Hall of Shamer

Al Campanis, one of the top executives of the Los Angeles Dodgers, spent Tuesday huddled in silence, trying to figure out how to explain away his racist remarks on national television Monday night. Unfortunately for Campanis and for the Dodgers, there is no way to change the meaning that he so clearly asserted. Asked why blacks are significantly underrepresented in the upper echelons of baseball, Campanis said, “It’s just that they may not have some of the necessities to be a field manager or general manager.”

Several times Ted Koppel, ABC’s most able interviewer, gave Campanis an opportunity to retract his remarks, but Campanis just kept going, adding at one point, “Why aren’t blacks good swimmers? They don’t have buoyancy.”

Forty years ago the Dodgers did themselves, all black people and the nation a great service by breaking the color line and enabling blacks to play what had been a white man’s game. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown vs. Board of Education, integrating all public schools, followed seven years later and no doubt was influenced by desegregation in baseball. The Dodgers have been an important force in changing race relations in this country.

Campanis’ remarks demonstrate better than most sociological studies how inadequate that change has been and how much remains to be done. Racism runs deep in this country. Blacks don’t have executive jobs in baseball (though they are well represented among players) not because they lack the ability, as Campanis would have us believe, but because they are systematically kept from power by whites.

Campanis’ words and the thoughts behind them are repugnant to people who believe in equity and truth. There is no room in major-league baseball for people who hold these erroneous and socially destructive views.