Something Stinks In Jackson, Mississippi and it's not just the water.

People need to get off of Coach Primes back. If you ask me something wasn't right in Jackson, Mississippi. There are videos of Coach Prime questioning the support for the football teams in the HBCU. Meaning they go and play at power 5 schools or higher tier programs and the money made from these games weren't going to the football team. Deion Sanders played at Florida State a power five school and had no connection to HBCU's. He was trying to find a way to shine a light on these programs that these kids could be seen as the equal of any division 1 program when it comes to the draft, as well as coaches could be able to be head coaches on the college and NFL level. He mentioned them being counted in the Heisman votes. He called out the NFL teams who did not show up for Jackson State's pro Day in March 2022. An opportunity for HBCU players to be considered for the NFL draft or to be able to make an NFL roster. Their is also video of Coach Prime talking about all that he did to shine a light on HBCU's and some of the folks turning on him for leaving when a better opportunity came along. He said there is only so much he can do when he is only the football coach. Meaning he did what he could by turning around a struggling program and proving he could get recruits to Jackson State. It helps when two of those star players happens to be his own sons who are possibly going to Colorado with him. The point of it all was to not only get people of color to support these schools by donating, sending their children to these schools but those who were lucky to succeed at these schools but are in the Hall of Fame like Jerry Rice and Michael Strahan. Now you have Ed Reed who played at the University of Miami, coaching at Bethune Cookman and Eddie George, Ohio State, coaching at Tennessee State University. That is because of Coach Prime. What saddens me is that before a game during the season you could hear people saying "Fuck you Deion," on video. Is this how we treat one of our own who is trying to do for us what the US isn't? It is said that many of these schools could lose accreditation or close. Who is going to want to show up to a job interview with the name of a school they attended with pride no longer an accredited institution on their resume? It is my opinion that people at these schools or even in the state of Mississippi are crying over sour grapes. Anyone who follows college football knew that Deion Sanders was not going to be at Jackson State for very long. I am surprised he stayed as long as he did but not at the success he had. He won 27 out of 33 games in three season including whatever post season games Jackson State was involved in. He is leaving a great opportunity to take on an 1-11 team in lily white Boulder Colorado. A program he has no connection to or great love for. Many people say it's about money. With a name like Deion Sanders there isn't enough money on the planet to pay him for the task he has to take on. I know that after the signing every program in the Pac-12 got video of all 33 games he coached at Jackson state. As I said before something wasn't right at Jackson State. He could have stayed and coached and seen his children graduate. They still could graduate from Jackson State and have quality careers while there because there is no promise Shedeur Sanders is going to make the team at Colorado or have any sort of impact which is my only problem with Deion's part of this saga. 

It's been several years since the 2016 World Series win for the Chicago Cubs and since Theo Epstein and Joe Madden left Chicago. All in a matter of 6 years. With Theo gone it is up to Jed Hoyer to build a winner on the North Side. I'm not holding my breath the Cubs will be competitive in 2023 no matter who they sign. Keep an eye on the trade deadline around mid season someone will be traded and I'm thinking it might be Cody Bellinger or Eric Hosmer. No emotional goodbyes this year and I think it was a stupid idea to let Wilson Contreras walk. He was a great piece to build around. Not to mention letting him go to the rival St. Louis Cardinals. I do think the Cubs are going in the right direction after seasons of losing. The Cubs have the right manager in David Ross and I can say I see another Championship coming to the Cubs under him. But for the time being lets not worry about who the Cubs have been named in on a particular player until he actually gets here. No one wants to read such news and then they come up short because they don't want to spend the money.  

 

When a Black boxing champion beat the 'Great White Hope,' all hell broke loose

Chris Lamb, Professor of Journalism, IUPUI

An audacious Black heavyweight champion was slated to defend his title against a white boxer in Reno, Nevada, on July 4, 1910. It was billed as “the fight of the century.”

The fight was seen as a referendum on racial superiority – and all hell was about to break loose in the racially divided United States.

Jack Johnson, the Black man, decisively beat James Jeffries, nicknamed “the Great White Hope.” Johnson’s triumph ignited bloody confrontations and violence between Blacks and whites throughout the country, leaving perhaps two dozen dead, almost all of them Black, and hundreds injured and arrested.

“No event yielded such widespread racial violence until the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., fifty-eight years later,” Geoffrey C. Ward wrote in his biography of Johnson, “Unforgiveable Blackness.”

