The Ten Foot Pole

Normally, I wouldn’t touch topics like race and sexuality with a ten foot pole. But today’s Washington Post sports page included three stories on these subjects, so I figured it was time to quickly get my pole out of the garage and put it back just as quickly. After today’s serious topics, I guarantee I’ll be back to making fun of Eli Manning and Norv Turner tomorrow. Promise.

Sheryl Swoopes Says She’s Gay
WNBA fans fall into one of two categories: Pre-teen girls and lesbians. The league has little trouble marketing to the former but has been confused about how to cater to the latter. It’s a tricky question, to be sure. How do you cater to your most loyal fans (gay women) while not alienating your biggest potential market (young girls and their families?)
That line becomes even more blurred with Swoopes announcement. Swoopes, arguably the greatest and most recognizable player ever to play in the WNBA, became the league’s top star in its early days and much of the first marketing campaigns centered around her. When Swoopes had a child and then returned to the floor, the WNBA played up the fact that their reigning MVP was a loving mother and wife. Now, the league will struggle with how to address, if it all, Swoopes sexual preference.
Either way, it won’t matter because the WNBA is such a non-factor in the world of sports. Some might look at it as a wonderful reflection on our society when a person’s homosexuality doesn’t cause an uproar, but in this case the lack of shock of Swoopes announcement is based more on a general apathy towards a floundering basketball league than any sort of progressive thinking.
The WNBA is hanging on by a thread and would have folded years ago if David Stern didn’t force NBA owners to keep it afloat. The league’s games get miniscule ratings and even in cities with a team, high school football gets more coverage in newspapers. Swoopes was brave to come out, but it’s important to remember, it’s still the WNBA.
How this will affect the league is anyone’s guess. The WNBA has always had the unfair (and, frankly, sexist) stigma of a “lesbian league” (which seems to suggest that only gay women can become good athletes, a knock on both them and heterosexual women in this country) and Swoopes coming out will do little to change that. Whether there is a higher proportion of gays in the WNBA than in the male professional leagues is open to debate (I’d guess that there probably are more in the WNBA, but not by as much as most people would think), but clearly the women in the league will have much less of a problem with an openly gay teammate than men would. This is why Swoopes announcement is a good thing for gay women and the WNBA, but will have little effect on closeted male athletes currently in professional sports leagues.
One more thing, in most news reports about Swoopes announcement, it has been stated she’s the most recognizable female athlete to ever announce she is gay. This is a strange statement of hyperbole for two reasons:
1) I’d guess only 20% of the population could pick Sheryl Swoopes out of a lineup. And perhaps 40% would recognize her name. And I’m really being generous with those percentages. Most people probably don’t know who Cheryl Miller is, and she’s the most recognizable female basketball player ever. (Did Sheryl Swoopes ever get name-dropped on Seinfeld?)
2) Has everyone forgotten about Martina Navratilova? She came out during her heyday and was infinitely more famous than Sheryl Swoopes. Everyone should follow the lead of the AP wire story on Swoopes which correctly calls her, “the most recognizable athlete to come out in team sports” (emphasis mine).

Air Force Coach DeBarry Reprimanded For Remarks
When Michael Wilbon declares a racially-charged story to be worthless, everyone should take a hint and drop it. Wilbon writes eloquently and thoughtfully about race quite often in his Washington Post column. Sometimes I agree, sometimes I disagree, but I always read, think and try to look at things from the perspective of someone who would know better than me.
Reading Wilbon all my life, listening to his appearances on Tony Kornheiser’s radio show for a decade and watching PTI since it debuted four years ago, I’ve grown a sense of what Wilbon will find racist and what he won’t. Which is why yesterday, when I saw the caption “Air Force’ on the PTI sidebar, there was no doubt which side of the fence Wilbon would be on in this ridiculous story.
A quick recap: In his press conference after a 48-10 loss to TCU, Air Force football coach Fisher DeBarry said:

[They] had a lot more Afro-American players than we did and they ran a lot faster than we did.
It just seems to me to be that way. Afro-American kids can run very well. That doesn't mean that Caucasian kids and other descents can't run, but it's very obvious to me that they run extremely well.

