So Neither Derek Jeter Nor Obama “Count”

BobLee
April11/ 2013

Major League Baseball has a new contrived CRISIS not involving PEDs or the designated hitter.  A contrived CRISIS in which Derek Jeter doesn’t “count”. ……… I did not watch 30 seconds of the NCAA Finals.  I wasn’t protesting anything or making a statement.  I did not know who won until Tuesday morning…… How much awareness of such a MAJOR event is necessary for one to function in daily life?……DJeter

If Wichita State had made the finals, MAYBE I would have watched due to the “Cinderella factor”.  ……. maybe.   I did watch assorted games over the month especially if it involved local teams or some especially compelling story line, but I knew if anything “earthshaking” happened it would be repeated ad infinitum for me to catch.

I have nothing against Rick Pitino or either of the institutions involved……. How many different colored Rise To The Occasion t-shirts are there?……  How many times can we see “the kid with the broken leg”?…….  Why would Michigan fans embrace individuals whose unrepentant illegal actions 20 years ears ago caused the school to suffer assorted penalties and institutional embarrassment?…… Do you  remember the name of the FGCU’s coach wife?

Did I watch the Women’s Finals?  Uhhh, No.

The Michigan kid’s long 3 against Kansas to force overtime would be my personal 2013 M-Madness Moment.  Neither State, UNC nor Duke’s participation merited any historical footnotes.

I haven’t watched Survivor since several episodes of Year One….. aka “Richard the naked gay guy”.   I haven’t spent twenty minutes total watching Dancing With The Stars since Stacey Keibler in Year One.   90% of my sum total of American Idol viewing involved Scotty McCreary two years ago…… We’re not a Neilsen family for a very valid reason.

Beyond our audiobooks, we are content with DVRings of Justified, Suits, Nashville, Castle, Good Wife and 2-3 others.  Blondie and Kid have some unexplainable interest in “Pretty Little Liars” and then, of course, there is Mad Men….. which has moved well beyond “cult status”.   I wonder – how much overlap there is with Mad Men’s audience and March Madness?

How many Turner Classic Movie devotees can name all three Kardashians?

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Major League Baseball has a New Dilemma that does not involve PEDs, the designated hitter or the demise of the stirrup sock.   Commissioner Bud Selig is bending over and grabbing his ankles because…… the race-baiters say “there are not enough (pure bred) African-Americans on major league baseball teams”.

Rompin stompin race-baiters are nothing new in America.  It is a recognized profession now.  My alma mater probably offers a degrees in it.   But this time it is “different”.   This time “black / minority” is not a synonym for African-American.  This time “skin color” is not the issue….. pure ancestral heritage is the issue.

Scenario:   Two boys grow up next door to one another in an inner city “housing project”.   One is a “pure breed” African American (Lord only knows what THAT means!) and the other’s parents immigrated to America from Puerto Rico or Dominican Republic.   Both boys may have the same “skin color”.  Both families deal with the exact same socio-economic deterrents to “success”.   The lures of a life of gangs, drugs, crime and terminal existence on “the welfare plantation” are a grim reality to both.

The kid with a Caribbean bloodline gets exposed to baseball thru some sort of neighborhood program and exhibits the physical skills and passion for the game.  He develops those skills and gets noticed by birddog scouts.   He “signs” out of high school and moves into the development pipeline for a career in baseball.

His next-door neighbor – aka “the pure-bred African-American” – lacks the skills or passion for baseball thru no fault of his own and his life takes a different path.

Roads diverging into a yellow wood…. making all the difference. Welllll, not according to the race-baiters.

The non-Caucasian ratios in MLB are apparently OK….. but unless a brown/black player is AfAm….. i.e. not Caribbean – Central American heritage.  He doesn’t count for MLB being all-inclusive…… say the race-baiters.

Unlike the NBA and NFL, the road to “the bigs” traditionally involves several years of ignominious toiling in a Bull Durham environment.  Regardless of skin color or citizenship of one’s grandparents….. 99% of MLB players spend several years honing their craft in the quite unglamorous obscurity of the minor leagues.  For every Bryce Harper or Mike Trout there are 100s of “might-have beens” faux-phenoms who can’t hit 98 mph heat or can’t throw 90+ heat

….. and end up being celebrities on local softball teams while retelling stories of their short-circuited careers.  The success pyramid simply narrows the higher up one travels…. as in any profession. There are less than 1,000 jobs “playing MLB”.

If you have followed this socio-cultural CRISIS over the past few years as it has smoldered, you know there are assorted other factors that play into all this.   Baseball has a different appeal.  It is not mano a mano combat.  It’s stars with a very few exceptions do not get the cross-marketing exposure of NBA and NFL stars.

ANY youngster envisioning “a career” in any professional sport faces incredibly overwhelming odds that he/she is good enough to compete against “the best of the best” in their chosen sport.   Every Junior High team – every Little League team – has “a star player” for whom that level of dominance over his peers will be his/her brightest shining moment.

67 March Madness teams with twelve players each = 750+ players.  Every “biscuit boy” on a March Madness team is a celebrity in some mini-universe of our celebrity-obsessed society.   But of those 700 players, fewer than 10% will ever draw a paycheck as a pro athlete.   Far fewer than 3-4% after the age of 25.

For every Dean Smith biscuit boy who had a cuppa coffee in pro leagues in places that don’t even rate UN membership….. the vast majority end up as water cooler usta-bees.  Hopefully transitioning their competitive urges into other occupations.

But back to our two boys in “the projects”.   The race-baiters don’t count the boy with Caribbean heritage despite the fact that both boys “looked the same” and had the same opportunities / lack of.  They want assurances that MLB will create special “development tracts” for boys with “pure” AfAm bloodlines….. not bloodlines diluted by miscegenation…… i.e. Derek Jeter doesn’t count in this latest CRISIS.

Which…. applying the same standards beyond sports – America has not yet had a “pure-bred” AfAm POTUS.

FYI…. MLB has only had ONE MIDGET – Eddie Gaedel in 1951.  Albie Pearson and Freddie Patek “don’t count”.

I’m not sure #42 Jackie Robinson would agree with this latest CRISIS.
I’m pretty sure not all of you will agree with my take on this.FCT2

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CONGRATULATIONS to BobLee BabeBuddy Nicole Comparato – appointed this week as Editor-In-Chief of The Daily Tar Heel for 2013-14.  Fabulous Comparato Twin Nicole’s twin sister Paige is Speaker of The UNC Student  Senate…… SA-LUTE to both FabCTs.  The Comparatos ROCK!

FWIW….. AgentPierce is ECSTATIC over both appointments which tells ya one reason we are both Big Fans of the FabCTs !!!!   ☺

Actually “Chancellor Comparato” has a nice ring to it !!!

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