 Hello there, it's Thursday at noon. I know it is. Do you remember our Arrangement Thursdays at noon on CFUV Are you ready to get started? What do you have in mind? What I want to do now is called first-person plural You make it sound excessively attractive That's what I have in mind Like everything else of interest to our crack research staff Baseball is organized The characteristic one notes is not restricted to organized baseball The term organized baseball is usually applied only to major league baseball and the affiliated minors It is not applied to the independent minors Leagues outside Canada and the US and the uncannable number of amateur programs Including college baseball Designed to identify the best players at each age level and funnel them into situations that will facilitate the development and assessment of their skills The taxonomy is sprawling and decentralized The leagues and other associations are marked by arcane local mores and The specifics change annually with exhaustive information not to be found in printed sources In short the environment is an organizational dynamics researchers dream come true Canada's role in this playful yet competitive atmosphere seems ambiguous Organized baseball seems to be losing interest in the country as a potential market for its product The Montreal Expos were one of the two teams marked for contraction meaning dissolution This passed wetter by the major league owners Vancouver a member of the triple a Pacific Coast League through the 1999 season Was downgraded to the short season single a Northwest League for the 2000 season and has not gone back The general unwillingness of Canadians to commit to paying literally any price to buy new stadium for their professional teams has been noted elsewhere In other sports, especially hockey The relative readiness of American municipalities to commit to any expenses that their professional franchises can articulate Has been cited as the beginning of the end for Canadian pro sports teams competing with their counterparts south of the border On the other hand organized baseball has no reservations about using Canadian players Canadians who played in the major leagues in 2001 Include stubby clap rail Cormier Ryan Dempster Rob Ducey Eric Gagney Steve Green Mike Johnson Corey Koski Erin Maillette Paul Quintrell Matt stairs Larry Walker and Jeff Zimmerman The situation appears to be one in which Canadians will be allowed to produce and get paid for a product but not to consume it. I Spoke with Terry McKay by telephone on May 30th My cake is the head coach of the University of British Columbia baseball team The program had drawn my attention for two reasons first UBC is a member of the NAIA a collegiate athletics organization based in the United States and until recently Composed solely of u.s. College and University athletic programs There are eight Canadian schools in the NAIA now Although in the interview you will hear the cake points out that only UBC has a baseball program I wanted to know the attraction of the NAIA to Canadian schools Anticipating that it provided a higher profile for prospective professional athletes among the collegians a way to draw attention from the moneymen in the American and national leagues Recruiting would naturally be more difficult for a school that gave its ball players no hope of moving on to more lucrative things after graduation Second Jeff Francis a pitcher on the team Had been the first Canadian collegian to make baseball America's pre-seasonal America team this in January of 2002 Francis had distinguished himself not only through his play at UBC But in various summer programs that showcase top amateur talent At the time of this interview Francis was being tagged as a high draft choice with all the reports I saw projecting him among the first ten selections He eventually went ninth overall to the Colorado Rockies on the first day of the two-day draft June 4th, 2002 In this interview, I asked McKay about among other things Francis's prospects as well as those of Surrey BC high school player Adam Lowen Who eventually went fourth overall in the draft to Baltimore. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself? Yeah, your coaching career got started and how you wound up at UBC Yeah, I'm starting my just got done my fifth year as the head coach at UBC Got the opportunity to start the program from scratch in 1997. So that was my first Coaching experience. I played up to that point Got done playing in 1996 So it kind of fit in nicely in terms of the time frame So yeah, I've been the head coach now for five years at UBC and hopefully I'm gonna do a lot more here It looks like you're off to a good start. You almost made the NAIA World Series this year I have been not keeping track of you and it looks like you missed it by one game. Is that correct? We would lost in the regional final to Albertson College and if we'd won the regional tournament We would have been able to host the super regional which was a best of three against the winner of California Which Albertson did and won that so I think we you know Technically if we could have won that regional tournament would have had a real good chance to win in the super regional against the California winner And if we would have went ahead and won that then you're at the World Series in Lewiston right now How did the decision to join the NAIA get made what considerations came out during the process? Was this all-year project or was this something that the the whole athletic department decided to do? It was kind of a mixture It was the thing that I you know I did right from the start when we started the program when there was talk of starting baseball at UBC IID that is the most important thing either we get an affiliation with somebody in the US or it's not worth doing There was no point doing a an exhibition program or something that kids weren't playing for I played at the National Baseball Institute back when it was going out here in Surrey and it became very difficult to recruit kids into You know play seasons where every game's an exhibition game where it doesn't mean anything So that was one of the things that I talked to the athletic department about right at the start And they assured me that you know as we got going into the program's history that that would be the first major step That they made from their end and sure enough they did after two years of playing kind of a club team level where we were playing Exhibition games. I think the year 2000 was actually our first year in the NAI so the university athletic department made the Decision to go ahead and move baseball into the NAI and actually have now joined golf and and cross-country and track and field in the NAI Also, so it's kind of a mixture between between myself and the baseball program and Bob Phillip in the athletic department So the major issue was recruiting the kids just weren't going to play for you if it meant they had to sacrifice their future I think so, you know, that was just my experience of being at the NBI was it was becoming real We had a lot of kids starting to leave to go to US schools and then that's kind of a big thing You know for me as a player was to where you know, you show up at the ballpark every day Well, if you lose today or go over for today, there's no Consequence to that where you know, it didn't bother you and you know I played in the States for four years before going to the NBI And then those were always the fun games the most important games or conference games And you're playing for a national ranking and all that type of thing it drives you and motivates you That's the only way you're going to get the top end kid is when you're actually