Baseball Stuff I'm Depressed About
Come for the Pirates replacing Roberto Clemente's name and number with a third-rate liquor ad, stay for the Dodgers visiting the president who thinks Jackie Robinson is "DEI."
Hi friends-
I wasn’t even going to write about any of this today because I woke up despondent, demoralized, and depressed. I’ve been railing against corporate greed at the expense of human decency my entire career, and sometimes it feels like I’m shouting into the void because nothing will change. Most of my colleagues stay silent because they are afraid it will render them unemployable in corporate media—and they’re right.
But I’ve never been able to hide my feelings, for better or worse. I can’t not write about these things because too many of you have messaged me asking for my thoughts on both of these situations, and weaseling out on speaking out about standing up for what’s right because I’m afraid I’ll lose money is how this country got into this current mess.
So here goes:
In 2021, the Pirates placed the number 21 along with CLEMENTE on the right field wall to honor their greatest player in franchise history. (The outfield wall is also 21 feet tall in his honor).
Over the weekend, a fan noticed the Clemente tribute had already been removed, and had been replaced with an advertisement for gross booze (ice tea and vodka in a can, anyone?).
These photos spread on social media over the weekend like measles in west Texas, and the Pirates were quick to issue a groveling apology. "We did not intend to disrespect the legacy of Roberto Clemente by adding the advertisement to the pad in right field," Pirates president Travis Williams said in a statement.
Oh yeah, Travis? What did you intend to do?
"When we added the advertisement to the pad, it was an oversight not to keep the No. 21 logo,” he continued. “This is ultimately on me, not anyone else in the organization. It was an honest mistake. We will be adding the No. 21 logo back to the pad."
Williams added: "We want to make sure that the Clemente family understands that we intended no disrespect to their father. We look forward to continuing our relationship with the Clemente family and apologize to them and our fans for our honest mistake."
The fact that the Pirates had removed the tribute to Clemente was news to Clemente’s family. So was Williams’ insistence that the Pirates had any relationship with the children of their most beloved and respected player in franchise history, whatsoever.
Roberto Clemente’s son fired back with his own statement:
….”We have always been open to building a sincere and lasting partnership with the Pirates….”
OK first of all: Roberto Clemente Sr. has been dead for 53 years. The fact that the Pirates do not have a meaningful relationship with his family means it’s never going to happen, and you wonder which side screwed this up so badly (I have a guess!).
Second, there is absolutely NO way that some poor stadium worker went rogue and put the dumb alcohol ad over the Clemente tribute with none of the higher-ups noticing. That’s not how any of this works. Stadium signage is sold and scrutinized at the highest level of each org because it = $$$$. Location of the ads is negotiated with the price. And while the buck may stop with Williams for this “mistake,” one wonders what kind of organizational culture this man is fostering for the ROBERTO CLEMENTE tribute to be 86’d in the first place, without someone going straight to the top and saying “THIS IS A HORRIBLE IDEA THAT WILL MAKE NATIONAL NEWS ONCE OUR FANS (CUSTOMERS) SEE IT.”
This is an organization that has not signed a free agent to a multiyear contract since Iván Nova in 2016, despite the fact that it collects tens of millions of dollars in baseball welfare every year from rich teams like the Dodgers and Yankees. It’s not like they were going to take the revenue they made from that Surfside liquor ad and pay any good players. That coin was just going to go into owner Bob Nutting’s pockets. (If Nutting doesn’t lose any sleep over not signing a free agent to a multiyear deal for nine years, he certainly won’t bat an eye about a disappeared Roberto Clemente sign).
The move shows contempt for not only Clemente’s family but for the Yinzers who still show up to the ballpark to support a team that is going nowhere. Williams and Nutting may as well have shrugged and said “Let them eat Primanti brothers.”
Here’s video of Bob “No Shame” Nutting walking through the concourse on opening day to chants of “Sell the team!” as a treat for you all.
The Pittsburgh Pirates are one of the most storied franchises in the National League. The careless men who run it are not fit to scrub the mud out of Clemente’s spikes.
I’m going to lose subscribers I can’t afford to lose for speaking out about this stuff instead of “sticking to sports.” If you would like to support me please do so now by taking out a paid subscription:
Not to be outdone in the “Disgrace The Memory of the Franchise Icon” department, the Los Angeles Dodgers today visited Donald Trump in the White House fresh on the heels of his administration erasing the story of Jackie Robinson’s military service from the Department of Defense website in an anti-DEI purge last month.