Johnson’s victory, in the manliest of sports, contradicted claims of racial supremacy by whites and demonstrated that Blacks were no longer willing to acquiesce to white dominance. Whites were not willing to give up their power. The story has a familiar ring today, as America remains a country deeply divided by race.

I began my book, “From Jack Johnson to LeBron James: Sports, Media, and the Color Line,” with Johnson because the consequences of the fight’s aftermath would affect race relations in sports, and America, for decades.

A backdrop of racial hostility

Born in 1878 in Galveston, Texas, Johnson grew up as the Jim Crow era in American history was getting started. The previous year, Rutherford B. Hayes became president after promising three former Confederate states – South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana – that he would withdraw federal troops, who had protected the measure of racial equality Blacks were beginning to achieve.

As federal forces left, whites disenfranchised Black voters and passed segregation laws, which were enforced by legal and illegal means, including police brutality and lynching. Journalists, too, sought to maintain social order by preserving myths about white supremacy.

Johnson’s boxing career challenged those myths. He dispatched one white fighter after another and taunted both the fighter and the crowd. He was brash and arrogant and made no attempt to show any deference to whites. He sped through towns in flashy cars, wore expensive clothes, spent his time with gamblers and prostitutes, and dated white women, which Black sociologist and commentator W.E.B. Du Bois considered “unnecessarily alienating acts.”

Setting up a racial battle

Johnson won the heavyweight title by easily defeating the defending champion Tommy Burns in 1908. Novelist Jack London, writing in the New York Herald, wrote about Johnson’s “hopeless slaughter” of Burns and, like other journalists, called on former champion James Jeffries to come out of retirement and “wipe that smile from Johnson’s face.”

Jeffries announced to the world that he would “reclaim the heavyweight championship for the white race.” He became the “Great White Hope.”

The Chicago Defender, a Black newspaper, said Jeffries and Johnson would “settle the mooted question of supremacy.” The Daily News in Omaha, Nebraska, reported that a Jeffries victory would restore superiority to the white race.

Before the fight, there were signs whites feared a Jeffries loss – and that this loss would not be restricted to the boxing ring but would have ramifications for all of society.

The New York Times warned, “If the black man wins, thousands and thousands of his ignorant brothers will misinterpret his victory.” The message was clear: If Jeffries won, white superiority would be proved – but if he lost, whites would still be superior.

Seeking to retain power

After Johnson easily defeated Jeffries, the Los Angeles Times reinforced white supremacy, telling Blacks: “Do not point your nose too high. Do not swell your chest too much. Do not boast too loudly. Do not get puffed up. … Your place in the world is just what is was. You are on no higher place, deserve no new consideration, and will get none.” Nearly a century later, the newspaper apologized for that 1910 editorial.

In response to the violence, many cities forbade a film of the fight to be shown in theaters. In 1912, Congress, citing the same motion picture, passed the Sims Act, banning the transport of fight films over state lines.

In doing so, it kept Blacks and whites from seeing Johnson beat a white man. Historian Jeffrey Sammons says, “in many ways, Johnson represented the ‘bad n—–’ that whites were so willing to parade as an example of why blacks must be kept in ‘their place.’”

An outpouring of violence

No white boxer could defeat Johnson in the ring, so white America worked to defeat him outside the ring. Johnson was arrested in 1912 and charged with violating the Mann Act, which made it illegal to transport women across state lines “for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose.” He served 10 months in federal prison.

But he was much more than one man. “No longer the respectful darky asking, hat in hand, for massa’s permission, Johnson was seen as the prototype of the independent black who acted as he pleased and accepted no bar to his conduct,” Randy Roberts wrote in “Papa Jack,” his biography of Johnson. “As such, Johnson was transformed into a racial symbol that threatened America’s social order.”

Whites responded to Johnson’s triumph by using violence to keep Blacks in their place by any and all means. When Black construction workers celebrated Johnson’s victory near the town of Uvalda, Georgia, whites began shooting. As the Blacks tried to escape into the woods, the whites hunted them down, killing three and injuring five, Roberts wrote.

Such scenes were repeated throughout the country, according to local media reports.

When a Black man in Houston expressed his joy over the fight’s outcome, a white man “slashed his throat from ear to ear.” Another Black man in Wheeling, West Virginia, who was driving an expensive car, just like Johnson was known for, was dragged from his car by a mob and lynched. A white mob in New York City set fire to a Black tenement and then blocked the doorway to keep the occupants from escaping.