playing You know for a national championship kids aren't interested in coming out and just playing exhibition games You played professionally for four years. No, that was college baseball for four years down in the US Who did you play for? I was at North Idaho College in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho And then I actually played a year at Albertson College who's now our conference rival kind of neat I still have some of the coaches that coach at Albertson still were coaching me when I was there So I still have a lot of relationships with guys from that school if UBC had not joined the NAIA What do you think their options would have been the most realistic options in terms of inter-university competition? We probably wouldn't have started the program camp. We would have started it already and it became evident that we couldn't get into the NAI I can honestly say we would have probably folded the program. There's just no reason to Try to run something at the level We've you know seen running it at the highest level, you know And if I if I wasn't able to recruit the top kids to come to UBC to play baseball to me There's no point in in running the program It's the nbi has folded because of the problems they had and I'm sure that you know about program like that at UBC would have run the same fate eventually it just Would have been too tough to raise money and to get the athletic department involvement financially and everything else It just it wouldn't have made much sense at all Did the option of doing it through the CIA you ever come up? Is this something to which they just were not amenable? Well, we were the first ones to really start college baseball in Canada at at our level Now there's a few other exhibition programs that were going on the prairie baseball academy and left bridge and the ABC program in cobec now they just run as club teams and exhibition that play all us teams But just exhibition games. They're both junior college programs. So we were the first four-year School program to start college baseball and then shortly after that you saw what happened in the ciu back east start up The league that they've got going back there now So we were contacted by them But we were already in the nai at the time and then made it, you know Clear to them that we were very happy where we were at We didn't feel that from a travel point of view would make much sense Going east to west the impossible given the weather in canada and the time frame from my college baseball plays We play from mid february to mid may And there's not many places outside of vancouver victoria the lower mainland that you're going to be playing baseball in february March and april the americans start college ball in january or february depending on the school and i guess that would be Well, my impossible once you get out on the prairies of canada Right, you know every year we start our season mid february february 14th down in catalforn in arizona where the weather's great You know i talked to a couple recruits actually a couple weeks ago In Ontario they still had snow, you know, and so they still aren't out in their field in may in some places in canada this year So it makes it really tough to try to plan a college program based around you Don't know year to year what the weather's going to do for you according to my records There are eight canadian colleges in the naia now for up for baseball Uh, you have alberta ubc You have calgary at alberta you'll revolve you have ottawa simon phraser uvc and university of winsor What do you think the advantages are for these schools? What do you think the advantage of being a canadian school and and essentially american athletics association are? What is it that appeals about in general not just from the standpoint of ubc? But for for all canadian colleges one of the perks we're the only baseball program that's in the nai So there's 240 baseball programs in the we're the only canadian one that plays baseball in the nai None of those other schools offer baseball at that level and then i think some of the other Schools they offer different sports in the nai the sfu has They've actually they're starting to change over to the ciu now But they still have a few i think left in the nai But the big advantages to me were from base where we are You know as so close to the border that we can cross the border within an eight hour bus ride and play 15 schools You know and an eight hour bus ride from vancouver anywhere in bc or across canada You're going to find one or two schools that you could play So to me it makes the the biggest sense just from a travel point of view from a budget point of view of Crossing the border having all these schools that you can play within a reasonable distance where if we have to play the university Alberta you're flying or the university of calgary You're flying and then just from a budget point of view doesn't make much sense now that you've managed to Get into the naia now that you've gotten the program going Yeah, how do you sell the program to recruits and parenthetically? Do you sell it to the american recruits the same way as you do the canadian recruits? One of the if i were a competent high school player, which i wasn't by the way If i had been how would you have sold it to me? The big thing for ubc, you know, obviously the kid has to be a great student academically to get into the university The standards are so high at ubc and continue to Increase that you know my number one thing before i look at the kid as a baseball player The first question i have to ask can i see your transcript and see how you do it in school? So you know if the kid meets the academic requirements, then i'm able to talk to him from a baseball point of view Right now with the success of the program on the field The kids are not going anywhere else I mean i'm able to have a lot of success recruiting the kids and you're going to get a top education From one of the top three universities in canada academically You're going to play in the best baseball program in canada that rivals any, you know NAI program now and and even some of the nc double a division one programs You know we've worked two and one against nc double a division one opponents this year So now if the kid has grades and he's an elite baseball player I don't expect to lose him to anybody and we're out recruiting a lot of division one schools right now for canadian kids Um, I have kids leaving us schools and coming home every year actually for this year for september's team We're probably going to have eight or nine kids leave us schools and come back They're canadian kids that are down at us schools and they're coming back to ubc because I think they they see it as Hey, the baseball program's as good as the one i'm at down here. If not better I would be getting a canadian education a better education and playing with people that I either played with when I was younger Or i'm closer to home. So that's been the big advantage. Um, so now the kid has grades I don't expect it losing to anybody we offer scholarship money on par with most of the american schools We compete against so that's not the issue We're showing that our players can go professionally in the draft now and then go on to the careers in major league baseball So that's not an issue of exposure. You know, jeff francis has proven that to be, you know, nonexistent That's not an argument anymore And uh, we just focus on the canadian kids. I actually don't recruit american kids Uh, it's my feeling that they've got enough places to play down there This is a canadian program for canadian kids that are going to get a canadian education You mentioned that you'd scheduled three