Yankees: Jackie Robinson Day Is Counterproductive And Should Be Nixed

The Yankees, count ’em one by one, have how many Black Americans on their team at the moment? Two, three, I don’t know but not many. And there’s a good reason for it. But why do we take one day a year to highlight that fact, instead of taking meaningful action over the next 364 days?

The Yankees broke their color barrier when they introduced Elston Howard as their catcher to New York. Howard, much like Jackie Robinson, did all the right things and still managed to thrive in a nation that was afflicted with some serious prejudices.

Today, it can be argued that those same prejudices still exist even while the face of baseball has changed. Except that the change has not included Black Americans, who are still not as prevalent in the ranks of baseball as they once were.

And no one at the time could have predicted that ballplayers of Latin American descent would overtake Black Americans, as they have, and even threaten (God forbid) to overtake the percentage of Caucasian ballplayers shortly. And, I hope you understand I say that facetiously.

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You can count the number of blacks on most major league teams today, on one hand now.

The game has changed while Major League Baseball pretends that it’s still 1947. Most baseball fans recall Jackie Robinson in they same way they remember George Washington as a chapter in a history book. But virtually no one can remember with fervor and emotion what the impact of Robinson actually was., despite the valiant efforts of newspapers like the

This, despite the valiant efforts of newspapers like the New York Daily News yesterday, when they devoted four full pages to honor the man.

The trouble is that all the “honoring” is done by people I already thought were dead, like Larry King. And then there’s Lou Gossett Jr. and Jerry Reinsdorf, the owner of the White Sox and Chicago Bulls who was eleven years old when Robinson broke the color line.

And this at the same time that a kid on Jerome Avenue in the Bronx picks up a copy of the paper and says, “What, who?” The fact is that Major League Baseball puts on a dog and pony, one and done, show every year, seemingly hoping that a glaring problem will be solved.

Don’t showcase something that isn’t fixed yet. The “cure” for cancer is not news until it’s a cure for cancer.

When, at the same time, it’s going to take a year-round effort to turn around what’s already happened, which is the fact that young black Americans don’t play baseball, they play football and basketball. And at night, they tune into the WWE and not the YES Network.

Not only that but every time the Robinson day rolls around, it forces the few remaining black stars in the game, like Adam Jones and Curtis Granderson to feel like they need to make a Martin Luther King-like statement to the world. When in fact, maybe all they want to do that day is play the game on the schedule.

Granderson himself gives pause to the idea in a comment he made in the New York Daily News today:

"“We can stand here and talk about these things and immediately, people are going to have a reaction. Some people are going to agree, some people are going to disagree, but everybody is going to react,” Granderson said. “I just wonder if we are really listening to what each other is saying.”"

Like, what are we doing here? And what are the Yankees just as an example doing, although the same could be applied to every MLB team, this Wednesday, just to pick a day, for the kids who will be coming to play on the same sacred ground where the old Yankee Stadium stood to play either organized or unorganized baseball in the shadows of the new stadium?

Video Courtesy of the YES Network

Or, for that matter, any other day this summer. Black ballplayers have stepped up to the challenge, and Granderson is one of them having donated a whopping $5 million to the college he attended to build a baseball complex.

But they can’t do it all.

Don’t showcase something that isn’t fixed yet. The “cure” for cancer is not news until it’s a cure for cancer. Establishing a goal is one thing, and if that’s the sole purpose of players wearing #42 for one day, I guess that’s better than nothing. But dropping it and leaving it there for the next 364 days is detestable and it borders on a PR con game on the part of MLB.

In our back yard, it’s the Yankees. I don’t know what they are doing regarding supplying the kids in their backyard with balls, bats, and gloves, but I should be aware, and so should you.

The Yankees should be pumping that stuff out there every day as part of a campaign to introduce kids, who are right around the corner, to baseball. And maybe they are, and I just missed it somewhere in the fine print of their homepage, but I doubt it.

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Major League Baseball will have something to celebrate when it can say that it has turned the corner and players like Andrew McCutchen, are being signed by the truckload off playgrounds in inner cities across America.

Because on that day, but not before, it will truly be an honor for this generation to wear #42 on the backs of their uniform. But for now, the message is completely passing over at least this generation, and potentially others to come, until Black Americans become extinct in our National Pastime.