Perhaps the greatest danger of living on a one-way street is the conditioned reflex to only look in one direction.
This limited perspective has brought our leisure sports, like everything else around here, to the brink of loathing.
Consider the many contemporary social activists and their naïve supporters who hold fast to their rash beliefs and portray Caitlin Clark as a third or fourth generation representative of the Ku Klux Klan.
Why not? Not only is Clark a popular, white basketball player who brings the sport much-needed TV attention and revenue (10-16 year old girls love Clark like they love Taylor Swift), but Clark’s WNBA team is the Indiana Fever. KKK sympathizer Edward Jackson was recently elected governor of Indiana in 1924, 100 years ago. See!
Many of the most active activists can be expected to engage in one-sided actions where the media attention far exceeds their credibility. Therefore, if you ask the right questions of those who protest against unfounded prejudice or racism, you will easily be accused of unfounded prejudice or racism. Thus, unfounded or misguided activism can certainly be used as both a cudgel and a shield.
This media offensive is adapted from Al Sharpton’s timeless playbook and is nearly foolproof. Jemele Hill knows the game and he plays it.
Hill, a former ESPN regular who made race her game, knows what’s good for her single-themed business: Given that the WNBA is 70 percent black and roughly a third gay (Clark is straight), Hill argued that “it would be very naive to not say that race and her sexuality have something to do with her popularity.”
Hill added: “A lot of people are happy about Caitlin’s success, including the players. It’s had a massive impact on the game. But it’s also a bit problematic in that it speaks to the value and marketability of the players who are already there.”
Ok, so that’s not such an outlandish statement, but doesn’t it work both ways?
Are the players happy with Clarke’s performance?
During Saturday’s game, Clark was ambushed on the court by opponent Chennedi Carter, who threw her to the floor. Carter’s teammate and Clark’s college nemesis, Angel Reese, jumped for joy from her seat on the bench. Was this a sign of the players’ joy for Clark or their resentment toward her?
What is the outrage about? National television? Maximum exposure? Is it reasonable to credit at least part of Clark’s success in the WNBA to the new luxury of charter flights for all players? Or should the travel be separated to fit Hill’s argument?
After the game, Carter said she was “not going to answer any of Caitlin Clark’s questions” and that was her right to free speech.
But did it not “matter” for Hill that Carter and Reese were black? Or that one day it might just be Carter, who was suspended for challenging a former WNBA teammate, also black, to a fight?
“We’d all be very naive if we didn’t say race played a role,” Hill said of Clark, but that’s hard to say considering what happened after Hill was taken down and Reese jumped for joy. Is it just a one-way street?
A few years ago, while appearing on ESPN, Hill did a dance of joy while reporting that black rapper Kendrick Lamar had been selected to perform at a college football game.
Given that Lamar has recorded similarly boastful yet vulgar, racially and misogynistic “songs” like, “If I gotta smack some black ass, I’m gonna make it look sexy. If I gotta smack some bitch hard, I’m gonna make it look sexy,” I asked Hill in print why, as a self-respecting, outspoken black woman, she was willing to promote Lamar.
Her response was in a tweet: “Honestly, I’m honored that Mashnick wrote about me. I hope to be that cranky one day.”
That’s fine. I’m in a bad mood. Watching ESPN makes me especially bad.
But she never answered the question, and she still hasn’t. That’s life’s one-way street.
Her response was in a tweet: “Honestly, I’m honored that Mashnick wrote about me. I hope to be that cranky one day.”
That’s fine. I’m in a bad mood. Watching ESPN makes me especially bad.
But she never answered the question, and she still hasn’t. That’s life’s one-way street.
You probably don’t know the whole story yet.
Homicide detectives will be the first to say, “That can’t be a coincidence.”
On Tuesday, the same day that MLB banned little-known Padres player Tucupita Marcano for life for betting on the team despite being injured and not playing for the Pirates last season, Hall of Famer Rob Manfred announced that superstar Shohei Ohtani had been completely exonerated as a suspect in baseball gambling.
Sorry, but I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it so easily that I just accept the claim that “he is innocent” and let everything blow over.
MLB owes us an answer: How was Ohtani’s former friend and interpreter, Mizuhara Ippei, able to establish millions of dollars of credit and $17 million in debt to bookmakers without significant assistance from a very wealthy and influential backer/debt services manager?
Or maybe Ohtani’s former friend had another friend with a $700 million contract?
Also on Tuesday, three minor leaguers were suspended for betting on baseball, but from their perspective and the perspective of the bettors, it seems more likely they were suspended for complying with MLB’s relentless commercial solicitation to gamble on baseball.
According to MLB, Marcano, who was given a life sentence, “ultimately lost all of his bets involving the Pirates and won just 4.3 percent of all MLB-related bets.”
So one or both of two things are true: 1) This helps explain why legitimate sportsbooks, including those affiliated with MLB, promote parlay bets so enthusiastically, because they’re super silly bets, and 2) Marcano’s publicist was Mike Francesa.
just Go a little outside
On Saturday’s SNY broadcast of the Diamondbacks-Mets game, Francisco Lindor called the first pitch of the bottom of the first inning a ball. There was an obvious reason for this: The pitch was high and outside. Gary Cohen could have just said “ball one,” or he didn’t need to say anything at all, because it was so self-evident. Instead, he called it “non-competitive pitch, ball one.” Really? Absolutely.
Reader Michael Balduino responded to Rob Manfred confusing Negro League statistics with MLB statistics by saying, “History is meant to be learned from, not revised, and history should not be used as a public relations stunt.”
Mets manager Carlos Mendoza makes lead-busting, game-losing pitching substitutions as if he was trained by manager Aaron Boone. … What’s that? Don’t tell me.
Television networks are very sensitive about issues of race, religion, and ethnicity, so good questions are not asked and interesting tidbits are not told. There is a forward named Evan Rodriguez on the NHL Panthers. Who is this player named Scott Gomez? Rodriguez What are you doing in the Stanley Cup Final? A: He was born in Toronto and his father is from Portugal.
On Saturday against the Mets, Arizona’s Christian Walker hit a grand slam. Although Walker appeared to delay his run to first base (SNY didn’t broadcast his full run), Walker had a chance to hit a perfectly modern three-run single.
Tuesday marked the anniversary of the massacre of pro-democracy protesters in China’s Tiananmen Square in 1989. The total number killed is estimated to be anywhere from hundreds to thousands. Nike, Adam Silver, Rob Manfred, Roger Goodell, team owners, and outspoken pro stars like LeBron James all aligned themselves with the Chinese Communist Party and ignored this horrific event.