nc double a division one opponents last year Is that right right who did you play? We went down it was a division one tournament in phoenix held by the oakland athletics at their spring training complex We beat the university of portland Beat the university of missouri and lost the university of washington. That's a pretty impressive performance Yeah, that was our actually our first games of the year and and we were really happy with how we came out and played We obviously had two top pitchers jeff francis and brooks mcnivin who will beat anybody It didn't really matter who so, you know francis went out and beat the university of missouri and mcnevin beat the university of portland And washington was a good game They were they were pre-season ranked number 24 and mc double a division one baseball And the score was actually two to one in the eighth inning and they put up five runs against one of our relievers So we were right there with with one of the top 25 ranked teams in division one baseball Which kind of shows you know the competition level or you know how we've developed as a program the type of level of baseball We're now playing Let's talk a little more about the players. You've mentioned jeff francis already What do you think his prospects are like? I've heard it projected as a first rounder in the upcoming draft Right. Do you think that's realistic? Yeah, actually I it'll be guaranteed that he'll go in the top 20 picks in fact It'll probably be in the top 15 and uh, there's a chance I I know of a couple teams that are sitting five through 10 right now that have some interest in them So it's so tough to tell with what these teams are going to eventually do next Tuesday It's a guessing game and then their head boss will make the final decision on draft day But he can go anywhere from picks five through 15 right now realistically I really would be really really surprised if he fell below 15 I think it's safe to say that most major league teams will be willing to take on one more competent pitcher at this time So you got you got that, right? That says you left hander that Pitches above his years. I mean that I think the thing that they like about jeff francis Is he might not take too long to get to their big week club, you know I I know some scouting directors and that I talked to you that the plan with a kid like francis is hey two years They expect him to be in the big leagues and that's kind of what the teams that need instant help on the mound I think they'll be looking to kids like jeff. How about the kid from sorry the one who played on the junior The national junior team. He's committed to arizona state. I think his name is uh, adam lowen. Is that right? Yeah, I know adam real well. He's actually going to go even higher He's he will he'll go in the top six picks pretty much for sure I don't know if number one's out of the question I think pittsburgh's kind of leaning otherwise to other places, but especially picks three through six You know lowen is projected to go right there. And so he's gonna You know go just that much higher than just a little bit higher than jeff might be it's like I said It's so tough to tell right now with what the teams are thinking so, you know, but adam He's obviously a high school pitcher that's got you know, he's throwing 92 to 94 miles an hour and A real good curve ball. He's got a high, you know real bright future ahead of him that kid One of the players like when you first get a hole in them These are I would say entering freshman maybe juniors at the outside when you first make contact with them I don't know if you want to take a lot of transfers into your program But what is it like dealing with the players as individuals? How much of your job is that of? Well troop leader and how much of it is uh master strategist To me that's the funnest part of the job is The relationships that you build with your kids. So we take the majority of our kids out of high school There are a few college transfers every year and there's not much you can do with them You know they've they've learned some things in their first two years and all that and you're only going to have them for two years So you just try to bring them up to the level get them into your system Teach them what you want them to to be doing out on the field and that's all you can really do with them A lot of the habits they've created that are ingrained in them so much It's real tough to make major mechanical adjustments to a pitcher or to a hitter High school kids a little bit different you get them coming as an incoming freshman and 18 year olds You know first time away from home From anywhere across Canada We got a couple kids from new Brunswick and we got Ontario kids and everyone else So it's a big move for them and then you should see them when they first show up. It's pretty funny You know they're they're all worried and scared and intimidated and you got to take them under your wing You know and you're a dad to them You're their dad now and and you have to handle your relationship with them accordingly So you know you have to deal with some off the field issues that the they come across as being You know young kids like that at a university for the first time and away from home missing friends and family and girlfriends and everything else So to me that that's the neatest part and then you know two days ago I get to go to graduation and see three of my seniors graduate and Two of them have been been with me right from year one and that was pretty emotional and To me I get as much happiness out of that as I will next Tuesday when jeff france gets drafted or bruce mcnivin gets Dropped in and they go and start their poker To me you know and as I get the equal benefit out of seeing a kid that stayed here and graduated From the university of british columbia played four great years for me You know and now we'll go on and be very successful in life just as well as jeff frances who came here did all the great things On the field and you know academically also, but we'll go out and play professional baseball here So it's it's pretty neat to see both levels like that. It sounds fascinating I was wondering how much strategy the college age players can handle How much of how much of a job was disabusing them of the notions that there are youth coaches Golden rider heads I think that at this age the The skills are pretty well formed but the notion of team play is still starting to take root the idea that it is a team game After all Yeah, that's a big one and that's kind of the one knock that I do have of the System that that produces these kids is that there's not as much emphasis Especially when they get in that 16 to 18 year old age group There's not as much emphasis on winning and team It's more to do with personal development developing you for the pros A lot of these kids go into these baseball schools and it's just one-on-one attention You know trying to make you as an individual a better player and they get to college and that's a big adjustment They have to make is They number one aren't used to playing with a lot of pressure on them because they're always the best player on their team From wherever they came from They're handling negative things for the first time Hey a slump or or going out on the mound and getting hit hard You know, they've never had to deal with this stuff before so it's a lot of mental Stuff going on in freshmen for the first time of having to fail You know, how do they handle failure? You know and that type of thing so when I get into the strategy Now the one thing that does help me at UBC is that I'm dealing with very bright kids From an academic point of view and that portrays out onto the baseball