The sports world responds

Johnson’s punishment served as a cautionary tale for Blacks during the Jim Crow era. Black athletes, however talented, whether it was sprinter Jesse Owens or boxer Joe Louis, were warned they had to be the “right type” of Black person, one who knew his place and did not challenge the racial status quo.

In those sports where Blacks were not banned and instead begrudgingly allowed to compete with and against whites, there were violent attacks on Black athletes. Jack Trice, an Iowa State football player, died of injuries from the attack he suffered in a game against the University of Minnesota in 1923.

The end of professional baseball’s color line in 1946 line was possible only because Jackie Robinson promised he would not respond to racist epithets and physical abuse so that he would be acceptable to white America.

In the 1960s, white America taught Muhammad Ali, whom many considered the “wrong type” of Black athlete, the lesson it had once taught Jack Johnson. Ali, a brash Muslim who refused to defer to the demands of white supremacy, was convicted of draft evasion for refusing to be inducted into the armed services. He was stripped of his heavyweight title and sentenced to prison.

Other Black athletes, like sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos, baseball player Curt Flood and football player Colin Kaepernick, all found themselves punished and ostracized for challenging white supremacy.

 

 I’ve said that no one wants to hear from athletes. Please stop putting microphones in their faces. Take away their twitter and whatever platform. The kerfuffle between Kevin Durant and Jay Williams is a perfect example. I remember when the Bulls drafted Jay Williams. I was excited when the Bulls drafted him in the 2002 draft believing he was the most prepared for the NBA than any other player in the draft. After his horrific accident on a motorcycle while feeling bad for him I had a level of disdain because the following year the Bulls drafted Kirk Hinrich. Not one of my favorite players. Especially when Williams was far more talented.

I’m not clear on what J. Williams said that set KD off but his expletive laced response was disgusting. In the beginning when athletes were forced to face the media it was the like watching paint dry especially when players started letting their kids take over the microphone and the players didn’t have anything interesting to say. The media would ask the stupidest questions or the interviews would always include the line leaving it all on the field/court. Doing my best to help my teammates be the best they can be. Yada yada yada. With social media the content became far more interesting but made me question their use of the English language which can be attested to jargon of their childhood. What I have a problem with is, and LeBron James has been guilty of this, the use of foul Language. Many of the players of all sports have children and it can be said that children are the biggest fans. Just because they cannot afford the price of a ticket they’re the ones who follow the players closest and their stats. Certainly if there’s beef between payers or media they know. Particularly in a time of unrest and protest when people are hanging onto every word athletes are using and certainly they will believe that it is alright to use this language. Players cannot opt out of meeting the media but they can control what they say on social media and whether they want to respond to any criticism or trash talk. Even speak up for the ones who do not have their talent name or platform. Let’s think about what we say before say it. In these times your words can be taken out of context with racist responses giving people the right to do things like throw objects at players where banning them isn’t nearly enough of a punishment.  G©

What a sight, fans at games again. But it seems more that fans want to act out. Let’s not excuse this and say it’s just a few bad apples especially in the NBA. Not to get political but since the end of the elections and since so many people have been vaccinated thanks to Joe Biden and whatever state and local entities it has allowed people at sporting events close to what they were before Covid. What is bothering me is the number of bad behavior of the fans. From some fans in Atlanta wanting to fight Lebron James over some supposed slight to now players having objects particular food items being thrown at them. I thought this went out in the early two thousands with the big brawl in Detroit in 2004 where the former Ron Artest had a drink thrown at him and he charged into the stands. Now we have Trae Young getting spit on and Ja Morant having racist chants directed towards his family in Utah. Russell Westbrook had popcorn thrown at him And now a fan arrested in Boston for throwing a bottle of water at Kyrie Irving. I have to ask is it worth being banned from watching a game, team, sport you love for what is a minutes worth of chicanery? The answer is not to leave a massive player alone with the fan who committed the transgression as Charles Barkley suggests. And Kyrie Irving issuing an age old  statement that players are human too and not to be treated as if they are in a zoo.

