Understanding Equality: Where the Sports World's Gifts to Nacho Consumption (Bowling) and the Civil Rights Movement (Jackie Robinson) Intersect

I’ve been yearning for a Vanderbilt team to finally win the university’s first national championship, and this what I get:

http://vucommodores.cstv.com/sports/w-bowl/recaps/041407aab.html

This is incredibl…….LY depressing. Vanderbilt’s first national team championship came with a 4-3 victory over Maryland Eastern Shore. Oh yes, and it’s WOMEN’S BOWLING.

Vanderbilt athletics has been steadily improving over the past half decade, and a few teams, notably the men’s tennis and women’s basketball teams, have flirted with national championships in recent years. Oh, and Vandy’s baseball team is currently ranked #1 in the country. But the WOMEN’S BOWLING team has beat them to the punch, forever enshrining themselves into the shame every Vandy alum will feel when answering the question, “Which team won your alma mater’s first national championship?”

This is beyond anticlimactic - it’s like a woman preserving her virginity until her wedding day and then sealing the deal in a bathroom stall at the reception. Add the fate-cheating element of this taking place the year the baseball team is number one in the country, and the simile’s only fitting if it’s with the best man.

But it gets better. Around the time the women’s bowling team was added at Vanderbilt, a competitive men’s soccer program was dropped. Yep, it’s another example of measuring equality purely in terms of numbers. Take one sport, soccer, in which literally hundreds of thousands of boys participate every year, and replace it with another sport, bowling (and calling bowling “a sport” is an act of Andrew Carnegie-esque charity on my part), where I’m betting you literally have the supply of quota-minded universities creating the demand of interested players, and you have “equality” as its come to be understood in American sports. Unfortunately, complete numerical parity is what counts, not actual opportunity measured against those actually seeking it. Does anyone honestly think that any of those girls started going to the bowling alley as young kids with the hopes that one day it would lead to a full ride at a top-20 university? No, they were there because they were too lame to hang out with the kids at the arcade and too heavy to play softball.

But the confusion between equality opportunity and numerical symmetry does not end with the inane manner in which Title IX has been applied. Consider the outright stupidity of how Jackie Robinson’s legacy has been treated this week. How many ESPN segments have you seen on the decline in Blacks’ participation in baseball, which almost invariably include the narrator somberly asking, “What would Jackie Robinson think about this if he were alive today?”

Seriously, how myopic can people be? Before Robinson broke the color barrier, there were no Blacks in baseball by policy; today, it’s by choice. Black athletes have entered into and excelled at other sports, and they have Robinson to thank. What says more about the progress - or lack thereof – we’ve made in opening doors for black athletes: the fact that blacks, by choice, are taking up baseball in less numbers or the fact that the best golfer in the world is not Caucasian? Tiger Woods has Robinson to thank. Meanwhile, other people of other racial minorities have thrived in Major League baseball. They, too, have Robinson to thank. Black Americans have moved away from baseball, but it’s been out of their own free will. That they have such mobility now is something to be celebrated.

To confine Robinson’s contribution to the sport of baseball is like saying Rosa Park’s enduring legacy is all about getting better seats on public buses. In terms of facilitating the Civil Right movement, the emergence of black athletes into major professional sports leagues and NCAA athletic conferences arguably comes only second in importance to the valiant contributions of Black Americans serving their country in World War II. The glass ceiling Robinson shattered had extended over all athletic opportunities in this country, but more importantly, it extended over equality in public services and facilities, educational opportunities, housing provisions, politics, the courts, and just about any other facet of life where there was an opportunity for racial oppression to manifest itself. Robinson forced America, the Land of Opportunity, to look itself in the mirror and acknowledge pervasive injustice and hypocrisy. So to answer the braindead ESPN reporter’s question on what Jackie Robinson would think about the current face of the Major League, I pose my own questions: Would Robinson be made aware that Blacks, as well as other racial minorities, can and have chosen to participate in any sport they wish, including sports such as golf where minority participation would have been unimaginable when he first walked on to Ebbets Field? Would Robinson be made aware that blacks are not only dominating in other professional sports, but they’ve transcended the courts and playing fields and are now serving as head coaches and front office personnel? Are you going to mention to him that since his death, there’s been an emergence of black CEOs, two black Secretaries of State, and there’s a very real possibility the next American president will be black? And oh yeah, are you going to mention that while yes, there’s been a decline in the number of black baseball players, it’s out of self-selection, not discrimination? Because if you did mention these things, I don’t think Jackie Robinson would share your pessimism.

Workin’ for the weekend,
Ryan

I have my own Title IX story. Ironically, it is also the story of when I knew I was not a liberal. I was nine, and I was the starting shortstop for my little league team. A girl sued our league to play and a judge agreed, forcing the league to accept her. She was put on our team. Up to this point, I did not care. If she could play, I did not care if she was man, woman, or some kind of hermaphradite like Sanjaya from American Idol.

Then it happened. On her second day of practice with our team, we were turning double plays. I was playing shortstop; she was at second base. The coach hit a ball to my right, and I ranged to get it. I turned and threw a perfect ball to her. Rather than gracefully catch the ball and turn the play--what our former starting second baseman, who now started on the bench, would have done--she completely missed the ball and it hit her in the face, cutting her lip. She cried and ran off the field. I did not feel one shred of regret or compassion for her. And I still don't.

--Paul