How
the Press & the CIA
Killed Gary Webb's Career
Today's
Stories
January 21,
2005
Derek Seidman
An
Interview with Army Medic and Anti-War Activist Patrick Resta
January 20,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Dying
for Sycophants
William Cook
The
Bush Inauguration: A Mock Epic Fertility Rite
Joshua Frank
The Democrats and Iran: Look Who's Backing Bush's Next
Eric Ruder
Why Andres Raya Snapped: Another Casualty of Bush's War
Mike Whitney
Coronation in a Garrison State
Robert Jensen
A Citizens Oath of Office
Peter Rost
Bush Report on Drug Imports: Good Data, Bad Conclusions
David Underhill
Is It Torture Yet?: the Eclectic Fool Aid Torture Test
James Reiss
Adieu, Colin Powell: Pea Soup in Foggy Bottom
CounterPunch
Staff
Voices
from Abu Ghraib: the Injured Party
January 19,
2005
Marta Russell
Social
Security Privatization & Disability: 8 Million at Risk
Mike Ferner
Marines
Stretching Movement: Protesting Urban Warfare in Toledo
Nancy Oden
The
Nuremberg Principles, Iraq and Torture
Tony Paterson
A Catalogue of British Abuses in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Divide-and-Conquer Plan to Destroy Social Security
Doug Giebel
BS and CBS: When 60 Minutes Helped Promote WMD Fantasies
Alexander Cockburn
Will
Bush Quit Iraq?
January 18,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
Americans Were Seduced by War: Empire and Militant Christianity
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Federal
Judge: Abu Ghraib Abuses Result of Decision to Ignore Geneva
Conventions
Douglas Lummis
It's a No Brainer; Send Graner: a Rap for Our Time
Ron Jacobs
Syria Back in the Crosshairs?
Seth DeLong
Enter the Dragon: Will Washington Tolerate a Venezuelan-Chinese
Oil Pact?
Lance Selfa
Stolen Election?: Most Democrats Didn't Even Bother to Inquire
Paul D. Johnson
Mystery Meat: a Right-to-Know About Food Origins
Elisa Salasin
An Open Letter to Jenna Bush, Future Teacher
January 17,
2005
Heather Gray
Misconceptions
About King's Methods for Social Change
Robert Fisk
Hotel Room Journalism: the US Press in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
What the NYT Death Chart Omitted: Civilians Slaughtered by US
Military
Jason Leopold
Sam Bodman's Smokestacks: Bush's Choice for Energy Czar is One
of Texas's Worst Polluters
Gary Leupp
A Message from the Iraqi Resistance
Douglas Valentine
An Act of State? the Execution of Martin Luther King
Harvey Arden
Welcome to Leavenworth: My First Encounter with Leonard Peltier
Greg Moses
King
and the Christian Left: Where Lip Service is Not an Option
January 15
/ 16, 2005
James Petras
The
Kidnapping of a Revolutionary
Robert Fisk
Flying Carpet Airlines: My Return to Baghdad
Ron Jacobs
Unfit for Military Service
Brian Cloughley
Smack Daddies of the Hindu Kush: Afghanistan's Drug Bonanza
Fred Gardner
The Allowable-Quantity Expert
Dr. Susan Block
The Counter-Inaugural Ball: Eros Day, 2005
John Ross
Zapatista Literary Llife
Suzan Mazur
Unspooking Frank Carlucci
M. Shahid Alam
America's New Civilizing Mission
Frederick B. Hudson
Jack Johnson's Real Opponent: "That I Was a Man"
Mike Whitney
Bush's Grand Plan: Incite Civil War in Iraq
Tom Crumpacker
A Constitutional Right to Travel to Cuba
Bob Burton
The Other Armstrong Williams Scandal
John Callender
La Conchita and the Indomitable 82-Year Old
Lila Rajiva
Christian Zionism
Saul Landau
An Imperial Portrait: a Visit to Hearst's Castle
Doug Soderstrom
A Touch of Evil: the Morality of Neoconservatism
Poets' Basement
Davies, Louise, Landau, Albert, Collins and Laymon
January 14,
2005
Robert Fisk
"The
Tent of Occupation"
Lee Sustar
Bush's Social Security Con Job
José
M. Tirado
The Christians I Know
Dave Zirin
The Legacy of Jack Johnson
Sheldon Rampton
Calling John Rendon: a True Tale of "Military Intelligence"
Tracy McLellan
Under the Influence
Yves Engler
The Dictatorship of Debt: the World Bank and Haiti
Tom Barry
Robert
Zoellick: a Bush Family Man
Website of
the Day
Ryan for the Nobel Prize?
