SHUT
OUT
AGAIN
" HOW ABOUT AN OWNER ...
...... WHO LOOKS LIKE ME "
Baseball HYPOCRISY
is your name to be more
specific BUD SELIG
is the name ...
the Chicago Cubs are FINALLY officially for sale. The safest bet you can possIbly wager is that the new owners will NOT be African Americans. Continuing a 100+ year "tradition" (sic) in the Major League of NEVER ever having Black ownership.
It is the same story of course whenever an MLB team comes up for sale every few years. These are no brainer investments. It is literally impossible for a Major League team not to increase in value no matter how poorly the organization is managed no matter how badly the team plays. So call buying a team a NO risk investment and one in which financing will always be available. More so for a team like the Cubs in a big Baseball city, a rich tradition and with the absolute GUARANTEE there will NEVER be competition.
This is one very simple fact that seems to escape some people specifically commentators. OWNING PRO TEAMS IN BASEBALL, FOOTBALL AND BASKETBALL IS AN ABSOLUTE MONOPOLY. You never ever have to worry about anyone fielding a competitive team in your city let alone another new Major League Baseball team. In its modest way it is more of a lock on business success and making $$$$ than Old John D. Rockefeller had on oil with his Standard Oil Trust.
Here is the Point ......
Baseball meaning Bud Selig and the Rich Boys of Summer could easily decree it is long past time there is an African American owner or African American ownership group in Major League Baseball and "we will award" the next franchise that comes up for sale - make it the Cubs - to African Americans. Well banks and hedge funds would line up to finance African Americans who applied because as noted above it is an investment that can't lose.
In its own way it is an exact duplicate of the decision back in 1947 to FINALLY integrate Baseball. Yes it was only one team that did so first but the real fact is that only because ALL the owners and the Commissioner agreed that the Brooklyn Dodgers could sign and play Jackie Robinson in the Major Leagues. Just as with the issue of ownership before Robinson there were all those shibboleths that there were NO Black players because they weren't good enough, because they weren't interested, because fans didn't want them. A bunch of lies used as camouflage to disguise Racism. Just as with ownership today.
Yes some teams make more operating income than others. But that is beside the point. Owning a team is like owning stock in a company that will CONSTANTLY increase in value. Again back to oil. Sports in its own way is just like oil. Humans specifically Americans psychologically depend as much on Sports as we do physically on oil.
Baseball is one of the Big Three - even if the lesser of the 3 - that is at the core of that psychic VALUE in Sports for Americans that translates just as much into real FINANCIAL value. Unlike oil companies there are even less pro Sports teams to go around. Only ONE per city except in a few New York, Los Angeles AND Chicago which have long proven they can support two Baseball "companies."
The point is there is only one reason there are NO African American owners in Baseball. It has absolutely nothing to do with some nonsense there are no wealthy African Americans. There are but as explained above that doesn't even matter. It is absolutely NOT that no African Americans unlike an endless parade of White Americans - that Black Americans have NO interest in the guaranteed increase in value, the prestige and all kinds of secondary benefits that come from OWNING Major League teams.
It's about ONLY one thing
the core Racism that remains
in Baseball camouflaged by
Bud Selig and the Owners
as something else when it
is nothing else but Racism
keeping African Americans
from MLB OWNERSHIP
" BARACK DO YOU HAVE AN
OPINION "
Whenever you want to reach us with comments
or better yet an idea for a topic for the Box .......
blackbox@blackathlete.com
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