Re: [Marxism] On Barry and Baseball

[dave.walters@xxxxxxxxxxx]

Jack, I respect you opinion even though you are a Marlins fan. I can let that 
go. You guys are kind of like
 the south of the Mason-Dixon line (which would include Baltimore, BTW) version 
of the White Sox. No,
 that's not fair, you guys actually won a couple of World-Series. But you just 
got that "expansion team 
stink" all over ya. Really :)

Anyway, I think you are very wrong if you think that the latent or overt racism 
one sees among *some* 
US baseball fans is what is driving the attacks on Bonds. This is what I get 
from what you wrote. The fans
 are lead around, by and large, by sports writers, and then, when the story 
gets big enough, like the
 McGuire scandels or all the others, then editorial and front page editors. If 
the papers put this in small
 boxes on the sports page of every page, it would hardly be a blip and all the 
signs with asteriks, etc,
 would go away. They lead, fans follow.

That white fans are racist, or not, I only go to a few games a year, is, 
really, besides the point. As I 
stated before, every big scandel in baseball over performance enhancing drugs 
has been pretty even
 across the board, it seems to me, with regards to race and climbs higher in 
visability as the player
 involved hits the general higher achivement of that player. You'd have to show 
me that the reporting for
 these previous scandals involving white players of *lesser* stature was 
substantially less than it is for
 Bonds. I don't think it was.

For the person who wrote that Hank Aaron was some kind of do-nothing flake when 
he broke Ruth's
 record, then you don't see the obvious differences. Bonds gets attention in 
the press, which gets non-
Giant's fns a handel to dis the guy, publically, non-racist for the most part. 
Aaron gets death threats, the
 *constant use of the N-word* at evey game he played at, shit thrown at him at 
every game, harrasement
 of the kind that came close to the kind  Jackie Robertson got when he played 
for the Dodgers. And
 people think Bonds was the victim of a racist onslaught? Gawwwd. I think 
Danielle is making this too
 much about her, but she's essentially correct on this, IMHO.

David
PS...my vote for best player *ever* is Satchel Paige, if you include the 
majority of his career 
in the Negro Leagues. 
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