Torii Hunter Owed Apology Over Outrage

Just so you know, Torii Hunter wasn't exactly in left field -- as opposed to his normal position for the Los Angeles Angels in center -- when he gave USA Today his thoughts on the decline of African-Americans in baseball through the years compared to the rise of Latino players.

Hunter referred to Latino players as "imposters," but he said as much to show how many in society confuse Latino players with African-American players. He said baseball loves the misconception, because he said baseball wants "dark faces" in the game, but only with this asterisk: "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?'"

All of that was the little picture.

Even so, more than a few folks gladly latched onto what Hunter called "the wrong choice of words" to miss the big picture.

Consider this quote:

"American blacks are being phased out and replaced by Latin-American players in some cases. I don't mean this in a negative way, but the Latin-American players make eight and 10 times less money than many American blacks. They're cheaper to sign."

That wasn't more of what Hunter told USA Today. That was what former Cincinnati Reds star George Foster told me in 1982. It was for a week-long series I did for the San Francisco Examiner on the decline of African-Americans in the game from 24 percent during the early 1970s to 18 percent back then.

Now it's eight percent.

Eight.

Something is wrong here. Given the month-long research I did for that San Francisco Examiner series, the reasons for the drop in African-American players go deeper than the tired answers you always hear: They range from African-Americans prefer basketball and football to they just don't like baseball anymore.

Some of that is true, but not as much as this: African-Americans have been steered away from the game (either consciously or subconsciously) for a while. In fact, nearly three decades ago, a slew of prominent baseball people -- including future National League president Bill White and former Players Association boss Marvin Miller -- told me for that San Francisco Examiner series that there was talk of a quota system in baseball to limit the amount of African-Americans on the field.

I even received a smoking gun in the mail from an anonymous scout. It was a computerized free-agent report back then from the Major League Scouting Bureau that asked for a prospect's race in addition to other information. See below:



Neither the NFL, the NBA nor the NHL did such a thing.

After I called then-commissioner Bowie Kuhn about the "race" slot on those computerized free-agent reports -- which could be construed as a way to operate a quota system -- Kuhn said he was stunned. "I'll look into it, and then I'll give you a response," he said, before calling back the next day and saying, "I don't see where [the classification of race on the forms] serves a purpose."

He issued a memorandum instructing the Major League Scouting Bureau and all teams to stop the practice.

I checked with a current major league scout of the past decade or so, and he said no team he has worked for has race on its forms. He said neither do the forms for the Major League Scouting Bureau. But he added, "You easily can get around that, because they ask you to give a physical description. They want a comparison. African-American players are usually compared to other African-American players, so ..."

African-Americans have been steered away from the game (either consciously or subconsciously) for a while. In fact, nearly three decades ago, a slew of prominent baseball people ... told me ... that there was talk of a quota system in baseball . You get the picture. This is the politically correct way for scouts to do what was done blatantly in 1982, when I spoke with Bill White, an African-American and a broadcaster for the New York Yankees at the time. He spent 14 seasons through 1969 as an accomplished first baseman for the New York-San Francisco Giants, St. Louis Cardinals and Philadelphia Phillies. He won seven Gold Gloves, appeared in five All-Star games and helped the Cardinals win the 1964 World Series.

So it was significant that White told me for that San Francisco Examiner series that he thought there was an attempt -- unspoken and otherwise -- by teams to limit the number of African-American players on their rosters.

"It's just the way some people in baseball establishment have been brought up," White said at the time. "Some of the people who are calling the shots in baseball today were trained by the original owners of the game, back before Jackie Robinson broke the color line. So the offspring of the original owners are creating the same results as before the color line was broken.

"This situation is partly the fault of black players who were in uniform during the 1960s. We knew this was going on back then, but we just sat back and said nothing. We should have been screaming. Now it could be too late."

Exhibit A: From 24 percent African-American players in the early 1970s to 18 percent in the early 1980s to 8 percent right now.

Coincidence?

Not if you keep connecting the 28-year-old dots.

Bob Thurman was one of three African-American scouts in the 67-person Major League Scouting Bureau when I did that San Francisco Examiner series. He also was among baseball's first African-American scouts. He discovered future Hall of Famer Johnny Bench in the 1960s. Before scouting, Thurman was an outfielder for the Reds from 1955-59, and he told me in 1982, "There are quotas to be followed. No doubt about that. That's why I didn't get to the majors sooner than I did -- the quota system. It's something that always has bothered me about this game. Why color?"

Said Marvin Miller back then, "From time to time, you hear talk about a quota system in the majors, but it's hard to prove."

Jim Guinn agreed. He was an African-American scout for the Oakland Athletics who signed future Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson. Said Guinn, shaking his head, in 1982, "When Rickey was playing in the Oakland Athletic League, there were very few scouts scouting the league itself. This is the same league that produced players like Frank Robinson, Joe Morgan and Curt Flood."

Which brings us to baseball's Big Lie: That African-Americans just woke up about two decades ago and decided to dislike a sport that was deeply rooted in its community before Jackie Robinson and the Negro Leagues. There were popular African-American baseball teams after the Civil War.

The Big Truth is that baseball began a push at all levels during the 1970s toward not looking for African-American players as fervently as it once did. Said former Reds great Joe Morgan for that San Francisco Examiner series, long before he would become a Hall of Famer and color baseball analyst for ESPN, "That's part of the game that's being played by some teams. If you don't have any black players, because you're not looking for them, then you don't have to play any, do you?"

Consider, too that I talked to college and high school coaches back then about the declining number of African-Americans on their teams. In other words, this just isn't a recent trend.

There was Bob Milano, for instance, who was the successful baseball coach at the University of California at Berkeley. Out of the 11 African-American players in the Pac-10 in 1982, four of them were on his California's roster. Milano, who is white and who consistently had African-American players on his teams, said back then, "I know from the black athletes we've recruited, I'd say there are usually just two or three schools after them. But if you look at a white athlete with the same kind of high school credentials, you might have eight or nine colleges involved.

"I look at our [tough] entrance requirements at Cal, and I compare them to other colleges around the state and the area, and it doesn't make sense. Why other coaches aren't going after [African-American] players, I can't answer."

Hmmmmm.

There also was Billy Reed, a legendary African-American baseball coach in Tampa, Fla., whose players included Dwight Gooden and Gary Sheffield. In addition to coaching at Hillsborough High School for 25 years, Reed organized a Senior Little League program called the Belmont Heights League in 1967 for youth in the inner city.

When I spoke to Reed in 1982, his Belmont team had won the United States championship two of the previous three years, and it had played in the Senior League World Series five of the previous nine years.

"The funny thing is," said Reed back then, "when these same [Belmont] kids try to play high school baseball, they never make the team. That's why there are few black players in the [high school league in Tampa] -- except at Hillsborough. A lot of black kids transfer [to Hillsborough] on special assignment in order to play baseball. The basketball and the football teams are predominately black around the state of Florida, because black kids are being forced into those sports by coaches at the schools they're getting bused to. It's just like they're saying, 'We'll give you these sports, but baseball is for us.' They aren't encouraging black athletes to go into baseball."

Hmmmmm.

If you combine the omniscient words from that San Francisco Examiner series with the computerized free-agent reports with a slot for race and baseball's current eight-percent silliness -- well, a bunch of folks owe Torii Hunter an apology.