baseball

29Oct

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

LGBTQ

Is Major League Baseball Still In The Closet And For How Much Longer?

Peter Dreier, Occidental College In his 1990 autobiography, “Behind the Mask: My Double Life in Baseball,” Dave Pallone, a gay major league umpire who was quietly fired in 1988 after rumors about his sexual orientation circulated in the baseball world, contended that there were enough gay major league players to create an All-Star team. Since then, attitudes and laws about homosexuality have changed. High-profile figures in business, politics, show business, education, the media, the military and sports have come out of the closet. Athletes in three of the five major U.S. male team sports – the NBA, NFL and MLS – have come out while still playing, with NFL player Carl Nassib and NHL prospect Luke Prokop coming out in summer 2021. Meanwhile, according to OutSports magazine, at least 185 ...

COVID-19 Case Spikes And Crowd Size – What Baseball Can Learn From The NFL’s 2020 Season

2Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19

COVID-19 Case Spikes And Crowd Size – What Baseball Can Learn From The NFL’s 2020 Season

Baseball season is here, and thousands of cheering fans are back in the ballparks after a year of empty seats and cardboard cutouts as fan stand-ins. Still cautious of the COVID-19 risk, most teams were keeping season openers to 20-30% capacity. Only the Texas Rangers planned a packed stadium for its home opener on April 5, a move President Joe Biden called irresponsible. It isn’t just baseball – college basketball was allowing up to a quarter of seats filled for Final Four games, soccer season starts April 17, and promoters are planning professional fights in filled-to-capacity arenas. Many of these attendance decisions are being made with minimal data about the heightened risk that players and fans face of getting COVID-19 at stadiums or arenas and spreading it the community. There is...

A Conspiracy Of Silence Led By Baseball’s First Commissioner To Preserve The Color Line

16Oct

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

Journalism

A Conspiracy Of Silence Led By Baseball’s First Commissioner To Preserve The Color Line

The Baseball Writers’ Association of America recently announced that it would remove former Major League Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis’ name from the plaques awarded to the American and National League MVPs. The decision came after a number of former MVPs, including Black award winners Barry Larkin and Terry Pendleton, voiced their displeasure with their plaques being named for Landis, who kept the game segregated during the 24 years he served as commissioner from 1920 until his death in 1944. The Brooklyn Dodgers ended the color line when they signed Jackie Robinson to a contract in October 1945, less than a year after Landis’ death. Landis has had his defenders over the years. In the past, essayist David Kaiser, baseball historian Norman Macht, Landis biographer David P...

Robo-umps are coming to Major League Baseball, and the game will never be the same

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

SPORTS, TECHNOLOGY

Robo-umps are coming to Major League Baseball, and the game will never be the same

The Houston Astros’ use of cameras to steal signs and conceivably cheat to win the World Series has driven many recent conversations about the place and meaning of technology in sports. The Major League Baseball season is on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic, but this has only delayed the league addressing the controversy of using technology within the game. New MLB-sponsored technologies, specifically those used to call balls and strikes, will spawn an entirely new set of questions about tech in baseball. These will only heighten the sport’s identity crisis. Baseball is a game heavily rooted in its history, and beloved traditions can make it very hard to change any aspect of the game. The historical continuity of game play enables fans to compare player and team performances over tim...