January 13,
2005
Mark Chmiel
/ Andrew Wimmer
Hearts
and Minds, Revisited
Joe DeRaymond
The Salvador Option: Terror,
Elections and Democracy
Greg Moses
Every Hero a Killer?...Not
Dave Lindorff
The Great WMD Fraud: Time for an Accounting
Jorge Mariscal
Dr. Galarza v. Alberto Gonzales: Which Way for Latinos?
Christopher Brauchli
Gonzales and the Death Penalty: the Executioner Never Sleeps
Gary Leupp
"Fighting
for the Work of the Lord": Christian Fascism in America
January 12,
2005
Robert Fisk
Fear
Stalks Baghdad
Josh Frank
The
Farce of the DNC Contest
Jack Random
Casualties
of War: the Untold Stories
John Roosa
Aceh's Dual Disasters: the Tsunami and Military Rule
Carol Norris
In the Wake of the Tsunami
Mike Whitney
Pink Slips at CBS
Alan Farago
Can
the Everglades be Saved?
Paul Craig
Roberts
What's
Our Biggest Problem in Iraq...the Insurgency or Bush?
January 11,
2005
Tom Barry
The
US isn't "Stingy"; It's Strategic: Aid as a Weapon
of Foreign Policy
James Hodge
and Linda Cooper
Voice
of the Voiceless: Father Roy Bourgeois and the School of the
the Americas
Linda S. Heard
Farah Radio Break Down: Joseph Farah's Messages of Hate and Homophobia
Derrick O'Keefe
Electoral Gigolo?: Richard Gere and the Occupied Vote
Gila Svirsky
A Tale of Two Elections
Harry Browne
Irish
"Peace Process", RIP
January 10,
2005
Ramzy Baroud
Faith-Based
Disasters: Tsunami Aid and War Costs
Talli Nauman
Killing
Journalists: Mexico's War on a Free Press
Uri Avnery
Sharon's Monologue
Dave Lindorff
Tucker
Carlson's Idiot Wind
Dave Zirin
Randy
Moss's Moondance
Dave Silver
Left Illusions About the Democratic Party
Charles Demers
Plan Salvador for Iraq: Death Squads Come in Waves
William A.
Cook
Causes
and Consequences: Bush, Osama and Israel
January 8 /
9, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Say,
Waiter, Where's the Blood in My Margarita Glass?
John H. Summers
Chomsky
and Academic History
Greg Moses
Getting Real About the Draft
Walter A. Davis
Bible Says: the Psychology of Christian Fundamentalism
Victor Kattan
The EU and Middle East Peace
John Bolender
The Plight of Iraq's Mandeans
Robert Fisk
The Politics of Lebanon
Fred Gardner
Situation NORML
Joe Bageant
The Politics of the Comfort Zone
Mickey Z.
I Want My DDT: Little Nicky Kristof Bugs Out
Ben Tripp
CounterClockwise Evolution
Ron Jacobs
Elvis and His Truck: Out on Highway 61
Saul Landau
Sex
and the Country
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Time to End the Blackout
Ellen Cantarow
NPR's Distortions on Palestine
Richard Oxman
Bageantry Continued
Poets' Basement
Gaffney, Landau, Albert, Collins
January 7,
2005
Omar Barghouti
Slave
Sovereignty: Elections Under Occupation
Kent Paterson
The Framing of Felipe Arreaga: Another Mexican Environmentalist
Arrested
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Old
Vijay Merchant and the Tsunami
David Krieger
Cancel the Inauguration Parties
Gideon Levy
New Year, Old Story
Dave Lindorff
Ohio Protest: First Shot Fired by Congressional Progressives
Christopher
Brauchli
Privatizing the IRS
Roger Burbach
/ Paul Cantor
Bush,
the Pentagon and the Tsunami
January 6,
2005
Brian J. Foley
Gonzales:
Supporting Torture is not His Greatest Sin
Greg Moses
Boot
Up America!: Gen. Helmly's Memo Leaks New Bush Deal
Petras / Chomsky
An
Open Letter to Hugo Chavez
Alan Maass
The Decline of the Dollar
Dave Lindorff
Colin Powell's Selective Sense of Horror
Jenna Orkin
The EPA and a Dirty Bomb: 9/11's Disastrous Precedent
P. Sainath
The
Tsunami and India's Coastal Poor
January 5,
2005
Alan Farago
2004:
An Environmental Retrospective
Winslow T.
Wheeler
Oversight
Detected?: Sen. McCain and the Boeing Tanker Scam
Jean-Guy Allard
Gary Webb: a Cuban Perspective
Fred Gardner
Strutting, Smirking, As If The Mad Plan Was Working
David Swanson
Albert Parsons on the Gallows
Richard Oxman
The Joe Bageant Interview
Bruce Jackson
Death
on the Living Room Floor
January 4,
2005
Michael Ortiz
Hill
Mainlining
Apocalypse
Elaine Cassel
They
Say They Can Lock You Up for Life Without a Trial
Yoram Gat
The
Year in Torture
Martin Khor
Tragic
Tales and Urgent Tasks from the Tsunami Disaster
Gary Leupp
Death
and Life in the Andaman Islands
January 3,
2005
Ron Jacobs
The
War Hits Home
Dave Lindorff
Is
There a Single Senator Who Will Stand Up for Black Voters?
