The Yankees and Their Ultimate Wrong: Jackie the Yankee?
First off, I really consider this a must read. I don't feel too strongly about much, but I really feel this point.
I like to leave the positives to AFOMG. He's better at making good things sound nice. So today, I'll throw in the requisite line about John Maine. He looks good. Here's a second line. I told you he would look good if he developed his secondary pitches. He has and so he goes.
But Since Tuesday something has been killing me. It is obviously Yankee related and I will explain it in a second.
But before I do, let me give you some backstory. I HATE people who think they are entitled to everything. People who walk into a room and aren't gracious or friendly because they don't feel like they have to be. People who think they are better because of their money or their false sense of ego.
The only person like this that I have ever liked is Patrick Bateman. And he was a movie character.
I HATE the Yankees' sense of entitlement.
I hate that they feel the need to play God Bless America at the 7th inning when the rest of baseball (for the most part) has stopped. The Yankees are not America's team and as one of our readers posted recently, once the national anthem is done, all I want is baseball.
We all remember 9/11.
It's the most important day of our generation and one of the most important in our country's history. But we do not need to play a song in the 7th inning, especially one with a shitty tape-recorded version, to remember that day.
The Yankees do it though because they think they are "America's Team." They are holier than thou while the rest of baseball is disrespectful for not playing America's second song.
(Note: I hate it when the Mets play it Shea, mainly because they only do it for nationally televised games, further proving our inferiority complex towards the image of the Yankees -- Salt.)
But on Tuesday, the Yankees took their whole shtick to the next level.
On Tuesday, The Yankees gave Jackie Robinson a monument in their Monument Park.
All of baseball retired Jackie's number. The Yankees one upped us all. This makes sense, too. Jackie Robinson was such a proud Yankee.
No wait. That's not it.
The gesture is nice, but like so many "Yankee" gestures, it is so transparent. Just as they are "America's team" the Yankees are "the team that truly loves African Americans."
Hell, they may one day retire Sip's computer because they are the "team of all bloggers."
I actually think the Yankees putting Jackie Robinson in their monument park is wrong. On April 15th, baseball celebrated Jackie Robinson. He was arguably the game's most important player. We as fans and as a country watched our players wear his number and paid homage to his story. WE did it as the baseball community.
But this wasn't enough for the Yankees. They had to prove that THEY were greater than baseball -- the almighty Yankees, AMERICA's Team.
So Jackie Robinson will live on in Monument Park. But here is the important question: Why wasn't Jackie Robinson a Yankee?
Oh yeah, because they were as racist as anyone else was back then.
This is wrong.
VCD,
Sip
(Pics courtesy of answers.com, msn.com, mlb.com)
posted by Sippy Momo at 1:36 AM
5 Comments:
On the negativity tip (by the way, go on, Sip: the masturbatory Yankee self-congratulating is gross), I hope that people are enjoying seeing the Hindenburg disaster that is the Phillies April as much as I am. I feel bad for Cholly bc he seems like a nice guy and all, but I love watching these jerks tank and tank some more. Last night's 13 inning debacle at RFK may have taken the cake. Oh baby it feels good to hate sometimes.
I think they did it because they will retire the # for Mo Rivera. This way, there is separation.
Yes, the owners then were racist, but the same people do not own the team now, so, though I hate George S., I can;t hold that against him.
Our team is naming a rotunda in the new park after Jackie. Some could say that is silly since he never played for us. I'm frankly of two minds on it. I like the idea, but at the same time, he wasn't a Met, though we do have roots in the Dodgers and Giants in a way.
Sip, the Yankees weren't just as racist as the rest of the teams back then -- they were MORE racist than the rest of the teams back then. They were the last New York team to integrate, long after the Dodgers had starting winning pennants with Jackie and Roy and the Giants had Willie and his pals. They held Vic Power, a black-skinned Puerto Rican 1B with a sharp tongue, down in the minors while he was hitting .360 every year while playing the inferior Joe Collins, instead. Power, eventually traded, then became a four-time All-Star and seven-time Gold Glover in Kansas City and Cleveland. They refused to upset their racist minor league scouts and contacts in the South, and kowtowed for far too long. Most of the Civil Rights Movement types in New York HATED the team because of it. They weren't as bad as the Red Sox, but in short, the Yankees were the reason why Jackie Robinson needed to leave a legacy.
Arod is peaking at the right time.
This argument is trash. Why does mourning a tragedy or celebrating a hero require entitlement? entitlement to what? Who are you to say what something should mean to someone else?
Before I explain, let me give you some back story. I HATE people who are small-minded and overly-cynical. People who assume when others are more gracious or friendly than they are, they must be disingenuous or impure. People that at once criticize those who act immorally and then criticize the ways in which the moral act. It is those who seek to determine when, and how, and who deserves to exercise virtue (or like something, or think something) that are the champions of exclusion and discrimination.
The yankees have a museum in right field with monuments to those that they feel meant something to the franchise and the game. My dad took me to monument park all the time as a kid. That place means something to us. putting jackie robinsons statue in monument park means something too. you can rationalize it into a grey area if you choose, but this question is way more simple: do you, or do you not, think jackie robinson ought to be memorialized in the places where franchises memorialize stewards of the game and pioneers in society as a whole?
hating the yankees attention-hogging PR machine and self-centered reality show drama is one thing. allowing that hatred to encroach upon well-intentioned and magnanimous acts that transcend success in baseball or business is shameful and small. If a by-product of all this is that some whiny mets fan feels inferior or jealous, I think the Yankees and Jackie robinson can live with that.
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