Orioles' Adam Jones berated by racist taunts at Fenway Park

[baltimore_chop]

Smh, this is exactly what I was talking about. The number of black baseball players in MLB doesnt matter bro. How they are treated does. You have absolutely no idea what it's like to come up through high school, the minors, and majors, as a black baseball player, and you never will. I hate when people talk about safe spaces and stuff, but wouldn't dare call their kids certain words or have their kids called certain words by anybody else. Words have power and are behind some of the worst atrocities this world have ever seen. For you to talk about safe spaces in a situation like this is mind boggling

[Tony-OH]

8 minutes ago, dan-O said:

I completely disagree. If you aren't applauding and celebrating Jones for at least trying then I dunno what to tell you. 

I understand what you're saying and the arguments you are making, I just disagree. I also find them a little petty. The bigger issue is the racism, it's not whether or not the sport is a white man's sport. You're white. You don't see things from Adam Jones' perspective, or from black people's perspective. And until you become black, which you won't, you won't understand. I won't understand. That's just the facts.

You are clumping me in with a group of people ("SJWs" probably, if I had to guess. Or snowflakes, maybe). You are holding a prejudiced view about me and "people like me". You, sir, do not know a single thing about me. So please stop.

Your response is right on par and typical. Now I will never understand because I'm not black. I just live in my white world with my white problems right? Ridiculous.

Ok, tell me the racist policies or situations that are causing a lack of black players in the MLB? Hell, just give me one.

Jones said something and had no solution so I'm not going to applaud him. Had he said, I'm going to donate a million dollars into starting youth baseball leagues in prominently black urban areas then I would have certainly said he's doing something about it and applauded him. I like Jones, and I support him. I think his comments were off base and did not offer any solutions. Let's not get him mixed up with Jackie Robinson now.

 

[Going Underground]

3 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

Your response is right on par and typical. Now I will never understand because I'm not black. I just live in my white world with my white problems right? Ridiculous.

Ok, tell me the racist policies or situations that are causing a lack of black players in the MLB? Hell, just give me one.

Jones said something and had no solution so I'm not going to applaud him. Had he said, I'm going to donate a million dollars into starting youth baseball leagues in prominently black urban areas then I would have certainly said he's doing something about it and applauded him. I like Jones, and I support him. I think his comments were off base and did not offer any solutions. Let's not get him mixed up with Jackie Robinson now.

 

http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2017/04/04/orioles-adam-jones-donate-75k-to-boys-girls-clubs-of-metropolitan-baltimore/

[MurphDogg]

10 minutes ago, DoughBoy52 said:

Good stuff, Tony. That was the intent of me bringing up the demographics, but you said it all much more eloquently. When you look at the percentage of black players in the game, combined with the other socioeconomic factors you point out, it's not surprising the way it is and it also doesn't make it a white man's sport. I, too, disagreed when Adam said that last year. 

It is a white man's sport in the sense that there are more white guys in it than the NBA and the NFL and there are few non-white managers and even fewer non-white executives and owners. The impact of that is debatable, and it needn't be the only reason that MLB hasn't had protests at the same level, but MLB is whiter than the NBA and NFL. 

[MurphDogg]

4 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

Jones said something and had no solution so I'm not going to applaud him. Had he said, I'm going to donate a million dollars into starting youth baseball leagues in prominently black urban areas then I would have certainly said he's doing something about it and applauded him. 

 

This is the exact some stuff that people said about Kaepernick and then when he did just that, somehow that didn't matter.

 

Telling people how they should feel and how they should express their feelings is not a great look.

[Emory Eagle]

13 minutes ago, RZNJ said:

Didn't take long for you to turn paranoid.   Wow!

Oh please... there's plenty of that crap around here.  Anyway this thread should be locked as it is turning political. 

One thing we can all agree on is that we like the O's and hate the Red Sox and the Yankees.  Let's focus on that. 

[Tx Oriole]

2 hours ago, Rene88 said:

Too many minorities make people feel uncomfortable I guess? Or hard to relate? I would love to see where they were going with that....

I wonder if they feel that way about hockey where most players are from the Kremlin (a.k.a-Trump's administration) and pastey white.

