The Negro Leagues are now "major leagues"; this is progress?

 So, the ranks of former major league baseball players expanded dramatically this week when Major League Baseball declared that the Negro Leagues were "major leagues."  My first reaction is to recall the joke told by Ben Franklin in the musical 1776; when told that he has the honor of being called an Englishman he says while that may be, he does not have the same rights as an Englishman and “. . . to call me [an Englishman] without those rights is like calling an ox a bull; he’s thankful for the honor but he’d much rather have restored what was rightfully his.”

Let me be very clear here; I am not saying that the African Americans who were forced to participate in the Negro Leagues were inferior ballplayers.  It is the greatest stain on a sport I adore that for many decades some of the greatest athletes in America were unable to play merely because of their skin color.  The history of the Negro Leagues, which Ken Burns ably and rightly included in his series Baseball, is a necessary component of understanding the game.  I have been to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, and it was a shame that the exploits of those players were not documented as fully as those of players in the National League and the American League.

But it wasn’t “Major League” baseball, and calling it that I find a trifle insulting.  If anything, maybe it was better.  As Jackie Robinson demonstrated once he was allowed to join the “major leagues,” the style of baseball played in the Negro Leagues was faster, more daring, requiring more strategy than the style of White teams in the 1950’s, where power hitting was all the rage. 

Not only was the style of play different, but the teams also didn’t play a set schedule of 162 games like the “major leagues.”  Facilities were usually inferior and travel schedules were more taxing.  Pitchers pitched more frequently as staffs weren’t very deep.  They played shorter schedules, so adding them to Major League statistics won’t affect counting stats, but average stats will be skewed; according to the LA Times article linked above, now Babe Ruth and Ted Williams will no longer be in the top ten for batting average.  This isn’t because Negro League players were better; they just played shorter seasons and had shorter careers.

What I think is the real damage from declaring the Negro Leagues to be “Major Leagues” is that now MLB can deny that there ever was any discrimination in baseball.  African Americans can now no longer say that they were kept out of the Major Leagues until Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, because now Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson DID play in the Major Leagues.  Problem solved.

If baseball wants to do something about racial issues, there are other steps that can be taken.  Cap Anson, the architect of the policy of excluding African Americans from playing in the Major Leagues, should have that fact added to his plaque in Cooperstown, permanently labeling him as a racist.  This year MLB took former Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis' name off the MVP trophies awarded at the end of the season; they should add a similar codicil to his plaque in Cooperstown as well (or just vote him out; what did he do, other than enforce the color barrier for 24 years?).

I will assume MLB meant well by “promoting” the Negro Leagues to Major League status, but it doesn’t make up for over a half century of overt, unabashed racism (and several more decades of covert, clandestine racism).  I consider it to be rewriting history to make past racism seem more palatable.  Once again, a mostly White organization takes symbolic action against racism; maybe eventually there will be some real, non-symbolic progress.

Does Colin Kaepernick have a job in the NFL?  I didn’t think so,

Are TV Comedies even trying to be funny?

 Many people have described the current TV landscape as a “Golden Age.”  Precisely, the third Golden Age; the first was the 1950’s, when TV technology was too crude to allow the filming of car chases or go on exotic locations, so TV dramas consisted of actors standing (or sitting) on a stage . . . [gulp] talking.  The second Golden Age was the late 1970’s/early 1980’s, when Grant Tinker and MTM revolutionized the drama with groundbreaking shows like Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere.  We are now in the late stages of the third Golden Age, when pay cable unfettered content restrictions and revenue streams were divorced enough from “ratings” that daring new shows like The Sopranos, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad could forge new ground.

This may be the Golden Age of Drama, but in my humble opinion it is the Lead Age of Comedy.  Of course, it is dangerous to discuss comedy rationally, as it is entirely subjective.  I won’t do the research, but I suspect that the audience for The King of Queens regularly exceeded that of the great TV classic Taxi.  But while I will confess that what I find funny is idiosyncratic, I still look at the recent winners of the Emmy for Best Comedy and wonder if this isn’t some joke on one of those prank shows.

At the last Emmy Awards the series Schitt’s Creek swept all the major awards.  That was for its sixth season; I have not watched it, but I did watch the fifth season (after having been told the first four seasons were not very good).  The show isn’t exactly bad, and my respect for great performers like Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara, both of whom I loved when they were on SCTV, is tremendous.  But the set up is cliched, and the writing didn’t seem to go anywhere.  In one episode a rumor starts on the internet that Catherine O’Hara’s character had died; people were surprised to see her, then it all stopped because a giraffe stepped on a kitten and the entire internet focused on that.  There was no pay off, no revelation for anyone about being happy to be alive, or being sad when the attention stopped. There was no plot development that I could detect.

As unsatisfied as I was about Schitt’s Creek, I liked the previous year’s winner, Fleabag, even less.  Again, I did not watch the season that won but the previous season, season 1.  For the life of me I could not understand why this was called a comedy, except that if it was called a drama it would be considered worse.  The sole joke was that the main character was devoid of redeeming qualities, which I suppose could be developed amusingly but there was no attempt to do so.  I gave up after 3 episodes, which may be unfair, but life is too short to watch a TV show you aren’t enjoying (besides, there were only 6 episodes so I watched half a season).

I was only able to watch episodes of the previous Best Comedy winner, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, on a plane over the Atlantic, so I reserve judgement (but I will say that what I saw did not encourage me to seek out more episodes).  I have recently watched another Best Comedy nominee from that year, season 1 of the dark comedy Barry.  This is another show with one joke; a hit man in LA stumbles into an acting class while tailing a mark, and decides he wants to become an actor.  I have been able to keep watching Barry, as it is well made and well-acted, and the plot is developing into an absurdist existential farce.  But it isn’t “funny.”