Mike Whitney
The Guantanamo Gulag
Joshua Frank
Greens and Republicans: Strange Bedfellows
Maria Tomchick
Playing Politics with Disaster Aid
Rhoda and Mark
Berenson
Our Daughter Lori: Another Year of Grave Injustice
David Swanson
The Media and the Ohio Recount
Kathleen Christison
Patronizing
the Palestinians
January 1 /
2, 2005
Gary Leupp
Earthquakes
and End Times, Past and Present
Rev. William
E. Alberts
On "Moral Values": Code Words for Emerging Authoritarian
Tendencies
M. Shahid Alam
Testing Free Speech in America
Stan Goff
A Period for Pedagogy
Brian Cloughley
Bush and the Tsunami: the Petty and the Petulant
Sylvia Tiwon
/ Ben Terrall
The Aftermath in Aceh
Ben Tripp
Requiem for 2004
Greg Moses
A Visible Future?
Steven Sherman
The 2004 Said Awards: Books Against Empire
Sean Donahue
The Erotics of Nonviolence
James T. Phillips
The Beast's Belly
David Krieger
When Will We Ever Learn
Poets' Basement
Soderstrom, Hamod, Louise and Albert
December 23,
2004
Chad Nagle
Report
from Kiev: Yushchenko's Not Quite Ready for Sainthood
David Smith-Ferri
The
Real UN Disgrace in Iraq
Bill Quigley
Death
Watch for Human Rights in Haiti
Mickey Z.
Crumbs
from Our Table
Christopher Brauchli
Merck's Merry X-mas
Greg Moses
When
No Law Means No Law
Alan Singer
An
Encounter with Sen. Schumer: a Very Dangerous Democrat
David Price
Social
Security Pump and Dump
Website of the Day
Gabbo Gets Laid
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk
Dragon Pierces
Truth*
Concrete
Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam
Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"
Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti
Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report
Paul Craig
Roberts
America
Locked Up: a System of Injustice
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
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January 21, 2005
Racism
and Steroid Hysteria
An
Asterisk for Major League Baseball
By
DON SANTINA
On a sunny July day in 1887, Cap Anson
of the Chicago White Stockings refused to play a team from Newark
unless they removed their starting pitcher, an African American
named George Stovey. Thus began the 60 year reign of apartheid
baseball in America.
The present day media fuss
over steroid use in major league baseball is reaching pandemic
proportions. At a time in American history of pre-emptive wars,
unchecked corporate looting, increasing poverty and homelessness,
continuing assaults on the Bill of Rights...but STOP THE PRESSES!
A baseball player may be using performance enhancing drugs!
Based on Grand Jury leaks of
player testimony (hmmm, this technique looks familiar), congressional
blowhards from the major parties have been falling over themselves
to get to a media outlet and express their outrage over this
heinous situation. Even George Bush, that paragon of honesty
and hard work, has weighed in on the matter, stating on two separate
occasions that steroid use "diminishes the integrity of
sports" and "sends the wrong message that there are
shortcuts to accomplishments."
Sports fans-always eager to
turn on their heroes at the first signs of fallibility-- are
clamoring for changing the records of suspected steroid users
or adding asterisks on the player's record, ala the asterisk
placed on Roger Maris' numbers when he broke Babe Ruth's single
season homerun record in 1961. (The season was eight games
shorter in Ruth's time.)
Baseball is obsessed with statistics
and records--and the "purity" of those records--even
though controversies have risen over the ever-changing height
of the pitcher's mound, the introduction of the "juiced"
ball, the short left fields of the old "bandbox" stadiums,
etc. Through it all, the stats remain the Holy Grail of Major
League Baseball.
Woe betide anyone who messes
with the Sacred Records.
And yet, oddly enough, there
was no hue and cry in 1998 when Mark McGuire, blown up like the
Pillsbury doughboy from ingesting tablespoons of something other
than applesauce, broke Roger Maris' homerun record. McGuire
admitted that he was taking androstenedione, a substance banned
by the Olympic Committee, the National Football League and the
National Collegiate Athletic Association. He didn't stop taking
it until the following season.
No fuss. No outrage. No talk
show blather. No senators screaming into the television cameras
about the morality of athletes and sanctity of records. McGuire
is white.