And there you go again. Putting politics into this. This is not political. It's about some stupid idiots that are racists. Calling AJ names and throwing things at him.  Unfortunately that is part of the world we live in. 

[Tony-OH]

11 minutes ago, Moshagge3 said:

I thought your initial post was OK, Tony, but I think you're contradicting yourself when you're calling out Adam Jones. You admitted in your first post that black people might, on average, have a tougher path to the majors because of the expense of travel ball, private schools that can field varsity teams, etc. and you also admitted that there has been some ignorance about how to coach Latino players in recent history. So if the obstacles are greater for non-whites than whites, I think "white man's sport" is a pretty fair, if uncomfortable, categorization.

Perhaps it's the label that bothers me. I disagree that it's a fair categorization to call baseball a "white man's sports" because that implies blacks are treated unfairly or are unwanted and neither is true. 

I believe it is harder for most inner city or poor kids, regardless of race, to become major league baseball players because of a lack of opportunity. That's a social and city issue that we can't solve or really discuss here without getting into politics. Unfortunately, most inner city people are black or Hispanic in almost every major city. In those cities, you can surely find lots of basketball courts and leagues, but few baseball diamonds. I know the Orioles have been doing a lot in Baltimore with the major league baseball funded RBI Program. 

Adam Jones does a lot around the city and in the community and he's a leader in this clubhouse. That's puts more emphasis on what he says because it means more. That's why I think he misstepped because he could have said it better and then said what he was doing to help to improve the situation. Instead, it just came off as another guy claiming racism or saying he's being oppressed (Not saying he said he was personally oppressed) while making tens of millions of dollars a year. Jones is better than that.

Saying all that, I absolutely support him for calling out the idiots who were yelling racial slurs and throwing things at him. I 100% support anyone who are against these kinds of people and him bringing that up can help bring awareness that could hep clamp down on this ridiculous behavior. Just because I feel he was wrong last year does not mean I thin he's wrong all the time or should keep his mouth shut. In fact, I'd like to hear Adam speak out more with potential solutions because I do think he's an intelligent guy who cares and someone who can help bring change if it's done the right way.

 

[Palmoripken]

2 minutes ago, dan-O said:

Additionally, I don't think Jones ever said "it's white people's fault". I'm sure he feels that yes, black athletes face racism, but also, crucially, yes! more needs to be done to remind black athletes that baseball is an option, more outreach needs to be done. 

You can view the "white man's sport" comment from the angle of he's playing the victim, like Tony did.

Or you can view it as statistically, yes, it's a white man's sport and let's get blacks more involved. Let's try to reach out to them and pave the way and show them it's an option over basketball and football. It doesn't have to be about racism all the time. 

That's how I read it too. 

[baltimore_chop]

1 minute ago, dan-O said:

I can easily say the same for your response. I've seen it time and time again. It's typical.

How many decision makers in baseball, amateur or professional, are black? 

Jones does a ton for urban youths and is ambassador for spreading the word about more black involvement in the game. But even if he didn't donate money, which he clearly does, simply talking about it is enough to warrant applause. That's what you don't understand. 

 

Precisely. He's been a part of the solution since he step foot in Baltimore, so to say anything less is asinine and defamation of the man's character. Secondly, Tony, I said there is a GOOD AMOUNT (not all) of white people who believe that baseball is a white man's sport. It goes all the way down even to the high school level. Remember the incident at Eastern Tech that happened around here a couple months ago. It's a sentiment that I'm positive a lot of African American ball players have felt coming up here in the states. Like I said before, it doesn't matter how many black ball players are on rosters, what matters is how they are treated. The foolishness needs to stop, and starts with people not telling people to get out safe spaces or whatever, and start changing their mindset. 

[MurphDogg]

2 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

Adam Jones does a lot around the city and in the community and he's a leader in this clubhouse. That's puts more emphasis on what he says because it means more. That's why I think he misstepped because he could have said it better and then said what he was doing to help to improve the situation. Instead, it just came off as another guy claiming racism or saying he's being oppressed (Not saying he said he was personally oppressed) while making tens of millions of dollars a year. Jones is better than that.