field for kids that have You know a good head on their shoulders come from a good background If they tend to handle this stuff they understand coaching a little bit better If you tell them something they're able to apply it a lot easier Or some of the kids I've had you know the younger age group I've had experiences with they have a tougher time trying to to do what you're trying to tell them You know to handle the information So I think I'm lucky at UBC to have real bright kids that way Where they take things that you teach them and then talk to them about And they apply them very quickly and understand them a lot better So you have a little bit more success that way You know with the UBC kids It must be difficult to strike a balance between your primary function as coach Which is to win as many games as possible to win the NAIA World Series if possible each year and to beat as many division one upon us as you can The Missouri's and Portland's and University of Washington's the world And at the same time to make the environment receptive to the players goals Which are invariably to move on to bigger and better things None of them want to be amateurs forever I'm sure Yeah no question in fact you know just because of who I was as a player And then friend the close friends that I have that are in the big leagues Jeff Zimmerman and Ryan Dempster and these guys that I know very well Actually, I put ahead their their individual development In terms of the pro game ahead of us winning a national championship for UBC For example, I think I would like to be regarded our program And me as a coach by how many players I got into professional baseball Or got to the big leagues versus how many national championships we won Now that's a direct conflict of the US programs we compete against They're winning number one They'll do anything to hold on to their kids an extra year or two And I'll do anything to push them out of the program They get an opportunity to sign We want them out chasing their dreams in professional baseball That's just how I was as a player and realizing that not many kids Get the opportunity to go play professional baseball So if they do they're going to go do it in my UBC players We're not going to talk them into you know stay one more year Because we might win more games or we might have a chance at winning a national championship Hey, you know go chase your dream And you know I hope to be watching you on TV one day to me That's that's what it's all about for these kids is to reach their ultimate goal And in the meantime and doing that if we have success at UBC In terms of a national championship or winning a conference title You know that's great but that's not number one to me You know if it's it's moving them on I've done a little bit of homework on the subject of Canadian players And it looks like there's an influx now There are a number of players coming into the professional ranks from Canada More in fact than since the 19th century If my casual observation is correct But at the same time that this influx is occurring It seems like pro ball is starting to well pull out The independent minors are taking an interest in Canada But the affiliated ones not to mention the majors seem to be Investing less in it with each passing year You know about the expo situation And you probably know that the Vancouver affiliated minor league team Got cut back from AAA to short season A a couple years ago And I wondered if there really if there really was a trend going on Or if it's not as grim as it seems with regard to pro ball Yeah, I think professional baseball when you're looking at Canada Professional baseball is all about dollars and cents And it's big business And Canada can't compete on the same stage as a big business With the U.S. markets And that's mainly because of our doll We hear that in hockey and all these other sports But there's truth to it I mean there really is even AAA The reason they left Vancouver Number one they couldn't convince the city to upgrade the stadium That Bailey and DeBille Bank They actually wanted to even build a new stadium Or at least get another five or six thousand seats in there The city not willing to do that Or spend that money on baseball I guess is what it boiled down to And therefore you gotta see like Sacramento sitting there Saying hey we'll build you a brand new 15,000 feet stadium And to host you guys down here And it's a no brainer from that point of view So it's just a different mentality up here I think to go towards sport In terms of supporting sport and to lose the expo Well that's just to me as it's a direct result of Community not being able to support a professional organization Last losing our AAA team the same way Like I said it's all money driven now And so if people don't come out to watch it Or support it and the corporate people aren't involved You cannot compete with people across the border And that's to me the side on professional baseball Yet like you said we're getting a trend now in Canada In terms of more players coming out of Canada And being recognized by professional baseball So it's kind of weird to me that that happens yet I think that's the direct result between amateur and professional Where amateur is grassroots And we're starting to run a lot better programs in Canada For the younger kids And we're starting to see the result of programs like UBC Where the kids we get now coming through the system Are so much more ahead of where they were 10 years ago So much more prepared for an elite level baseball So to me that's kudos to the Little League coaches And the organizations that run these kids through their programs That when they come out they're being recognized By major league baseball and by college teams Recruiting them that they're ready to play at an elite level Where you know professional baseball is a business It's just a whole another deal What changes in the way college baseball is organized in North America Do you predict for the next decade What has it been like being in the NAIA And where are they headed How do you think the NCAA is going to handle all of this The NAI as a whole right now They're starting to lose members over to the NCAA They're two organizations that run side by side As four year programs In the Northwest we've lost a few teams The last couple of years that have jumped With the NCAA division two So you know with the NCAA comes a little bit more money You know obviously the football programs The big time football programs And basketball programs that run NCAA athletics Really fund the whole organization To where schools like the University of Washington Their athletic department is funded by football You know that's the thing They bring in 10 million dollars U.S. A year of the football team And you know that pretty much funds the majority Of their budget baseball They're not a big sport team Big drawing team You know fans wise they don't make money They you know need money every year to live So I think UBC actually is one of the few schools in Canada I know that we've been in meetings with the NCAA Over the last two to three years About potentially down the road This is a long term vision of UBC athletics But that is getting into the NCAA At the division one level You know and then starting to prepare our teams Like baseball playing in the U.S. system To get them ready for such a move If we were able to convince the NCAA Down the road that this is something that we could handle Okay finally let's uh let's bottom line That you've spoken about the relationship between College athletics and academics Let's talk about society in general Do you think baseball is good for Canadians Or for Canadian society And what do you