75 Years Later, Jackie Robinson in the Eye of Controversy

It is one of the strangest baseball scandals to come along in years: a mix of basepath brio, accusations of racism, and reference to one of the giants of the game’s past. Even as the brouhaha between Tim Anderson of the White Sox and Josh Donaldson of the Yankees is thoroughly a creature of the ballfield, it also illustrates how America’s pastime is not walled off from the country’s cultural politics.In a tilt between the White Sox and Yankees on Saturday, Mr. Donaldson, the Bronx Bomber third basemen, repeatedly called Mr. Anderson, the shortstop for the Pale Hose, who is black, “Jackie.” The reference was to Jackie Robinson, the immortal Dodger who broke baseball’s color barrier in 1947. Mr. Anderson reacted with indignance, benches cleared, and a brawl nearly broke out.The flareup comes during a season that marks the 75th anniversary of Robinson’s epochal appearance with the Brooklyn Dodgers after a starry turn as a football and basketball prodigy at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a spell in the Negro Leagues. In a postgame interview, the manager of the White Sox, Tony La Russa, called the remarks “a racist comment,” an assessment seconded by Mr. Anderson. Newsday reports that Major League Baseball is “concerned” about the comments and intends to investigate. Mr. Donaldson somewhat apologized, telling reporters, “Obviously, he deemed it disrespectful. And if he did, I apologize.”However, there is a backstory. Mr. Anderson called himself “Jackie” in an interview from 2019, comparing his own prowess on the diamond to that icon’s. “I kind of feel like today’s Jackie Robinson,” he opined in a Sports Illustrated feature that focused in part on the isolation he felt as a black player. In subsequent years, Mr. Donaldson had used that moniker to refer to Mr. Anderson, seemingly without incident. That ended Saturday. While it seems clear that Mr. Donaldson was mocking Mr. Anderson, many are wondering if the latter’s self-appellation precludes standing to level accusations of nefarious intent. Mr. Donaldson himself is no stranger to controversy, once ripping his now teammate Gerrit Cole as overly reliant on slathering foreign substances on the ball to make it spin and dive, a variety of gamesmanship that baseball outlawed last year. Now that they both don pinstripes, Mr. Cole places those comments “in the rearview mirror.”“Jackie-gate” transpires against the backdrop of a sport undergoing a demographic shift. The Institute for Diversity in Sports finds that only 7 percent of major league ballplayers today are black, a decline from 18 percent in 1991. Global Sports Matters reports that in 1973, that number was 24 percent. Currently, more than 57 percent of major leaguers are white and nearly 32 percent are Hispanic.Trash talking has always been just as much a part of the sport as the thwack of the bat. One of baseball’s greatest managers, Leo Durocher, rode umpires so hard from the dugout that he earned the nickname “the Lip.” Just as there are unwritten rules that govern the game’s folkways, there are unsaid norms about the genre and pitch of insults. If Mr. Donaldson overstepped them, it is because he failed to see that not baseball, but the world around it, has changed. The sport has always claimed to be a window out from society’s ills, but it frequently is a mirror, reflecting its preoccupations. Racism, steroids, gambling, and greed have all marred the game, even as excellence, boldness, and ingenuity have uplifted it.The baseball scribe Roger Angell, who passed away last week at 101, wrote that “the stuff about the connection between baseball and American life, the ‘Field of Dreams’ thing, gives me a pain.” Fair enough. Transgressing the rules of America in 2022, however, could soon leave Mr. Donaldson in a world of hurt in the form of a fine or suspension.Already, the Yankees have felt the sting. On Sunday, Mr. Anderson clubbed a three-run home run and placed a finger on his lips to silence the Yankee Stadium faithful. He took his sweet time rounding the bases.

75 Years Later, Jackie Robinson in the Eye of Controversy

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