Exhibition Game, Tris Speaker
For once, I find myself in agreement with my Confederate counterpart: the 1984 59th US-CS Exhibition Game should not have been played. And neither should the 58th, nor the 60th, nor any other such game.
Spare me the usual refrain: 'Engagement is a positive good!' and 'This game was a landmark in North American race relations!' and 'But when else will I get to let a slave-invested fried-chicken franchise jerk off all over my face and call me bitch for a $150 a ticket!' It's all accommodationist claptrap, and always has been. No one here is clean: the US team was clearly willing to leave their black players behind to take part in the exhibition game, and even when they changed course, the team itself had hardly more than a token contingent, the systemic racism of the Northern leagues as virulent, if not as open, as anything in the South. And the CS team refused at first to play at all, almost to a man, until management came down hard with the promises of contract cancellations and exile to minor league teams. The grandiose 'charitability' of McCullough 'granting' two of his players the right to rollick around a diamond in a land of bondage is so ridiculous as to inspire nausea, and that Allred or Franklin felt any measure of gratitude to him or pride in this 'accomplishment' is beyond my ability to describe.
That so minor a change as allowing men bound in irons and sold like farm equipment to have some tiny measure of rights - and not even rights as human beings, but 'rights as sportsmen!' (thank you for that charming bit of legal vomit, Justice Ford, we can put it on the shelf right next to the 3/5th compromise) - provoked such hysteria across the Confederacy is appalling. That such an 'outrage' as black and white players sharing the same field drove thousands to support the 'Boycott the Game' movement is revolting. That the boycott gathered steam everywhere save Georgia, where as much as $40 million (CS) in tourism spending was on the line is just another sick chapter in the American worship of the Almighty dollar, whether green or butternut.
Addendum: Tris Speaker wishes to express regret that this article contained content that some readers found offensive, and that no insult whatsoever towards the LGBT community was intended.
For once, I find myself in agreement with my Confederate counterpart: the 1984 59th US-CS Exhibition Game should not have been played. And neither should the 58th, nor the 60th, nor any other such game.
Spare me the usual refrain: 'Engagement is a positive good!' and 'This game was a landmark in North American race relations!' and 'But when else will I get to let a slave-invested fried-chicken franchise jerk off all over my face and call me bitch for a $150 a ticket!' It's all accommodationist claptrap, and always has been. No one here is clean: the US team was clearly willing to leave their black players behind to take part in the exhibition game, and even when they changed course, the team itself had hardly more than a token contingent, the systemic racism of the Northern leagues as virulent, if not as open, as anything in the South. And the CS team refused at first to play at all, almost to a man, until management came down hard with the promises of contract cancellations and exile to minor league teams. The grandiose 'charitability' of McCullough 'granting' two of his players the right to rollick around a diamond in a land of bondage is so ridiculous as to inspire nausea, and that Allred or Franklin felt any measure of gratitude to him or pride in this 'accomplishment' is beyond my ability to describe.
That so minor a change as allowing men bound in irons and sold like farm equipment to have some tiny measure of rights - and not even rights as human beings, but 'rights as sportsmen!' (thank you for that charming bit of legal vomit, Justice Ford, we can put it on the shelf right next to the 3/5th compromise) - provoked such hysteria across the Confederacy is appalling. That such an 'outrage' as black and white players sharing the same field drove thousands to support the 'Boycott the Game' movement is revolting. That the boycott gathered steam everywhere save Georgia, where as much as $40 million (CS) in tourism spending was on the line is just another sick chapter in the American worship of the Almighty dollar, whether green or butternut.
Addendum: Tris Speaker wishes to express regret that this article contained content that some readers found offensive, and that no insult whatsoever towards the LGBT community was intended.
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