Not sure it is fair to require Adam Jones to have developed an entire thesis on how to resolve race relations in MLB over the last 12 hours.

[FlipTheBird]

Just now, MurphDogg said:

Not sure it is fair to require Adam Jones to have developed an entire thesis on how to resolve race relations in MLB over the last 12 hours.

20 pages, double-spaced. And he'd better have all of his references noted with the proper citation.

[Going Underground]

4 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

Perhaps it's the label that bothers me. I disagree that it's a fair categorization to call baseball a "white man's sports" because that implies blacks are treated unfairly or are unwanted and neither is true. 

I believe it is harder for most inner city or poor kids, regardless of race, to become major league baseball players because of a lack of opportunity. That's a social and city issue that we can't solve or really discuss here without getting into politics. Unfortunately, most inner city people are black or Hispanic in almost every major city. In those cities, you can surely find lots of basketball courts and leagues, but few baseball diamonds. I know the Orioles have been doing a lot in Baltimore with the major league baseball funded RBI Program. 

Adam Jones does a lot around the city and in the community and he's a leader in this clubhouse. That's puts more emphasis on what he says because it means more. That's why I think he misstepped because he could have said it better and then said what he was doing to help to improve the situation. Instead, it just came off as another guy claiming racism or saying he's being oppressed (Not saying he said he was personally oppressed) while making tens of millions of dollars a year. Jones is better than that.

Saying all that, I absolutely support him for calling out the idiots who were yelling racial slurs and throwing things at him. I 100% support anyone who are against these kinds of people and him bringing that up can help bring awareness that could hep clamp down on this ridiculous behavior. Just because I feel he was wrong last year does not mean I thin he's wrong all the time or should keep his mouth shut. In fact, I'd like to hear Adam speak out more with potential solutions because I do think he's an intelligent guy who cares and someone who can help bring change if it's done the right way.

 

More blacks live in the suburbs then big cities now. 

 

looked at numbers from the 2010 to 2014 American Community Survey and found that 39 percent of African Americans live in the suburbs, 36 percent live in cities, 15 percent live in small metropolitan areas, and 10 percent live in rural communities. That’s a noticeable shift from 2000, when 41 percent of African Americans lived in cities, 33 percent lived in suburbs, 15 percent lived in small metro areas, and 11 percent lived in rural communities

[Tony-OH]

11 minutes ago, MurphDogg said:

It is a white man's sport in the sense that there are more white guys in it than the NBA and the NFL and there are few non-white managers and even fewer non-white executives and owners. The impact of that is debatable, and it needn't be the only reason that MLB hasn't had protests at the same level, but MLB is whiter than the NBA and NFL. 

So is the NFL and NBA black man's sports? These labels are ridiculous, and that's my point. More black players are in the NBA and NFL, more white players are in the MLB and NHL. Who cares? It's only an issue when players are denied opportunity because of their race.There is absolutely no proof in the last 30 year that anyone has been denied a job or replaced with a white guy because of his race in MLB. Simply, the talent pool of black players is much smaller for the MLB then the NFL and NBA. Again, there are multiple reasons for that at the amateur level but it's not because of racism.

I watch and cheer on the Ravens and I've never thought once, man, I wish Ray Lewis was white so I could root harder for him. 

 

[MurphDogg]

4 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

So is the NFL and NBA black man's sports? These labels are ridiculous, and that's my point. More black players are in the NBA and NFL, more white players are in the MLB and NHL. Who cares? It's only an issue when players are denied opportunity because of their race.There is absolutely no proof in the last 30 year that anyone has been denied a job or replaced with a white guy because of his race in MLB. Simply, the talent pool of black players is much smaller for the MLB then the NFL and NBA. Again, there are multiple reasons for that at the amateur level but it's not because of racism.

I watch and cheer on the Ravens and I've never thought once, man, I wish Ray Lewis was white so I could root harder for him. 

 

Why do you think there is a lower percentage of black quarterbacks in the NFL than in the NFL at large, and why, historically was there an even lower percentage?

Why are there fewer black centers than other offensive line positions?

If you want to just focus on baseball, why are there so few black pitchers and even fewer black catchers?