What Chris Rock got wrong: Black Latinos and race in baseball

*When I first heard the Chris Rock piece about the lack of blacks on Major League Baseball I thought, what about all the Afro-Latino players? Adrian Burgos Jr., much better at analyzing baseball than me, takes up the issue. VL

By Adrian Burgos Jr., Sporting News

We had two strikes against us: One for being black, and another for being Latino. — Hall of Famer Orlando Cepeda

Cepeda shared this reflection with me a number of years ago in recalling his playing days as baseball’s racial integration unfolded. Cepeda recalled numerous instances in which Americanos saw the Puerto Rican as just another black man when deciding to deny him services or in refusing him the same accommodations that his white teammates enjoyed. He also shared that on other occasions Americanos who he encountered saw him as a Latino, and proceeded to poke fun at his accent and his unfamiliarity with North American ways, which reminded him how they saw him as a foreigner in this land — even though his native Puerto Rico was (and remains) a U.S. territory.

Cepeda was not alone in enduring such encounters during that era. This treatment (and feeling they were consistently behind 0-2 in the count in their social encounters) was at the core of the critique that Roberto Clemente and Felipe Alou would make about how those within MLB circles (whether team staff, league officials, or the press corps) dealt with Latinos. Unfortunately, many of the issues about perceptions of those ballplayers who are both black and Latino continue in US baseball circles, particularly in discussions of race and the history of America’s game.

Making the visibile invisible

Chris Rock’s recent appearance on “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” permitted the comedian to expound on the rocky relationship between African-Americans and baseball. Provocative as always, Rock also used his biting wit in detailing baseball’s shortcomings that have effectively turned off African-American sports fans, preventing them from sharing his own love of baseball.

A diehard fan, Rock fondly remembered the days when it was much easier to spot African-Americans on the field, highlighting the Mets of the late 1980s with Dwight Gooden, Kevin Mitchell, Darryl Strawberry and Mookie Wilson. Interestingly, the 1986 Mets squad that claimed a World Series title included five key players who were Latinos, three of whom were Mexican American: Jesse Orosco, Rick Aguilera and Bob Ojeda.

One of the zingers Rock flung MLB’s way prompted my memory of interviewing Cepeda. To illustrate his point about the disappearance of black ballplayers from MLB, Rock decried that the Giants won the 2014 World Series without a single black player.

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