by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig may not be bending to the pressure to move the 2011 All-Star Game out of Arizona, but he damn well knows the pressure is there! Today there was a protest outside of the headquarters of Major League Baseball in New York City. The protests are becoming part and parcel of Selig's world.
The protests, of course, are a result of Arizona's latest piece of racist legislation, the "papers please" law, SB 1070, that targets Hispanics for racial profiling by law enforcement officers. Considering that a full quarter of America's major league baseball players are are of Hispanic origin, this is an issue that Selig should not be allowed to blithely ignore. But so far he has.
Baseball has been an important component of American popular culture for over a century. It is Casey at the Bat, Lou Gerhig saying good-bye, Babe Ruth pointing out where he will send the next one one out of the park, and hot dogs and cold beer on summer afternoons.
Baseball is too American to allow itself to be used by the fascists of the Fourth Reich as some sort of affirmation that Arizona isn't as bad many believe it to be. The citizens of Arizona, by and large, are proud to be stupid. They will not change until change is forced upon them. Selig needs to stand up for racial equality and decency in America by moving the 2011 All-Star game out of Arizona.
www.movethegame.org
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