A Clash of Cultures Is Playing Out on the Baseball Field
To some, baseball is a sport as American as apple pie, Ford trucks, and white picket fences. But the game has been played in Latin American countries for nearly as long as it has been played in the United States, and the different styles of play are becoming an issue in Major League Baseball games.
When Roberto Clemente became the first Latin American player to be enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1973, 11 percent of major league baseball players were Latino. Today, nearly 30 percent of MLB players are Latino, and the differences in style cause some tension. This is playing out on the field, where 87 percent of bench-clearing conflicts were the result of skirmishes between players of different ethnicities, according to a study by USA Today.
“I hate to generalize, but Latino players tend to be a little more flamboyant,” said Chuck Berry, president of the Pittsburgh-based Roberto Clemente Foundation. “This can upset some of the purists.”
On the other hand, Judy Battaglia, a sports scholar and communication studies professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, believes that a sense of nationalism is emerging in baseball, and that there’s a form of hegemonic racism in the MLB—a form of “hidden domination” by white players.
“When one person shows passion and it is differently displayed culturally than another, the problem falls on the shoulders of the individual to remedy it,” Battaglia said. “We do not instead examine the more insidious cultural domination that is befalling [the] game.”
“I think it’s a culture shock…we’re opening this game to everyone that can play,” Houston Astro Bud Norris told USA Today. “However, if you’re going to come into our country and make our American dollars, you need to respect a game that has been here for over 100 years.”
Berry attributed the tension in baseball and comments like Norris’ to a culture clash happening in American society as a whole, referencing the anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiment that is currently prevalent. He credited the MLB for its efforts in reaching out to Latin Americans, welcoming Latino players and helping them adjust after moving to the United States.
“The teams these days are doing so much more than they used to 20 years ago,” said Berry. “[They are] providing a better base for the players language wise, trying to get them more acclimated. I see a lot more effort on MLB’s part trying to help.”
Battaglia says baseball is suffering because “there is no space for the in between,” or finding common ground between the different cultures of baseball.
“I do not see how the sport can continue to grow while races, classes, ethnicities and gender remain pigeonholed and marked, and fights continue to break out among fans and among the players themselves,” she said.
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Original article from TakePart