Gentleman, start your outrage! Let’s go over DeBarry’s quote piece-by-piece.
- TCU has more black players. Check.
- TCU ran a lot faster than Air Force. Check.
- Black players run very well. Well, except for the offensive lineman. 5/6th check!
- It doesn’t mean white kids or any other race can’t run well, but it’s clear black kids run extremely well. Umm, what exactly is wrong about this statement?
I didn’t realize that we, as a society, had become so touchy about race that people can’t make factual statements about the subject.
Look at the top two receivers and cornerbacks for each NFL team, the two positions where speed is said to count the most. Of those 128 players, how many are not black? Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any corners and for receivers, only Brian Finneran, Joe Jurevicius and Drew Bennett come to mind. Let’s say I forgot about one or two players (and I’m not talking about current starters either, Kevin Curtis doesn’t count because he’s behind Torry Holt and Issac Bruce on the depth chart), which would mean that only five of the 128 players (4%) at two speed positions are white. If I didn’t forget about anyone, the percentage would drop to 2% (3/128).
So why, exactly, are people up in arms about DeBarry’s comment? He didn’t say white kids couldn’t be fast. He didn’t make irresponsible genetic assumptions about why black kids were faster. He just said that, in general, black kids were faster than white kids and those of other descents.
Yesterday, the vice-president of the Black Coaches Association was on Sportscenter and said that, in an emergency meeting called by the BCA, they recommended that DeBarry be reprimanded and choose his words more carefully, which indicates to me that the BCA had nothing better to do yesterday.
Get over it. Just because somebody brings up race doesn't mean they're automatically making a racist statement.

Aaron Upset At Astros’ Lack of African-Americans
The Houston Astros became the first World Series team since 1953 without an African-American player on their active roster. This makes Hank Aaron and Joe Morgan upset, and rightfully so. Unfortunately, Aaron and Morgan are upset with the wrong people.
“It is very disturbing to see something like this,” Aaron said. “You would think that [the Astros] could find at least one or two African-Americans, especially in this city.”
Aaron’s original sentiment is understandable. The decline of black players in baseball is a disturbing trend. But to blame the Astros for not opening a roster spot for a black player, simply because of his race, is an irresponsible statement.
It’s not the job of the Houston Astros to put together a diverse lineup. It’s the GM’s role to put together the best lineup possible within the budget. If a black player fit a needed role, the Astros would no doubt pick him up. But that’s difficult to do when only 9% of players on opening day rosters were black.
The Baltimore Orioles had zero black players on their opening day roster. The Boston Red Sox had just one the same as Aaron's old team, the Atlanta Braves.
So clearly, the problem isn’t just with the Houston Astros, it’s with baseball's lack of importance in the black community. Black kids don’t dream of playing major league baseball; the NBA and NFL, in that order, are the goals. And it makes sense.
Basketball is easy to play on a tight budget. All you need is a ball and a hoop and you can play all day. With one other person you have one-on-one and so on. But baseball requires a handful of players, a bat, a ball, gloves for at least half the players and a field. The equipment is tough to come by, the field is even tougher. Whereas basketball courts need little upkeep (once they’re created, all you have to do is replace a net every once in a while - and you don’t even need to do that), baseball fields need constant supervision and a lot of space. That’s tough to come by in any place, let alone in cities and the deep south where a vast majority of the nation’s 35 million African-American reside.
Plus, baseball isn’t nearly as exciting as basketball and football and is much more difficult to get started in. A top baseball draft choice will play in the minor leagues for two or three years. The top picks in basketball and football get playing time almost immediately.
Hopefully the rise of young black stars like Dontrelle Willis, C.C. Sabathia, Justin Upton and Prince Fielder will spark a resurgence in the game’s popularity among black kids. If not, the Houston Astros will be the first of many teams in the coming years to play in a World Series without a black player.