think would need to happen For them to complement each other better For what would Canadian society have to do To improve things for baseball And what would baseball have to do To improve things for Canadian society I think you know the first thing Is just a facilities issue I know here in Vancouver We really struggle with that in terms of There are not any The only baseball only facility In Vancouver is not Bailey Stadium And that's now leased by a professional team We're fortunate to play out of there But when we're talking the grass roots And building up through the different age groups Indoor facilities Badly needed in climates like Vancouver Where it rains so much We need indoor facilities Where kids can go in and train year round And to me that's the biggest thing And society has to understand That we've been so hockey dominated Over the years Here's a sport baseball That seems to be showing a trend upwards And we have to have things like facilities In place to be able to handle that Because the kids that make baseball Their goal and what they want to focus on They're starting to understand That this is a 9, 10 month a year deal We're in the past because of hockey And that baseball is always the sport That the hockey players play in the summer When they weren't playing hockey So society needs to understand that That baseball needs to be treated And handled in a year round fashion Just like hockey has been in the past Where these kids are committed And serious year round of that sport And want to develop in that sport And then the second thing along with it Is facilities We need to build baseball only facilities Not facilities that are baseball In the summer soccer in the winter Or more gay We can be out on a field We show that We're out on a field September Through November And then we get back out in January Through May And so that's our college season We're out on a field And we need a facility that can handle us Being outside on a field And that's where you go across the street And see the other baseball fields That are across from that Baylor Stadium They have soccer played on them all year round Baseball only gets to get in their April Through August You know, it's quite a difference It sounds like excruciatingly difficult work From your standpoint Having to handle not only on the field Aspects of the game But dealing with all the stuff In the front office as it were The university The community and so forth Looks like you have to be a professional Diplomat As well as a professional coach At our level, you know, fundraising is a big part of it too Where sometimes, you know, during the day It seems like I'm more of a fundraiser Office, you know, person Compared to a baseball coach Where when I get out to the field Is actually the happiest time of my day Because I get to concentrate on what I love to do You know, the rest of my time during the day Is talking to corporate people and alumni And trying to raise the awareness throughout Canada Of our program And getting people on board to help support us You know, raising scholarship money And there's tons of stuff That has to keep getting done To build what we dream, you know That we're trying to build here And so new stadium on campus is a goal of ours And it goes down the line Well, thanks a lot for your time today You've really helped us out a lot I really appreciate your speaking with me this morning No problem, Carol, thanks Naaaaaaage! I've perceived that Major League Baseball Began in the late 1940s Not in 1871, 1876, 1901, 1920 Or any of the other dates Commonly cited by so-called baseball historians I support this claim by noting That the top Caucasian professional baseball leagues That existed before the Kola line Began to go down in the 1940s Cannot reasonably be called Major League Baseball My defense will not be reliant upon the social utility Of drawing the line as a way to get even with bigots Although I personally find such reciprocity Not without appeal It is rather an internal attack on the Major League Baseball Those pre-war years Dismantling the notion that the games and pennant races Could have been legitimate in and of themselves In the context of the race issue My initial motivation for such specificity In setting a single date on the Dona Major League Baseball Was the perceptible lack of agreement As to how long the top North American professional leagues Have been playing essentially the same game They do now Television announcers regularly report On a player having broken one modern record or another With closer inspection revealing that the date of transition Used in the particular case May correspond to, tautologically, Nothing other than the last time another player Was more successful in the given category The examination of the more perceptible discontinuities In Major League play Since the first professional team was formed in 1869 Is instructive in other respects The central precepts of team sport Were violated in the days of the color line To an extent that severely contextualizes And perhaps entirely invalidates American league and national league standings And the statistics before that time And the violations stem with logical inevitability From the ban itself It is imperative to the integrity of an event That is competitive and presented as such That all sides attempt as a matter of good faith to win Otherwise what transpires is not a contest But an exhibition at best, a farce at worst The 1919 Black Sox scandal was not about The Chicago players intentionally playing poorly As much as it was about their intentionally playing Less well than usual The point of law as it were had to address the latter act Else any player who threw a game could counter argue That he hadn't done anything to hurt his team He had only declined to help it as much as usual On that particular day This rhetorical play was known by early 20th century Baseball fans and administrators To be used by would-be game fixers And approaching players thought to be potentially helpful The popular term for intentional underperforming Was laying down, implying a more passive And less detectable variety of subversion Than flagrant misplay The ban on blacks playing in the American and national leagues Created a conflict of interest in players That discouraged them from full display of their talents As in Las Vegas where every successful new strategy Implied by gamblers is made illegal upon discovery By the casinos and the biggest individual winners Are rewarded with an informal request to leave Nevada And never return The professional baseball players of the day Were subject to attack on the race issue If they became too good at what they did Babe Ruth himself was suspected of being a Quote secret negro A claim which he felt compelled to deny Frequently throughout his career His denials may have been rooted in whatever racism He harbored personally But the prospect of his being removed from his profession However slim the probability must have motivated him as well Did it perhaps motivate him And others with a little extra ability to burn To keep a lower profile on the field It cannot have encouraged better play on his part Less prominent players also had to be concerned With passing the quote race test close quote For example teams wanting to use Cuban players Had to establish that the players in question Were quote true Cubans close quote that is As opposed to black ones Some of the players so examined Passed the test and some failed Player abilities are largely developed By the individual player A young person begins to hone baseball skills At an early age The young person spends certain amounts of time and energy On batting throwing running and other skills Development