There has been much talk of continuing the “labor peace” in Major League Baseball’s new collective bargaining agreement, but there is a sinister angle to it. The agreement appears to benefit current players from “competition” from younger players in the future, for as long as it remains in place. A limit on bonuses paid to draft picks and the banning of signing them to major league contracts accomplishes part of this “mission.” If those new rules sound amiss, it is because they are: Athletes who play multiple sports are less likely to consider professional baseball if there is no money in it for them upfront. But the greater “dirty little secret” in the agreement is the one that appears to be motivated by prejudice against foreign-born players; given the relatively small footprint of European and Asian players, this is clearly aimed at prospects from Latin America—apparently because some players, like Torii Hunter, were possessed of sentiments such as the following:
"As African-American players, we have a theory that baseball can go get an imitator and pass them off as us. It's like they had to get some kind of dark faces, so they go to the Dominican or Venezuela because you can get them cheaper. It's like, 'Why should I get this kid from the South Side of Chicago and have Scott Boras represent him and pay him $5 million when you can get a Dominican guy for a bag of chips?’”
The real issue for African-American players is that there are fewer opportunities to learn to play in inner city environs, and thus basketball and football have become the sports of choice. But anti-Latino sentiment goes beyond that; here in Seattle listening to local (white) sports commentators, if you are a Latino player you must be All-Star caliber—or be subject to malicious ridicule, as if they exist on a different social dimension or planet. Latino players have a greater footprint in professional baseball than in the other major U.S. sports, being virtually invisible in football and basketball (not to mention hockey); apparently some demographics in this country feel a great deal of angst over the perception that Latinos are “taking over” even one “American” sport. This is, of course, in keeping with anti-Latino political sentiment in the country generally, to be used for scapegoating purposes. Why not blame them for keeping the “natives” down in baseball too?
The CBA limits the number of foreign-born players by reducing spending to an astonishingly low $2.9 million on amateur free agents, which would include almost all players from Latin American countries. In 2012, this spending will be “adjusted” according to how good or bad a team is, and subsequently a team can “trade” for cap space another team doesn’t use. But the average of $2.9 million per team will remain, which is a ludicrously low amount in this day and age. It guarantees that far fewer Latino players will be signed, and that some teams will find it pointless to sign any Latino players who are foreign-born. Baseball is claiming that other rules put in place cut-down on age and identity “fraud,” but that is mostly a fear-mongering shibboleth; there has been no documented case of that concerning any current foreign-born Latino player in the majors. Obviously this all benefits white players as well as black, so the racial discrimination aspect cannot be denied. Curiously, posting fees for Japanese players, which can run into the tens of millions of dollars per player, are not counted against the cap.
New York Yankees blogger Mike Axisa put the impact of all of this in blunt terms: “The MLBPA sold out its future members for the sake of its current members. The draft and international spending limitations are severe and will drive young talent away from the game, and you’ll see legitimate two-sport guys like Zach Lee and Bubba Starling be pushed to college by the spending restrictions. Teams also have little incentive to run a baseball academy in Latin America now. We’ll see the real impact of these changes in five or ten years, when there’s a sudden lack of young talent and barely enough real athletes to play the middle infield.”
As I have often suggested, there is nothing intelligent about bigotry; it merely brings out the stupid in people.
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