It’s almost as if the modern comedy has evolved to the point where it isn’t supposed to be funny.  Lucy frantically trying to manage items on a speeding conveyor belt is so passé; now we are supposed to watch a character in an uncomfortable situation and chuckle (internally) at the character’s discomfort.  Eliciting laughter is not a comedy’s raison d’etre.

Frankly, the funniest show on broadcast television now might be Legends of Tomorrow, the CW’s pastiche of superheroes that is masquerading as a show about superheroes.  I will concede that my favorite comedy of the past four seasons, NBC’s The Good Place, often passed on doing jokes in favor of some absurdist philosophical point (but the show still had many, many moments of unbridled hilarity).

I think the problem is that the TV marketplace is now so Balkanized, so fractured, that there is no point in trying to appeal to a mass market funny bone.  Why try to appeal to 22 million viewers, like Friends did in its final seasons?  There are so many networks and platforms, it is futile to try and reach that audience.  I can’t even find data on how many people in America watched Fleabag (I didn’t try very hard) but I am guessing it is in the low single digit millions, if that.

And don’t get me started on what these shows call a “season.”  Barry is all of 8 less than half-hour episodes; Fleabag was 6 per season and ran out of ideas after two seasons.  Cheers produced 22-27 episodes per year for 11 years; yes, the Kirstie Alley were a slog at times, but that’s over 270 episodes.  I’m going to go out on a limb and say creators who can create 270 episodes of a TV show (while racking up 179 Emmy nominations and 28 wins) are more talented than ones who call it a wrap after 12.

So, there will never be another I Love Lucy, or All in the Family, or Cheers.  TV comedies aren’t even trying to be funny; maybe the last funny sitcom was Modern family, and that ran dry a couple of seasons before the end.  I guess if we want to find the humor in our modern world, we have to read the political news.

Dick Allen for the Hall of Fame?

 Ron Santo.

Marvin Miller.

Dick Allen?

The Baseball Hall of Fame has gotten into a nasty habit recently of denying entry to deserving people, then letting them in immediately after they die, when they are unable to appreciate the honor.  Marvin Miller, one of the two or three most influential people in the history of baseball, was kept out until after his death, but he said he understood why the owners, who control the Hall of Fame, would not want him admitted.  The case of Ron Santo I find harder to fathom, as he was a popular player and then a beloved announcer for the Cubbies.  The fact that he also lost a leg to diabetes and was in ill-health when he was not being voted in adds to my confusion.

Recently former MVP and Rookie of the Year Dick Allen passed away.  The objective case for his Hall of Fame induction is obvious.  According to Baseball Reference, his ratings for Black Ink, Grey Ink and the Hall of Fame Monitor all put him over the threshold (albeit marginally in some cases).  He put up impressive offensive numbers during one of the most pitching-dominant periods in baseball history, the 1960’s.  The fact that he picked up an MVP award during his career further solidifies his case. 

Yet he never garnered much support from the Baseball Writers Association, where he never got more than 19% of the vote, and far cry from the needed 75%.  The Veterans Committee came close to inducting him, giving him 11 o the needed 12 votes.  Since then the Phillies retired his number, and a revote on his induction was postponed due to COVID.

The case for Dick Allen entering the Hall of Fame is obvious, but so is the case for keeping him out.  You don’t have his numbers and peak at under 20% of the writers’ vote for no reason.  He was difficult to work with, attacked managers and teammates in the press, was a divisive locker room presence, and never led a team to a championship.  Bill James, in his seminal book What Ever Happened to the Hall of Fame, recounts Allen’s tumultuous history and concludes, “And if that’s a Hall of Famer, I’m a lug nut.”

But now that he has passed away, will he get in?  If he only missed by one vote before, I’m guessing the sentimental vote will put him over the top.  Also, a lot of his “difficulty” at the time can be attributed to racism, and in a more woke culture some of the complaints about him will be muted (Bill James acknowledged that Allen was the victim of racism, but pointed out that so were Willie Mays, Henry Aaron, Roy Campenella, Bob Gibson, and others who weren’t excluded from the Hall because they were “difficult”). 

I do wish that the Hall would make an effort to indict players while they are alive so they can appreciate the honor.  I previously wrote that Pete Rose should be inducted after he dies, because his “lifetime ban” will have expired, and the point of the ban was to deny him the honor.  For millionaire superstars (like Rose, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens) there aren’t many penalties that will deter them from bad acts, but not seeing themselves inducted in the Hall of Fame should make them think twice.

I’m not proposing that dead players be ineligible for induction, like deceased persons can’t win a Nobel Prize.  I’m just saying that for marginal persons who are kept out, greater weight should be given to how close the person is from meeting the Grim Reaper.  Come on, you know Marvin Miller should be in the Hall, so when he gets past 80 years old just put him in.   Ron Santo was the best third baseman during a pitching-dominated era and played in a pitcher-friendly park, and put in years as a broadcaster.  He should be alive when the inevitable and overdue induction takes place.

The Hall is not about numbers and statistics.  If it were, they would have an objective standard for entry, like golf.  Anyone with a lifetime OPS of .900 or career WAR over 60, come on down.  There are intangibles.  When Harold Baines was inducted, I protested that it is the Hall of FAME, not the Hall of Pretty Good.  Sandy Koufax only had 6 or 7 good seasons, but he was the best pitcher when he was on, and he led his team to championships.  On the other hand, Rafael Palmiero had 3,000 hits and 500 home runs, but never led his team to anything.  Koufax goes in, Palmiero stays out (although granted it is for the failed drug test).

So, Hall of Fame voters, if you are on the fence in the future, look at the player’s birth certificate and take that into account when voting yea or nay.