is largely a function of this allocation Later when coaches and managers become involved It is still the young person who has to execute And the physical and mental processes that accompany Every action of the eventually mature player Can still be said to spring from the player's own past And present regiment to a great extent The call line could not have been reasonably ignored By a prospective professional baseball player Players had to allocate a certain amount of their stamina And intellect to beating the ban continuously Evading at every moment of their brief professional And professional lives Certain players did not have to worry as much as others About it which only added to the inequities it caused And as with Ruth Those who survived the entrance exam Still had to worry at least in theory About becoming good enough at the game To draw negative attention And possible witch hunts With the resulting absurdity that it was possible For a player to be too good In what was supposed to have been a competition Taking practical steps to prepare for race scrutiny Or at least the player's anticipation of its Becoming a non-trivial influence on his career Necessarily compromised player training effectiveness And performance in league games The resulting contests were not entirely about Who played baseball the best As the ban was an informal one Never appearing as black-letter law in any official American league and or national league documents The individual teams were technically at liberty To field black players from the beginning of the 20th century and before That they did not attempt to do so Preferring to participate in the unspoken moratorium Violated the principle of competition as well Some cooperative elements inevitably Must exist for league games to be held A blanket immunity for collaboration cannot be granted In an environment in which competition drives The validity of the enterprise to such an extent It is difficult to blame the successful teams for Preferring the status quo It is easy to blame the perennial losers for not Hiring all the black ball stars they could And going to any extreme to see to it That none of their opponents got too rambunctious With the new talent The athletics of the late 1910s The Red Sox of the 1920s And the Phillies of the 1930s What unquestionably have benefited from having had Rube Foster, Martin De Higo, and Ray Dandridge respectively Preferring to take the easy route These teams effectively threw season after season In the same way the Black Sox threw the 1919 World Series They couldn't be bothered to try Is there anyone who could explain why watching a game In which one team is losing on purpose is worthwhile? I am not referring to situations such as The insertion of the mop-up reliever in baseball Or the third string quarterback at the end of a football game Those situations are marked by the presence of two mitigating factors The teams are cutting their losses So that they have a better chance of winning future games And the personnel in the field, given their identities Are still trying to win the game if possible No conflicts of interest exist Even conceding for the sake of argument That the athletes in the American and national leagues Were in general superior to the black ball mainstays in pre-war times A concession that one might well prefer to describe as falsehood The former were compromised in their ability To pursue the goal of winning to a perceptible extent By the side effects of the coal line Teams that abdicate the goal of winning In favor of deliberate sub-optimality are not teams They reduce to triviality the completion of the games In which they engage Games which are the only evidence their league has To offer of its legitimacy and worth A thrown game is no game And the games played by the American and national leagues During the days of professional baseball apartheid Were thrown games in the strictest sense of the term The pre-war pennant races took place in the shadow of conditions That were measurably more racist in certain major league cities than in others St. Louis and Boston for example Were often cited as worst towns the most for blacks To claim that the racism and regional fluctuations therein Were irrelevant since there were no black players in the majors of that time Is like saying that racism is not a problem in all white neighborhoods For example, Forsyth County, Georgia Became noteworthy in the early 1990s for not having had a black resident in several decades Closer examination suggested that the absence was a result of conditions so inimical to blacks That none had remained in the county long enough to have been rightly called residents It was the social conditioning question that had caused and maintained the demography The concept of the level playing field is not strictly enforced in baseball With franchises building their teams around their parks And on occasion their parks around their teams However, there are and must be some restrictions on home team advantage Minimally killing off or maiming for a life opposing players is and must be implicitly forbidden Such an observation may seem ridiculous now Unless you have lost a relative to a lynching And there are quite a few people alive who have It has been nearly 50 years now since Brown versus Board of Education was first addressed By the US Supreme Court A lot of people who are around then are around now Or at least their first two or three generations of descendants are Or they should be It would be petty to assess the historical effect of regional pockets of racism solely in terms of how they have influenced baseball games That is not to say that one cannot Conversely, assess the games in terms of how they have been influenced by regional pockets of racism What should the manager of the Chicago Cubs for example Have to cave into those who would maintain a hostile environment in St. Louis By leaving any of his players home when playing road games against the Cardinals If I had been managing the Cubs in 1935 I would not have left Gabby Hartnett home for a road game against the Cardinals Had I been managing the Cubs in 1998 I would not have left Sammy Sosa home for such a game The implications for fair play of having to leave any number of players home for road games are obvious Racism did have a casualty count And the pervasiveness of its more violent aspects Was such that not even a baseball game could take place in certain parts of the country Without being influenced by it One hears often that history is written by the winners Examined more narrowly history is written by those who are still around to write it today It follows that any version of history which a given group promulgates at the expense of other Groups ability to compile not to mention circulate other versions must be looked upon as suspect It is not petty to mourn the effect of genocide on discourse Eliminating persons with knowledge of a culture has been a historically effective way of curtailing The presence and influence of that culture in general discourse As the individuals who sustain the culture are dispatched The culture itself naturally succumbs to attrition Is there a black american canadian mexican cuban honduran Salvadorian Polizian or falcon islander alive will maintain that the exclusion of quote colored men close quote from the american and national and indeed federal leagues Between 1884 and 1947 had no measurable effect on the game as played by these leagues To claim that the damage is done and cannot be undone That it is best to let bygones be bygones Is to accept and reinforce the aims of the initiators on the color line If one dismisses the loss incurred by the game Never mind the persons thus