Civil Rights Game in Memphis

[Nimajneb]

Baseball’s Civil Rights Game is on now in Memphis, featuring the Indians and Cardinals.

Major League Baseball will stage its inaugural "Civil Rights Game" this coming March 31, when the defending World Series champion St. Louis Cardinals play the Cleveland Indians in an exhibition game at AutoZone Park in Memphis, the home of the National Civil Rights Museum and the city where Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968.
The 5:30 p.m. ET game, expected to annually precede the opening of the regular season, will be broadcast live on ESPN, and is planned to culminate a day during which baseball will celebrate the nation's civil rights movement.

The Official Site of Major League Baseball: News: Major League Baseball News

Jimmie Lee Solomon, MLB's senior vice president of baseball operations, has been working tirelessly on details of the event since it was formally announced in December at the Winter Meetings.
"I'm very nervous, of course, but I'm very confident we'll put on a fantastic show," Solomon said. "We'll make baseball proud, we'll make the world proud, and we'll teach a lot of things people need to know about baseball's place in the civil rights movement."
Baseball has long been considered to have foreshadowed that movement. The sport was re-integrated on April 15, 1947, when Jackie Robinson played his first game for the Brooklyn Dodgers. That act came about 60 years after African-Americans were barred from the Major Leagues and more than a decade before U.S. public schools were fully integrated and African-Americans were admitted into what were then all-white public universities in the South.

The Official Site of Major League Baseball: News: Major League Baseball News

There’s no denying that the treatment of race in the history of professional baseball and in the effort to integrate black players into the major leagues is evocative of the broader struggle of the Civil Rights Movement. Anything MLB can do to call attention to race relations in a meaningful way should be encouraged, and the charitable aspects of this game and event are commendable in and of themselves. Baseball is, in my opinion, frequently given a solemnity and mystique in modern society and culture that it does not wholly deserve. For all the respect that is given to “America’s” pastime, we see it torn down when loud headlines target steroid scandals and ticket prices, DUIs and fiscal disparity. I imagine everyone here has a “soft spot” in their heart for the game, but I imagine most hold it in a place either long in the past or, perhaps, from playing the game or watching the game in a form MLB seems to have lost from time to time. (My personal pinnacle as a fan had to be the ’95 playoffs between Seattle and New York, coming back to win the final 3 games of the 5-game series… best times in little league would be caught between winning the intermediate level title, or my nonchalance when a baserunner tried to knock me off the plate – he still hasn’t touched home!).

A panel discussion preceded today’s game…

Ogletree posed the questions and kept the conversation moving, asking at one point what could be done to draw African American players into the game. Despite numerous inner-city programs, plus the one-year-old baseball academy in Compton, Calif., the panel determined that MLB is going to have to do more.
According to figures presented by the panelists, only eight percent of the players on the 40-man rosters of the 30 clubs are currently African American.
"It's going to take a multi-tiered approach," said Winfield, who played 22 seasons with six teams and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2001. "It's going to take a partnership that hasn't existed yet in MLB between baseball and the players. A better platform has to be utilized to get present-day players to reach the kids.

The Official Site of Major League Baseball: News: Major League Baseball News

Addressing the task of meaningful community outreach would do a lot to convince me that MLB still holds meaning and importance to a society worthy of its reputation.

[Nimajneb]

I might pose several questions to thread readers:

What do you think of the game and the significance of baseball in the context of the civil rights movement? Personally, I think that an exhibition game was a poor choice with respect to pulling in a broader audience, and missing the obvious opportunity to combine the event with, say, the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's debut coming up on the 15th.

What meaningfulness does MLB have to society on a broad scale... or is it just an overpriced spectator-driven industry?

What meaning does baseball hold to your own lives?

[all4phillysportsfan]

I agree about the exhibition game being a poor choice. I can understand celebrating Jackie Robinson's 60th anniversary by doing something, but is a civil rights game the appropiate way to go? I think baseball is america's past time, and it's the get away from the real world.

Baseball means alot to me, it's my favorite sport, I have a relative that got drafted by the Pirates, so baseball has been in my life ever since I was born.

[Nimajneb]

I think baseball is america's past time, and it's the get away from the real world.

With all the negatives of that characterization... the more real my world gets perhaps the farther I get from baseball (though the impositions of reality have been fairly pleasant). I consider it somewhat curious that baseball has seemed (to my eye) to only moderately reflect the economic realities that have manifested the past decade. For all that it's an escapist practice...

[all4phillysportsfan]

I do see your point, but going to a game or watching a game on tv is a great way to forget for 2 1/2-3 hours about our daily lives, all the stress, work, you name it.

[unreal654]

I like the idea of a civil rights game, it is important that we remember baseball's past and pay tribute to the brave people that broke the color barrier.