What's all the fuss about?

[flatfloor]

CHICAGO - The Cubs had two problems in the first inning Saturday: It was hot, and Shawn Estes was white. Then it cooled off a bit, and Estes was still white. Worse, he was still Estes.

It is Dusty Baker's opinion that blacks fare better in hot weather than whites do. How we arrived at this topic is something of a mystery, but the discussion started with the rigors of day games at Wrigley Field and ended with a Baker commentary on skin color and heat.

Is the Cubs' manager right? There is enough evidence to suggest he isn't, but his theory does give Cub fans another out should their team fall apart this season. To the normal excuses_too many day games, organizational cheapness, the Billy Goat curse, etc._you can now add the Wilting White Man theory.

"You have to pretend that you're a construction worker out there," Baker said before Saturday's Cubs-Cardinals game. "You have no choice. It's easier for me. It's easier for most Latin guys and it's easier for most minority people. Most of us come from heat.

"You don't find too many brothers from New Hampshire and Maine and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Right? We were brought over here for the heat, right? Isn't that history? Weren't we brought over here because we can take the heat?"

Baker is referring to blacks being captured in Africa and sold into slavery hundreds of years ago. They were brought here for no other reason than they were a convenient source of forced labor.

"(Blacks') skin color is more conducive to heat than it is for lighter skin people, right?" Baker said. "You don't see brothers running around burnt. Yeah, that's fact. I'm not making this stuff up. Right? You don't see some brothers walking around with white stuff (sun block) on their ears and noses."


Baker doesn't want day games to be an excuse for his team's struggles, and that's a good thing considering the Cubs went decades without a World Series title during a time when every team played day games exclusively. Day games as an explanation doesn't work around here.

"People don't want to hear that as an excuse or an alibi," Baker said. "They don't want to hear that my team is exhausted, so we don't say it. It's just a fact."


So what's the fuss about?

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[jjwq8]

Cubs need to employ more Brits.

"Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the Midday Sun" :D

[sdaniels7114]

The thing about baseball is that even if you're obsessive enough to know why its ok to make the second out at third base but NEVER the first or third, there still isn't enough to occupy the mind for nine innings over 162 games per year. All that free time leaves the mind wandering.

[flatfloor]

The politically correct crowd says you can't say things like that. I don't know if there is any truth to what he said but geez you would think he was a white racist defaming black people. :rolleyes:

[jjwq8]

AS a matter of interest, does anyone know the incidence rate of melanoma in people with a greater degree of melatonin than causcasians, where sun-block (white-stuff referred to by Baker), isn't applied?
Or will the likes of Mr. Baker then claim it is a white conspiracy, not telling him and his ilk that skin cancer and exposure to the sun are directly related?

[flatfloor]

Mr Baker had no axe to grind with anyone, your statement is exactly what creates the "fuss". Much ado about nothing.

[jjwq8]

Believe it or not Jim, I was expressing a genuine concern in a none too clever form. We have sun better than 95% of the time. When I first arrived in the Gulf, I studiously spent my weekends roasting myself to what I considered a very healthy dark brown, I then went back to the UK in November, arrived in freezing fog, and within days had faded back to the colour of weak tea. (other descriptions at your own discretion). I decided there and then that a tan simply wasn't worth the aggravation and pain required to acquire one. Only later did skin cancer raise it's head when one of the guys with whom I used to veg in the sun, lost an ear, part of his jaw and eventually his life. I'm sorry if my original comment was banal.