excluded is not worth examining One is guilty of upholding the color line oneself In the sense that the color line was a line of propaganda that was sustained by passive as well as active destruction of opposition And evidence that might serve opposition So far from having no choice but to accept what transpired under such twisted circumstances is valid One has no choice but to throw out the results This practical and theoretical imperative is binding for scientific reasons as well Reality control encompasses diddling with the conditions before the testing has begun as well as throwing out subsequent results that one does not like Without taking this statement to be true in the extreme. I know that history is consensual Some range of popular assent would be a necessity in redrawing a line initiating modern major league baseball history If it were to be put into practice To maintain that the color line was not of sufficient import to merit selecting 1946 or 1947 As when modern major league history began Is to take on the counter arguments of quite a few black americans canadians mexicans cubans hondurans Salvatoreans beletheans and falcon islanders in addition to taking on the responsibility of coming up with a more logical year for candidacy Are you so worried about babe ruth being stripped of some of his statistical legitimation That you never even think to extend the same amount of concern to josh gibson Did your parents have to use the side or rear door to the stores in their hometown The doors are still there in the rural south by the way They're isolated and architecturally inefficient presence along otherwise featureless long brick walls A tangible and measurable reminder of exactly how willful the segregationists were about ensuring their ideals Did you have an older sister with a gift for numbers? Who nonetheless received little or no math education while not too bright kids went to public schools that were better funded than your siblings by several orders of magnitude We won't even talk about the so-called literacy tests That were administered in the united states to blacks but not to whites to prevent the former group from voting If you really think that jackie robinson was an inadequate auger of the world to come Don't convince me convince a black woman or man or better still convince someone who wasn't quote really close quote black But who got pigeonholed as such early on and never escaped the label Because until you do you will never ever get the consensus necessary to establish any other time as historically more significant And if brushing them off in the hope that they will ultimately grow weary of arguing and go away Is your preference? I remind you that it was the failure of this approach that allowed the coal line to go down in the first place It may seem hard headed of me not to believe the pre 1946 american league and national league to have been major league baseball With ruth wagner matthewson garrick hornsby cob and others Spending their careers playing in one or both of the two leagues One may ask how I could not regard them as having been major league My response is that on the contrary. I didn't regard them as having been baseball Races a term that is often used not without cause synonymously with assigned social role Assignment of a given player to the white group or the black group was ultimately at the discretion of the commissioner's office Which was the authority of last resort on such matters during kinsaw mountain landis's term in office The assignment of status was even made explicitly by landis in some cases With a given organization trying to classify a player as white but being thwarted This operationalization of whiteness was such that once it was in place Competition among the teams in the white leagues could not possibly have retained integrity This was in part because the team wasn't truly at liberty to improve itself under such a system An upwardly mobile team could not freely scout recruit acquire develop or trade players Under such a system since their fortunes might ultimately hinge on whether landis's temperament would favor them in a particular case With such a specter at the end of the tunnel Teams gave up on certain players just to be on the safe side With some of the players being dismissed before they had had a chance to play for the organization at all Even more of a conundrum given the simple-minded taxonomy employed by the baseball establishment Must have been the issue of how to deal with cubans and pollinations and native americans and arabs and mexicans of heterogeneous ancestry and so forth The ban on quote blacks closed quote presuppose that race was univariate dichotomous and discreet With such tepid assumptions as the foundation of their conceptual model The racists made it impossible for landis or anyone else to be quote fair close quote within the context of its application They're being no logically consequent standard against which fairness could have been judged I expect the racists would have said that they just knew Who was white and it was black The statement whose articulation would only have supported my case A lot of people don't think of sports and is particularly looking at game theory is necessarily sociological I've enjoyed what you've done this week. The idea behind the dawn segment is that context counts You can't look at the game after the call line went down and the game before the call line went down and say This is the same game The way they handled it was so different The black letter law notwithstanding the color line never was a black letter law, wasn't it? It was a de facto policy that was made in the head office It wasn't written down somewhere and said blacks are excluded from baseball It was oral tradition only there were any number of times where landis The commissioner at that time just said we're simply not going to allow this And that was that his word was law and the supreme court of the united states sort of upheld his word as a law Saying that baseball was a sport not a real business And one one points out that that decision came in the middle of possibly the most corrupt era in the history of american politics Which is saying something. Yeah one wonders exactly who had to get paid off for that one to come down Are you suggesting that a supreme court justice might have been paid off by a major league baseball? I'm suggesting that it's possible these guys had a couple of bucks even then and everybody else in the country was for sale in those days Why not the judiciary even if it wasn't that blatant of a conspiracy? It's obvious that it was part of the hegemonic flavor of the day Somehow baseball was america's game and when they said that what they meant was baseball was white america's game There was a sense of superiority of the game and the superiority of white players This is a really good environment to study legitimation. There are still people who look back at the pre 1946 47 Major leagues and call them the major leagues not the white leagues and that baffles me It's like the the rationale seems to be well They were racist, but we're just going to pretend they weren't and I feel a little weirded out by that for one thing There are plenty of blacks playing bowl then they just weren't playing in the white leagues There are any number of Sources you can consult printed sources about who was who in black ball I have a couple on my shelf And weren't there rumors of different players who were in the white leagues that they had black backgrounds? That they had quote negro blood. Yeah, you hear about that as well. There are rumors about Babe Ruth. I've mentioned accusation. There were also some cases John McGraw the Giants was