monte irvinThis is Monte Irvin from back in the day; he was one of the first African-American outfielders to start for the San Francisco Giants, so I’d take it that he might know a thing or two about American racism.

“Just happened to be that way. It’s not designed that way,” Irvin said in an interview with The Chronicle on Friday. “That’s going to happen unless you get more participation with youngsters coming up.” [...]

“Everyone says we have our first African American president. Has there ever been a Jewish president? An Italian president? They don’t say a damn thing about that. You think we’re still fighting the Civil War or something. If you want to mention it in passing, OK. But don’t dwell on it. –SF Chron, via Rob Neyer.

I never understood why people would say that we need “more” blacks in baseball. It’s a mindset that I can’t wrap my head around; it’s not as if baseball is excluding groups of people based on race. And then there’s the “Latin players are cheaper to develop so we need to invest more money to cultivate black players.” Only an idiot sportswriter would say something like that. Yeah, these players are pretty cheap, but we need to go someplace else and find players that will cost our organization more money. Great competitive mindset, people. Some of those clowns couldn’t run a lemonade stand.