MAN , COULD THEY PLAY THAT GAME, BY RONALD B.SAUNDERS

BLACK BUZZ NEWS SPORTS NEWS
Special Report
Kansas City, Missouri
July 6, 2010


Blogger Black Buzz's award winning poem titled Man Could They Play That Game appears in the book, Crossing Limits Poetry Anthology on pages 28 & 29.
Crossing Limits is an important vehicle for building vital bridges of communications. Racism devastates our communities. The immediacy of the poetry and intimacy of the stories therein will stay with readers for a long time.
Sandra Haldeman Martz, Editor
Where I am an Old Woman I shall Wear Purple

Crossing Limits is important both for Pittsburgh and for the country, because these poems do cross limits and create a community of words, a community of poets. A strong community celebrates both its commonalities and its differences, as these poems do. There's a lot of struggle in these poems, but a lot of strenght too.
Jim Daniels, Poet
The poem Man Could They Play That Game is about the great Negro League players in which the vast majority of those great men & women were denied the opportunity to play the game of baseball solely on the basis of the color of their skin and race. Three Negro women played in the Negro Leagues and they are as follows : Toni Stone, Indianapolis Clowns & Kansas City Monarchs; Connie Morgan, Indianapolis Clowns; Mamie Peanut Johnson, Indianapolis Clowns. Mamie won 33 games and lost 8. I had the pleasure of seeing Connie Morgan and Toni Stone play against the Kansas City Monarchs at Forbes Field. In 1950, The Indianapolis Clowns were playing serious baseball and by the time Connie Morgan played with them in 1954 the top talent of the Negro Leagues had been raided by the Major League, and by 1960 the old Negro League basically faded into history. These three Negro women were also barred from playing in the white-female Professional baseball leagues, but these Negro women, Toni Stone, Connie Morgan, and Mamie Peanuts Johnson were the equal to the men that they played against in the Negro Leagues. They played against Satchel Page, Hank Aaron, Jackie Robinson, etc. Man, those ladies could also play that game.
The single most important event in the history of Major League baseball is when the great Jackie Roosevelt Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947 with the famous Brooklyn Dodgers.
In the first twenty three years after Jackie arrived on the scene 16 of the National League MVPs were awarded to players who had Negro League experience.
According to baseball historian Ken Burns the Negro League All Stars played the White Major League All stars a total of 438 games in which the Negro League All Stars won 309 games to the white players winning only 129 games, which means the Negro League players won 72.5 per cent of all the games played in these classic match-ups.
The great Babe Ruth once said that Pop Lloyd shortstop on the famous Chicago Leland Giants is the "greatest ball player in the history of the game." The Leland Giants challenged the 1910 National League Champs the Chicago Cubs, but the Cubs refused to play the Chicago Leland Giants. What were the Cubs afraid of ?
And many white fans and players called the great Babe Ruth the "Negro with the pug nose, or pug nose Nigger, and many other racially derogatory slurs and epithets.
These Negro League baseball players could really play that game, and Jackie also made it possible for the Negro descendants of slaves from all over the Caribbean, Central & South America to play and dominate the present game.
These Negro men and women could really play the game of baseball, just as their African Canadian brothers could also really play the game of hockey. These African Canadian men dominated hockey in the late 19th. century into the earlier part of the 20th. century but like their African American baseball contemporaries they were banned and Jim Crowed from playing hockey a game they dominated in Canada.
Its high time that the Canadian government, and its citizens finally recognize the achievements of these great Black Canadians who played in the Canadian Colored Hockey Leagues, who also beat the best white Canadian teams like they owned them. You may want to read/review and watch ESPN's series on titled Black Ice.
When given an equal opportunity in all fields of endeavor African Americans can can do as well as whites. And in many cases African Americans exceed whites in accomplishments and achievements under like or similar conditions while simultaneously living under such wretched circumstances.
Its a fact that 90 per cent of the Black slaves forcibly taken from Africa were imported into the Caribbean, and South America. And only 10 per cent of the Black slaves taken from Africa came to British America or North America.
The first Black African slaves imported into the present day Dominican Republic )Hispaniola ) came in 1502, Cuba in 1513, Honduras 1526, Guatemala, 1526, and Columbia 1533,etc.
The first Black Africans to come as slaves in Puerto Rico arrived in 1517, but the first Black African free-man came to Puerto Rico in 1509, his name was Juan Garrido. Mr. Garrido was the son of a West African King. Puerto Rico only abolished slavery in 1873, and the descendants of those Black African slaves have played an instrumental role in the development of Puerto Rico's culture and civilian life. And there is a strong emphasis among many Puerto Ricans in reconnecting and appreciating their Black African roots, and many Black Puerto Ricans have contributed significantly to the building of present day Puerto Rico.
One proud prominent Black Puerto Rican of today is Dr. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, who is a professor of sociology at Duke University with affiliations to the following units : African and African American Studies, Latin American Studies, Latino Studies, and the Institute for Critical U.S. Studies. Dr. Silva's research has appeared in such journals as Sociological Inquiry, Racial and Ethnic Studies, Race and Society, Discourse and Society, Journal of Latin American Studies, Contemporary Sociology, and Research in Politics and Society. To date, Dr. Silva has published four books : White Supremacy and Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era ( Cowinner of the 2002 Oliver Cox Award given by the American Sociological Association ), Racism Without Racists: Color- Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States ( 2004 Choice Award; this book is now in a second expanded and revised edition that was published in 2006 ), White Out : The Continuing Significance of Racism ( Ashely Doane ), and ( with Tukufu Zuben ) White Logic, White Methods: Racism and Social Science.
So you can see by the achievements of Dr. Silva that Black Puerto Ricans can do more than just play baseball and box.
