When it comes to baseball’s ethnic tensions, the problems run deeper than bat flip
*When the current MLB season began, nearly 30 percent of the players were Latino. When there are bench-clearing brawls, as there are in professional baseball, the Latino players involved are called “antagonists.” There’s more going on there than the use of a word. VL
By Chris Lamb, The Conversation
In Game 5 of the American League Division Series (ALDS), Toronto Blue Jays outfielder Jose Bautista faced Texas Rangers reliever Sam Dyson in the seventh inning with two runners on base, two outs and the game tied 3-3.
[pullquote][tweet_dis]When Latinos followed blacks into baseball in the 1950s and 1960s, sportswriters quoted them in pidgin English and anglicized their names[/tweet_dis].[/pullquote]With the count 1-1, Bautista turned on a 97 mph fastball, hitting it into the upper deck of the Rogers Centre. Bautista tossed his bat into the air: a triumphant moment for the 34-year-old all-star – the biggest swing of his career, and the second-biggest for the franchise, after Joe Carter’s 1993 World Series-winning home run.
But after the game, Dyson seemed angrier about the bat flip than giving up the home run.
“Jose needs to calm that down,” Dyson said. “Just kind of respect the game a little more.”
Dyson’s comments came a couple of weeks after USA Today sportswriter Jorge L Ortiz asked San Diego Padres pitcher Bud Norris about a study that said the majority of bench-clearing incidents in Major League Baseball involved foreign players. Norris said that foreign players – particularly Latinos – needed to show more respect for the game.
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[Photo courtesy of The Junior College Newspaper]