In a statement sent by the Pentagon at 1:24 p.m. ET Wednesday, press secretary John Ullyot cited Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in saying "DEI is dead at the Defense Department" and said the Department of Defense was "pleased by the rapid compliance" that led to the erasing of stories on Robinson, Navajo Code Talkers and Ira Hayes, one of six Marines who raised the American flag at Iwo Jima.
Ullyot’s comment smearing Robinson should have been the end of any talk of the Dodgers visiting the White House to celebrate the World Series championship they won last fall. Period. Full stop. This wasn’t a mistake. According to Passan, before the story on Robinson's service was restored due to widespread outrage, the URL had redirected to one that added the letters "dei" in front of "sports-heroes."
We all know that what Ullyot said is exactly how the Trump administration feels about Black people and women: that any accomplishments they may have achieved are due to affirmative action and not equivalent to the accomplishments of white men.
I thought we had all agreed that Jackie Robinson is an American hero. I was wrong.
Today, the Dodgers slapped their fans in the face by visiting the White House to shake the hands of men who think Jackie is merely “DEI” anyway.
Maybe they are as exhausted as we all are from nine years of culture wars and everyone at each other’s throats and chose the path of least resistance. Maybe the organization’s leaders decided to bend the knee like Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and various law firms around the country because they are afraid of Trump retaliating against them financially.
Mookie Betts, not a fan of Trump due to Trump’s racism, did not go to the White House after the Red Sox won in 2018. He said he regretted that the story of that day became about his personal politics, not about the Red Sox World Championship. “'No matter what I say or what I do, people are gonna take it as political,' Betts said this week, after announcing he would go to the White House this year. 'This is not about me; I don’t want anything to be about me. It comes with the territory, being Black in America in a situation like this. It’s a tough spot to be in.”
Obviously, Betts could have chosen to sit out this visit, but he would have been the only one. The team somehow decided that the best way to handle this situation was….. to have 100% attendance at this event, even though Donald Trump does not have close to 100% approval from the team’s roster. The big brains who run the Dodgers decided that if they treated the White House visit as a glorified pizza party instead of legitimizing a man who just tried to erase Jackie Robinson’s legacy that it wasn’t political at all.
Of course it was political.
And extremely painful to those of us who grew up rooting for this team, and thinking that they cared about being welcoming to players and fans of all stripes. That’s all eyewash now. They chose profits over people, like how every multibillion dollar corporation ultimately does.
Look, I think the whole tradition of visiting the White House after you win a championship is stupid. Blake Treinen, mega MAGA, did not go pal around with Joe Biden in the White House in 2021 when the Dodgers went to celebrate their 2020 World Series title and I did not care. I don’t think any athlete should be forced to go shake the hand of a politician whose policies and beliefs upset them. Judging from the photos released today, it’s clear that some Dodger players could barely hide their disdain for Trump, and it’s galling that this turned into some kind of peer-pressure “Nothing to see here!” field trip when players were allowed to opt out of the Biden visit (again, as they should have been!)
The Dodger C-suite hates bad headlines more than anything. Some consultant must have calculated that 100% attendance at the White House would have led to fewer headlines than 5 or 6 guys—including the future Hall of Famer Betts—opting out. At press time, Trump is so radioactive right now due to tanking the economy because he doesn’t understand tariffs that there’s no mention of the Dodgers visiting him on the front pages of either ESPN or MLB.com.
Dylan Hernández of the Los Angeles Times wrote the best piece I’ve seen about this all week, and you should read it in its entirety here.
The Dodgers have accepted an invitation from President Trump to visit the White House on April 7, the franchise of Jackie Robinson bending the knee to hateful forces similar to the ones they challenged when breaking their sport’s color barrier.,” Hernandez wrote.
How pathetic. How spineless. More than anything, how hypocritical.
And how devastating. Both the Pirates and Dodgers showed this week that they are more than willing to spit in the faces of the icons they love to claim as their own when it suits them financially, when they can get a pat on the back for celebrating non-white players, or when it means not rocking the boat.
The story the Department of Defense deleted from its website about Jackie Robinson included his being court-martialed for refusing to move to the back of a military bus because he was Black. This happened in 1942, thirteen years before Rosa Parks was arrested for doing the same thing. This is an administration that wants people to believe that racism does not exist, and that slavery and the Jim Crow south are not a fundamental (and humiliating) part of this country’s history.
The Dodgers disgraced Robinson’s memory by yukking it up with Trump today.
Next week they will celebrate Jackie Robinson Day with all pomp and circumstance of an organization on the correct side of history. They will pat themselves on the back for being the team righteous enough to break the color barrier, like they can have this both ways.
They can’t.
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It’s so absolutely disappointing and disgraceful the Dodgers visited a President that would be happy to let LA burn.
Molly: Keep speaking the truth. I appreciate it very much.