The current target of wrath
over suspected substance abuse is Barry Bonds, a home run hitter
who will probably break the immortal Babe Ruth's record during
the coming season. Bonds is an African American.
Is all this fuss another ugly
eruption of baseball's racist past?
In the 20th Century, baseball
was America's Favorite Past Time, second only to invading small
countries. Baseball players and their records were cultural
icons; every kid knew the batting averages and rbi's of their
favorite players. How many wins? How many hits in a season?
How many homeruns? What did DiMaggio do today? When Ruth
was asked why he was paid more than the Depression-plagued President,
he responded "because I had a better year."
How would these records have
changed if African Americans (and Latinos of African ancestry)
had been included during the 60 year period of color line baseball?
What impact would black players have had on the records of the
all-white baseball players? Would Ruth have still hit 714 homeruns
if he had to face pitchers like Satchel Paige, Leon Day or Smokey
Joe Williams?
It seems unlikely.
Banned from Major League Baseball,
black athletes played professional baseball in the Negro Leagues,
which lasted until baseball integration in the late 1940's.
However, for over thirty years during the off season, Negro
League teams played exhibition games against teams of white major
league all stars. The pre eminent baseball historian, John Holway,
has determined that Negro League teams won 268 of the 436 games
played with their white counterparts.
That's a .615 winning percentage!
Baseball is a game in which a .300 hitter is regarded as a huge
success. In competition, the white players were blown away by
the black players.
For example, Smokey Joe Williams
struck out 20 white New York Giants during a 1914 game. Williams
was 26-5 against the white major league teams.
Ty Cobb was major league baseball's
base-stealing champion, but he was thrown out trying to steal
three times in one exhibition game by a Negro League catcher,
Bruce Petway. Negro League pitcher Webster McDonald was 14-2
against white major leaguers.
Phenomenal records were established
in the caliber of play within the Negro League itself. Pitcher
Leon Day had a .708 winning percentage, Ray Brown was .747.
Josh Gibson hit a 580 foot homerun at Yankee Stadium during a
Negro League game.
When Satchel Paige, perhaps
the most famous of the Negro League pitchers, was finally allowed
into Major League Baseball he was well over 40 years old. However,
in his first season his ERA was 2.48 and his fast ball was clocked
at 103 mph!
White major league players
knew how good the African American players were during that era
and also knew that many of them would lose their jobs to superior
players if the color barrier was lifted. After all, they played
against them off season on a regular basis for many years. Some
white players were quite candid in their assessment of the skills
of the Negro League players.
Hall of Fame pitcher Walter
"Big Train" Johnson testified that Josh Gibson "hits
the ball a mile and he catches so easy he might as well be in
a rocking chair. Throws like a rifle. Too bad this Gibson is
a colored fellow."
Batting champion and hitting
maestro Ted Williams called Satchel Paige "the best pitcher
in baseball." Baseball icon Joe DiMaggio concurred, stating
that Paige was "the best pitcher I ever faced and the fastest."
Paige was an old man when he
faced down premiere hitters like Williams and DiMaggio in the
1940's. If he had been allowed into the white man's league 20
years earlier, how would Ruth and Lou Gehrig and Al Simmons have
fared against Paige and his 100mph plus fast ball?
Josh Gibson hit over 900 home
runs in the Negro League, including majestic shots in major league
parks like Yankee Stadium and Forbes Field. The odds are that-facing
the same pitching as Ruth (with all the white stiffs who pitched
all 9 innings)-Gibson would have surpassed Ruth in home runs.
In 2005, Barry Bonds would be going after Josh Gibson's record,
not Ruth's.
Simply stated, major league
baseball records established during the 60 years of segregated
baseball are tainted and therefore, meaningless.
These records were established
during a period in which many of the best players of the game
were excluded from the game. The white players knew it. The
white owners knew it.
A reasonable observer must
conclude that these records should be followed by an asterisk
stating "African Americans were not allowed to play."
Back to that incident in 1887:
Was Cap Anson just a vile racist or was he worried about protecting
his batting average? Anson was a ham-fisted fielder who holds
the all-time record for most errors committed by a first baseman.
His Hall of Fame credentials were built on his hitting.
Did Anson really want to face
a pitcher like George Stovey who in 1886 held opposing hitters
to .167 and went 34-14 in 1887?
End of story.
Anson and the white major leaguers
who followed him knew that their records would be shredded by
the black athletes, jeopardizing not only their jobs, but also
their stature as American cultural icons in sports pages, baseball
cards and movies.
Don Santina is a cultural historian who has
written on film history, music and sports. His articles have
appeared in the CounterPunch, the Black Commentator, the People's
Weekly World and the San Francisco Chronicle. His monograph
on the "Cisco Kid" legend in film is in the archives
of the Motion Picture Academy. He can be reached at: Lindey89@aol.com
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