I like J.A. Adande, as a sports journalist. I remember him best as the straight man on Around the Horn, but in spite of his “role,” he was always a source of informative and insightful sports opinions, on the show and in the times that I’ve come across his writing on the internet throughout the years.
However, I don’t know it’s because it was for The Undefeated, an online rag that doesn’t hide its black bias, and he’s just trying to appeal to its target audience, or he’s deciding to waver from his modus operandi of logical and educated opinions; but his article about how “this isn’t the baseball he grew up watching because there aren’t enough black guys in it and the ones that are aren’t aren’t playing ‘black enough’ baseball” seems just so, so, so beneath a guy I’ve always held in regard for integrity and not needing to ever play the race card in order to look intelligent.
Basically, Adande says the Cincinnati Reds’ Billy Hamilton (a black player) runs down flyballs at the wall, is a fast runner and steals a lot of bases is playing “black baseball.”
By this logic, Mike Trout, Trea Turner and Kevin Pillar, are playing, black baseball. These are also guys who are very good outfielders who are capable of making plays at the wall and occasionally robbing some home runs, and they are also very fast runners who steal lots of bases. However, all three of them are white guys, thus negating Adande’s logic of what defines “black baseball,” and how absurd it is to associate such styles of play solely with the color of a player’s skin.
I understand Adande’s observations about how the game is most certainly nothing like it may have been when he was growing up when Rickey Henderson was stealing practically 100 bags a year, but the change in the style of the game has less to do with the dwindling number of blacks in baseball, as much as it has to do with the fact that the things that Adande is basically labeling as solely “black skills” are things that aren’t as strategically favored in today’s stat-driven, sabermetrically-friendly baseball.
In short, steals are now considered too risky and not worth the risk of giving up an out just for a single base. Unless a player has the raw foot speed of Billy Hamilton or Trea Turner, they do not have the perma-green light to steal at will, and even other good base thieves like Dee Gordon and Jose Altuve still have to be great at studying opposing pitchers in order to steal successfully.
Crashing into outfield walls in order to make plays on flyballs are also frowned upon these days, because baseball players today are pussies and get hurt way more frequently than back in Adande’s watching days. Players don’t want to get hurt, and the fans and management of these players don’t want getting hurt, so more often than naught, players are instructed to concede the double or homerun rather than end up on the disabled list for leg, hip or rib injuries from smashing into outfield walls just to make a highlight.
Adande isn’t wrong about the numbers of black players continuing to dwindle, but his supposed black baseball is dwindling, because the things that he claims makes baseball black, are simply considered risks often not worth taking, either for strategic or health related reasons.
It has nothing to do with race, but everything to do with today’s strategies.
C’mon, Adande, you’re better than this.
