Will Latinos Boycott Baseball’s All-Star Game?

Should Latino players boycott Major League Baseball’s highest profile game of the year?

Next to the deciding game of the World Series, the MLB All-Star Game is probably the most watched baseball game of the season. This year the All-Star game will be played in Chase Filed, in Phoenix, Arizona, the state considered to be the epicenter of the wave of anti-immigrant bills that have spread across more than 20 states in the past year. It’s a five-day event that begins this Friday and culminates with the big game on Tuesday. That, in itself, is more a concern for politicians and activists than it is for professional baseball players. But the idea surfaced, some months ago when the venue for this year’s game was announced, that a political statement on such a large stage would go a long way toward shining a light on discriminatory laws that affect all Latinos regardless of citizenship or legal status.  

It made sense because 20% of all MLB players are Latino.

What’s more, this year’s roster of players, selected by fan balloting, has 20 Latino players; 31.25% of the 64 total players selected for the most prestigious game of the year.  Fourteen American League players and 6 National League players are on the rosters are Latino. The top vote-getter this year was Jose Bautista, an outfielder with the Toronto Blue Jays, who broke the MLB balloting record with almost 7.5 million votes. Imagine the statement his no-show would make. But this is what he told MLB.com:

“I can’t even describe how good that feels,” Bautista said of being an All-Star for the second straight year. “It has been a fun year so far, and it’s going to be another honor to represent the team and two countries — the Dominican [Republic] and Canada.”

It would be an incredibly big statement for the 20 top Latino MLB players to skip-out on the All-Star game. The attention that would generate would out-do any march or speech or protest. Sen. Robert Menendez, (D) New Jersey, has called for a larger boycott, saying all players, of all ethnicities, should boycott the game becasue of the laws he calls “an embarrassment to our country.”

Menendez recently told Newser.com:

“While I understand the frustration about the failures of our current system, states should not be permitted to enact their own discriminatory immigration laws while the federal government works to reform our laws…”

Several activists groups have called for a general boycott of the game – that would send a crippling economic message not only to the league but to the city of Phoenix and the state of Arizona as well.  But that’s unlikely to happen.

The opposite would also make headlines.

Instead of not going to the game, maybe the players could use the game as a platform to speak out against the controversial laws. With all cameras and microphones trained on them, live, across the country and the world, what better opportunity to make a statement?

But maybe the greatest statement would be made by doing nothing at all. Maybe more could be said by playing the game, enshrined alongside hot dogs and apple pie as quintessentially American.  More than likely, that’s what’ll happen. According to the Washington Independent, Mexican-American Boston Red Sox first baseman Adrian Gonzalez

had previously said that he would “probably” not attend the game, but now says he will follow the lead of the Major League Baseball Players Association. The MLBPA has said that they oppose the law, but Nation columnist Dave Zirin says it appears that they “have no plans to call for any kind of a boycott.

By all indications, the game will go on.

Follow victor Landa on Twitter: @vlanda