Don't Totally Dismiss Bradley on Cubs

MESA, Ariz. -- To hear Milton Bradley tell it, nearly everybody associated with the Chicago Cubs doesn't celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

Team executives. Manager Lou Piniella. The fans.

Especially the fans.

They all are racially insensitive, Bradley suggested during an ESPN television interview, and for reasons I'll give later, I was torn by the whole thing. Now I'm less so after I huddled with baseball Hall of Famer Billy Williams, an old acquaintance, who was among the first African-American players for the Cubs.

I'm not saying Bradley is right, but I'm also not saying this is another case of Milton being Milton, which often isn't pretty.

I'm saying ... let's just wait.

On Wednesday at HoHoKam Park, where the Bradley discussion grew as thick as the summer ivy at Wrigley Field, folks kept asking Williams for a comment between his duties as Cubs senior advisor, and Williams kept telling them to move along -- except for a FanHouse columnist. We discussed several things.

For instance: Bradley told ESPN that he received a slew of racist letters during his only season with the Cubs last year. He said many lacked postmarks, and he implied they came from Cubs officials. He said life was so bad in Chicago as an African-American player that he was "a prisoner in my own home."

So did Williams face such ugliness during the 1960s, when he played for the Cubs with fellow African-American Ernie Banks, another Hall of Famer?

Williams rolled his eyes.

"Oh, I got letters. Oh, hell yes," Williams said, easing into a chuckle in the home clubhouse at HoHoKam Park. "I came up in 1959, and I imagine every black player who came up during that time got letters -- even from your own fans. No, it wasn't just me getting them, and we all used to look at each other's letters. And I'm talking about they were coming from the hometown fans."

Guess some things never change. After Dusty Baker became manager of the Cincinnati Reds, he told me that during his four seasons as the Cubs' skipper through 2006, he was a prolific target of racists. Williams nodded, saying, "Yeah, Dusty got letters. As blacks, we all had to deal with those kinds of things through the years. But I think that if you have one million fans, you're only going to have 25 [bleeps]."

The thing is, Williams was as gifted mentally as he was athletically. That's why he resisted the urge to sprint from his spot in left field to slap abusive Bleacher Bums with his glove. He just ignored them.

In contrast, Bradley is gifted athletically, but not mentally when it comes to adding perspective to adverse situations. He once tore his ACL with the San Diego Padres while he argued with an umpire. Another time, his general manager and manager with the Texas Rangers had to drag him back from racing to the press box to confront a team announcer for what Bradley viewed as unfair remarks.

Then came Bradley's meltdowns in Chicago. There was his triggering one of his many confrontations with the explosive Piniella by forgetting how many outs there were in right field. There was his suspension near the end of the season by Cubs general manager Jim Hendry for saying overall "negativity" has kept the team from winning a world championship for more than 100 years.

There also was a lot in between, including Williams conversing with Bradley in the shadows.

"According to Milton, it was tough for him, because he said people were making accusations toward him in right field, but I don't know," Williams said "I just know that I had some conversations with him, and he told me that things had happened, and he said they weren't getting on him as a ballplayer, but as a black person. I just know that I enjoyed the fans in Chicago over the years."

After a pause, Williams chuckled, because he was thinking of the always jovial Mr. Cub, and then he added, "You just know Ernie [Banks] has enjoyed the fans over the years, and we both came up under tough times. But I just think that the fans expect more now. Not only from Milton Bradley, but from all of the players. And because of the size of the salaries these days, I just think people are a little jealous.

"The other thing is, when you get so close to something, like this team has done for the last few years (before getting swept out of the first round of the playoffs in 2007 and 2008) -- well, I don't like it when it gets derogatory from people and it is directed to the ballplayer himself, but here's the thing: The fans want to win so badly here in Chicago that they'll do some things and they'll say some things."

Like some crazy things.

Maybe some racist things.

These latest things about Wrigleyville are coming from Bradley, though, who deserved more than a few boos during his dreadful season (.257 batting average, 12 home runs and 40 RBI) after signing a three-year deal for $30 million. He also is an accomplished master of controversy. He was traded during the offseason by the Cubs to the Seattle Mariners, which means this is his eighth team in 11 years for a reason.

Which is why I first struggled with embracing any of Bradley's ESPN comments. You had to wonder if he was coming from a vindictive tongue or whether this was just Milton being Milton. Plus, among those on the Cubs' current roster, Alfonso Soriano is Hispanic, and Kosuke Fukudome is Japanese, and Ryan Dempster is white, and they've all been famously roasted in Wrigleyville.

It's just that, upon further review, I thought about the Baker example of how Cubs fans can take their displeasure on the other side of the black-and-white line. Not only that, African-American players such as LaTroy Hawkins and Jacque Jones had their racial issues with Cubs fans in recent years.

I also grew up in South Bend, Ind., located 90 miles east of Chicago near a Golden Dome, and Chicago's professional sports teams were our teams. You were a Cubs fan or a White Sox fan. You couldn't be both, and my two brothers and I were in the minority among the minorities since we chose the Cubs.

Most African-Americans in South Bend -- especially those as old as our parents, uncles, aunts and definitely our grandparents -- preferred the White Sox, partly because they acquired Minnie Minoso, the first player of color for either team. He joined the White Sox in 1951, four years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier and two years before Banks did so with the Cubs.

Then there was Chicago's North Side, which was the Cubs' side. It wasn't considered as minority friendly as the South Side, which was the White Sox's side and filled with working class African-Americans.

What helped the Cubs with African-Americans was Banks and then Williams, but they still embraced the White Sox more -- in South Bend at least. Maybe those African-Americans had a sixth sense about the racial grief that Williams and others were suffering in private around Wrigleyville, but that's in the past.

So is Bradley, according to the mantra of Piniella and Hendry on Wednesday at HoHoKam Park. Whether Bradley's claim of heightened racism in Wrigleyville also is in the past will depend on something.

It will depend on whether an individual less controversial than Bradley says the same thing about Wrigleyville in the future.