Neither fans nor players would want any sort of barrier between them. And the more raucous the better. And no one knows when someone is going to lose their mind and start chanting racial epithets and throwing things. What is a good sight to see is that with the environment we’re in people are willing to point out the culprit and apprehension is swift. But we didn’t sit around waiting for sports to come back to have to deal with ignorant people. Understandably you have to take the good with the bad and the players are totally excited to be playing in front of fans. The owners are excited to have as many fans to fill their coffers. What happens however if a social justice situation comes up like last year when games are cancelled how are fans going to respond to that particularly during the playoffs (which is one of the most painful playoffs to follow)? It is still hard for fans to understand athletes are not automatons as if we didn’t always know that. But speaking of coming back from Covid, it is certain that we are not the same country prior to Covid. It’s possible these acts would’ve happened anyways. Whatever the reason there is no excuse for them happening. G©

 

 

CHICAGO — The 2005 season will always hold a special place in the heart of Chicago White Sox fans, but for the family of Loretta Micele, a World Series championship was just part of the allure of a magical year.

Micele had been a fixture at the Sox home ballpark since 1945 when she started working home games as a concessions worker. So, when Game 1 of the 2005 World Series rolled around, Micele never figured the Sox would honor her for 60 years of employment with the team. The anniversary celebration also included the Sox honoring Micele's years of service with a sign, naming a section of the 100-level concourse after her, “Loretta’s Lounge.”

But seven years after Loretta’s death in 2014, her little piece of the ballpark has been done away with and instead named after first-year manager Tony La Russa. But the rebranding of what is now considered “La Russa’s Lounge” hasn’t gone unnoticed and has Sox fans — and Micele’s family — who are unhappy with how the team handled the renaming of the space.

Much of this week’s firestorm started after Sox fan Tyrone Palmer tweeted out a photo of the new sign bearing the 76-year-old manager’s name.

“This legit pissed me off,” Palmer wrote in a tweet that has garnered more than 29,000 likes and more than 4,500 retweets in less than one day. “This was formerly named Loretta’s Lounge after Loretta Micele. She worked concessions for the Sox for 60 years….She gave so much to the organization and replacing her name to that of TLR is shameful.”

Lou Soto, Micele’s great-grandson, told Block Club Chicago that the family wasn’t even made aware that the change would be made. Soto’s mother still works for the team, and he said that when the family inquired about the sign that has been displayed on the 100-level concourse for nearly the past 16 years, they were told the sign had already been disposed of.

“They told my mother that they threw the sign out,” Soto said. “It was really disheartening. It meant a lot to our family. Every time we’d go to a game we’d take a picture in front of it.”

Soto did not immediately return a message left by Patch on Thursday.

 

LaRussa Right To Be Angry

Over the years I’ve been a huge fan of Tony LaRussa from his days in Chicago. Obviously those days didn’t end well and he moved on to Oakland and St. Louis leaving some to wonder if it was a good idea to let him go with what he was able to accomplish since leaving Chicago: 6 Pennants and Three World Series wins. So why not bring him back and see if there is any magic left in a 70 plus year old baseball genius. There must be some because they currently lead the American Lead Central.

Recently he got himself into a kerfuffle because one of his young hitters during a blowout hit a Homerun with a 3-0 count on a position player the Minnesota Twins threw out on the mound which is not something unusual. All in the mind of saving the bullpen for the next game where the score isn’t a lot to a little. Obviously a fielder cannot get a pitch up to the speed of a Major League pitcher. The game being a laugher by that point a number of times fielders have given up homeruns and no one gets their backs up over it. In this case LaRussa did because of an old school rule or rules, you don’t show up the other team, you never swing at pitch when you have a count of three balls and no strikes (tantamount to fouling a jump shooter in basketball). It looks bad and if it had been a close game you could have swung at ball 4.

When Yermin Mercedes hit a ninth inning homerun with two out in a 15-4 blowout he broke some rules that I can understand LaRussa being upset about. Swinging on the 3-0 count. Trying to add to an already large margin against a position player, not respecting the other team and just ending the misery. I wouldn’t have gone to the media and lambasted the kid but I would have said something. I wouldn’t have talked about punishing him especially with the exceptionally hot start he had to the season where he was hitting close to .400.

A number of players have come out about LaRussa being out of touch with today’s players and bringing up unwritten rules. Everyone has unwritten rules that logically tells you how to handle a situation without having to be told. It shows a level of respect for your comrade even if he happens to be on another team. Plenty of times those comrades become teammates and you have to relive the situation all over again. However you think it might be funny after a while it would make me think twice about trust. It’s great the White Sox clubhouse has Mercedes’ back and it seems if the White Sox do well this year it’ll be in spite of LaRussa rather than because of his tutelage. But how much can you argue with a Hall of Fame Manager?