste Football.
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