constantly trying to get players of uh dubious pigmentation Onto his club and he ran himself ragged doing it You hear a lot of stories about what a jerk he was on a personal level But one thing that was true of him was he wanted to win And he went crazy trying to find ways around the call and he succeeded in a couple of cases He got in a couple of quote cubans closed quote And the issue of whether quote cubans closed quote were black, white, or indifferent was one that baseball hadn't really considered at the time They decided to draw a line between the black cubans and the white cubans the result being that Adolfo Luque got to play in the major leagues and martin de Higo did black is not an objective Ontological thing it's something that they were constructing whether they realized it or not Then the powers that be in baseball at that time the point of the dawn article was that if you want to draw The line of legitimation and you want it to be a singular one as opposed to An ounce you're just constructing one that makes the story more interesting on a case basis Uh, then that's probably a good place to draw it There are people who draw it in any number of places draw it at 1871 1876 1901 1920 And so forth and I think I think you'd make an excellent case for 4647 I think I think it's an inescapably important change in the way the game was played Not because racism is bad or anything like that, but there are implications to race The construction has implications that wreck the possibility of Reasonable competition sure because you're always worried about whether or not the next guy is going to be constructed is not white I'm sure babe ruth was an excellent athlete I'm even more sure that hannis wagner was that water johnson was But they're playing a game that was not what it pretended to be the subtext of the game The context of the game whatever the term would be in this case was such that it made the game from a contest to an exhibition an image of The real contest to the extent that the contest can be defined metaphysically I want to talk about legitimation a little bit because UBC joining the NAIA speaks very well to it. Yes I got the impression from what Terry mckeague said to me in the interview that he's interested in putting together a baseball program at UBC That is reasonably good by american standards by the standards of American college baseball and what might argue he already has in the five years that he's been there Oh, yeah, you could the way he chose to do it the program is largely his baby His vision was such that he thought that joining the NAIA was the only way to permit recruiting of the kind that he would need to do You can't cut off a player's chances of future employment without certain repercussions The obvious one being that no player who's especially good is going to consider your school No player is going to go play for a dead-end team if he thinks he has any chance of making the pros afterwards And what that means for canada is that if there aren't canadian schools that meet that criteria Then the students that are coming out of high school who want to go to college Who eventually want to go to the major leagues are going to seek college scholarships south of the border And you have a drain not only Of baseball talent out of canada, but you have a drain of college talent Who are going to america and learning under american schools? And that has hegemonic concerns for canadian culture Because what you have is young people being educated american style and while american style and canadian style education are Similar in a lot of ways and nonetheless is Flavored with american culture and i think that came out in his interview That one of the things that he was concerned about was actually recruiting canadian students So they had a chance to go to a good canadian college And that keeps not only their baseball talent accessible to canadians, but it also ensures That good college educated students are coming With a canadian education instead of an american education You also mentioned in your intro about the conflict of consuming as baseball has dried up in canada to a certain extent The big major leagues are going south of the border. We may lose montreal It may be that toronto will be the only Major league baseball team in canada We will not be able in canada to consume baseball on a major league level They're taking the talent south of the border for the most part using those players But with that talent goes an interest in that talent So there'll be a lot of canadians who will be interested in watching the rockies for instance That comes with american commercials and more american culture being introduced into canada Maybe I think that it begs the issue of legitimation I think that what happened with hockey to a certain extent was that the canadians formed a backlash Against what the nhl was doing, which was essentially pulling all the teams south of the border They haven't done all of them yet, but there are six teams left in canada And what one of the effects of that i think has been that canadians are a little more Unwilling to consider the pro game the beyond end all they still watch the stanley cup playoffs You'll never get that out of their system But they're also a great deal more interested in all the other levels of the game So it could be a good thing in disguise for canadian baseball I think it will democratize it I think that it's entirely possible that the reaction will not be that everyone in canada will just Watch major league baseball like mindless sheep and never consider the alternatives to the product I think that they're already starting to play recreationally the recreational participation here is a lot greater than I anticipated And I think they'll be more interested in the youth game I think they'll avail themselves of the other varieties of the product we call baseball I think that's Just as possible as the possibility that everybody will just give up and watch the american teams And if torana's on watch them and put up with a league in which 29 of 30 teams are american without ever looking at What drives that league without looking at as I said the context and the subtext of that league And deciding this is something other than a sport at this point This is everything that's wrong with sport one of the things that surprised me in the 94 95 strike Was that there are people saying there was quote no baseball close quote and there was baseball in 95 before the strike was resolved There was college baseball High school teams again a lot of participation and these alternatives exist I think increasing returns functions to a certain extent the best players go to the schools with the highest profile And that makes the highest profile schools better able to recruit Good players and I think mckang is trying to Acknowledge that and take advantage of it to the extent that he can given his resources. I don't have a problem with that I think it's inevitable that one bow some what to visibility issues to positioning issues Both factors are at work on one hand people want to see the best of the best And they want to see them concentrated in one league and on the other hand It's possible for people to pursue other versions of the product as well You have been listening to first person plural on cfu v 101.9 FM In victoria, british, columbia simulcast it on 104.3 cable And cfu v dot u v i c dot ca First person plural is produced weekly by dr. Patty thomas and carl wilkerson All music for first person plural is composed performed and produced by carl wilkerson For more information about first person plural or patty thomas and carl wilkerson visit our website culturalconstructioncompany.com