Strike 3: Negro Leagues, Fake Nostalgia and White Fragility

Originally published in Word In Black by Joseph Williams and Liz Courquet-Lesaulnier Back when he played, baseball Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson was a great hitter in pressure situations. He was especially clutch in the World Series, so much that sportswriters gave him the nickname “Mr. October.”& Last week, nearly 40 years after his retirement from the game, Jackson came through in the clutch again — this time, for history, truth and Black people — during Major League Baseball’s “Tribute to the Negro Leagues” game in Birminham, Alabama. Intended to celebrate the teams and players Jim Crow kept out of the major leagues, the event included the largest-ever gathering of surviving Negro League players. It climaxed in the first regular-season, major-league game ever played in Alabama, between the San Francisco Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals in Birmingham’s historic Rickwood Field, former home of the Birmingham Black Barons. And it was a perfect opportunity to honor the late Wille Mays, a MLB legend who was from Birmingham, played for the Black Barons and spent 21 seasons with the Giants. During a pregame broadcast, however, Jackson — who played for the Birmingham A’s, the Oakland A’s farm team in 1967, on...