Originally Posted May 2016
I LOVE this story because it is a “make you think” piece…. In the early days of Saturday Night Live, Garrett Morris did a reoccurring bit involving a Hispanic baseball player that EVERYBODY has heard. The punch-line catch-phrase has become so over-used to be trite.
“Beezball been berry berry good to me!”
Arguably, it was THE most memorable bit in Garrett Morris’ career.The “joke” was based on the “broken-pidgin English” of the character. Had it been a Caucasian player saying …. “Baseball has been very good to me” it would have been a bomb. Garrett Morris could not get away with that today in a society where PC-police lurk behind every potted palm. ….
and that might be “a good thing”.
Normally I oppose ANY implementation of “political correctness” because it usually involves nitwit liberals overreacting to a no-biggie situation simply to create CHAOS.
This situation, in my opinion, is a legitimate time to cause “foul”.
Recently a brouhaha developed between a Houston Astros baseball player – a Dominican – Carlos Gomez – and a Houston newspaper reporter.
The reporter quoted Gomez word-for-word in his answer to a question. See the LINK below. Gomez uses “pidgin English” as his second language. The quote when it appeared in print came across like a Garrett Morris impersonation….
The question now is ….
Should the reporter and/or his copy editors have corrected the quote into “proper English” rather than emphasizing his improper grammar.
What Gomez meant in his answer was obvious. It was not a provocative topic… but seeing his quote as he spoke it…. screamed
“this guy, making millions of dollars playing baseball in America, can’t even “speak good English”.
One of the BFDs in MLB these days is the “lack of diversity” as relates to American-born African-Americans. There are like less than 10% of total MLB player rosters.
Most of the black-skinned players you see are Latin American, Dominican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central American. There may soon be more Asians (Koreans and Japanese) players in MLB than “African-Americans”. The reason why this is the case is a topic for another day.
Yes, I know one could make reverse claims about The NBA. Lets not go there today.
Many clubs employ “professional translators” to be go-betweens with their Latin and Asian players. In the Gomez case, a translator would have rephrased Gomez’ answer into proper English. Gomez’ doesn’t use a translator because his “broken English” is considered good enough to communicate in normal conversation. But it wasn’t in this case.
So…. What do YOU think?
Was Gomez’s broken-English germane to the story or should the media editors have corrected his grammar on their own?
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CARLOS GOMEZ SAYS CHRONICLE COLUMNIST USED HIS QUOTES “TO RIDICULE ME”
Posted by Andrew Bucholtz on May 14, 2016 11:00
Houston Astros’ center fielder Carlos Gomez is still upset about the way Houston Chronicle columnist Brian T. Smith quoted him 
in a piece last week.
In that column, which is largely Smith saying Gomez hasn’t produced the way fans had expected following the team’s midseason trade for him last year and also includes lines like “We’ve witnessed the dabs, team-first taunts and me-first prancing all across the field,” Smith quotes Gomez as saying:
“For the last year and this year, I not really do much for this team. The fans be angry.” They be disappointed.”
Gomez spoke to ESPN Radio’s Max Bretos and Marly Rivera on their Max y Marly show Thursday, and said Smith’s behavior demeaned him:
“That person knew exactly what he was writing, and he did it intentionally to ridicule me,” Gomez said. “… I do not wish for him to lose his job because he may be a father and have a family, but he should have given a better thought process before writing such comments. Because [he] not only [hurt] a Dominican, but every Latino who makes an effort [to learn] the language.”
“With all due respect to what [reporters] do, they deserve respect, but people like him who want to f— with you because they can f— with you, they should be suspended or fined, just as someone on TV is fined who says something inappropriate,” Gomez told Rivera. “People like this should be fined as well.”
The issue isn’t Gomez denying that he said this quote this way, but that he believes Smith purposefully didn’t clean up his English (which is his second language) and instead purposefully framed his unadulterated quote in a way that made him look dumb. Gomez goes on to say that journalists should be cleaning up his quotes:
READ MORE….