Brazil didn't outlaw or ban slavery until 1888 with it famous Gold law, and more Black Africans were taken to Brazil than any other location in South or North America. The overwhelming majority of Brazilians have a Sub-Saharian African geno-trait, because of the largest importation of Black African slaves in the Americas.
Since 1502 the Black Dominicans have been brainwashed and taught to hate everything that is Black and from Africa, and that's why you have so few Dominicans use the term Black or call themselves Afro-Dominicans or Black Dominicans. The "Willie Lynch Theory" worked very well in Hispaniola for many centuries, and what you are witnessing in the present day Dominican Republic is a manifestation of the Willie Lynch Theory in concert with the Methods on how to control and deculturate the Black African roots from the people of the Dominican Republic. How can a Black Dominican like Big Popi call himself a white man, who appears to be more Black African than any of the present day African American ball-players. That just goes to show how twisted and confused the Dominicans are about their rich Black African heritage.
Also the dominant culture in the West has conveniently invented all these new terms such as Hispanic and Latino to deny the Black Africaness heritage of today's baseball players from the Cuba, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. More importantly the white media, historians, sociologist's and the folks on Sports Center have basically hijacked the Dominican players African roots by calling them Hispanic and Latino. All of today's players from the Dominican Republic call themselves Dominican rather than Afro Dominican or Black Dominican. So it is up to people like me to set the record straight, and try to enlighten my lost Dominican brothers and sisters.
Furthermore Dominican women, and African American women spend Billions of dollars a year on hair care products trying to get their hair straight, and the straighter the hair and the lighter the skin is an added plus in Dominican society. The Dominican women like their African American counter-parts are doing everything to their God-given natural hair to alter & make it more straight like white women's natural hair. So why do Dominicans & African American women spend billions of dollars a year to look like Miss Anne ? Quite frankly its because of 400 plus years of intense European racial brainwashing/indoctrination coupled with a brutal relentless assault on Black Africa, its culture, heritage, and the result is a slave mentality.
Where American Black women, and Dominican females still use such terms as good hair to describe a person with an alleged good grade of hair, because its more like the White woman. African American women are spending from $ 300.00 to $ 700.00 dollars a month to artifically make their hair look more like the European woman. The Dominican women don't have one third of the wealth of an African American female so they struggle to get their hair done on a monthly basis. If you believe that God made everyone then all people made by the creator have good hair. God gave everyone of his little creatures good hair. People who live near the equator need short hair, so the scalp can breathe. People living in cold climates need long hair, to keep them warm. Natural hair is easy to manage, inexpensive to maintain, and allows participation in various activities. Unfortunately many African American women don't swim because they say like a person with a slave mentality that they don't want their hair to return to its natural state. God didn't make any junk. People have different grades, and textures of hair based upon the climates in which they originated. Many young Black girls still wonder why their mothers put a hot comb to their hair, which often burns. And more so-called African American women, and Dominican women are doing everything in their power to look like the European women. When will this pathetic brainwashing stop ? Probably never because its a 400 year old disease; Its called the Post Traumatic Stress Slave Syndrome or the Delayed Stress Slave Syndrome; The Dominicans also have the two previous diseases.
Look at Sammy Sosa now, he is the same color as the late Michael Jackson. The Dominican Republic has always been ruled by a group of corrupt very light skin or white skin ruling class that has never advocated for the dismantling of its color hierarchical system. The Black Haitians are discriminated on an on-going basis in the present day Dominican Republic. And to think that the Black Haitians dominated and ruled their light skin brothers from the Dominican Republic for the first 40 years after the Haitian Revolution. So its payback time !
Black has always been beautiful, and Africa indeed is the Motherland and the beginning of civilization and the origin of man.
The great Black Puerto Rican, Orlando Cepeda acknowledged his rich Black heritage at his induction ceremony for the baseball Hall-Of Fame, but the Dominicans are really far behind the Puerto Ricans as it relates to appreciating their Blackness and rich African Heritage. Puerto Rico still has some remnant's of the old color caste system, but the color caste system in the Dominican Republic is very widespread and en grained in the fabric of every part of Dominican society. Roughly 90 per cent of all the Dominicans are descendants of African slaves, and they would be called modern day Mulatto's by the old U.S. standards, and their color caste system is more reminiscent of the present day U.S. color caste system, which unfortunately is still with us today.
Of today's present players, Hanley Ramirez of the Florida Marlins is the most complete player in today's game. Hanley hails from Samana, Dominican Republic.

Here is Black Buzz's poem titled :

MAN, COULD THEY PLAY THAT GAME

Josh, Cool Papa, Satchel, Buck, Monte, Pop Lloyd, Willie Wells, Judy, Campy, Oscar, Martin Dihigo, Ray D., Minnie, Rube Foster, and others,
Man, could they play that game !
For we all know why they were selected into the baseball Hall of Fame,
Man they could hit, run, field, pitch, steal bases, drive in runs
equally as good as the great white
elite players of their day
from the New York Island to the
San Francisco Bay.

Their historical denial
to play the national pastime
is still considered by many
to a major crime,
Yes they were banned for years
because of racism and white America's fears.

Cool Papa ran the bases so fast
players felt in order to stop Cool Papa
they needed a pair of Everlast
Oh ! Josh could hit the Long Ball
with great authority and consistency
over any Major League Wall
How unfortunate he never received
an appropriate Major League Call
Man, Satchel had a fast ball that curved
in and out and blooped over the plate
Isn't it a shame that old Satchel
arrived in the Major Leagues
with the Cleveland Indians so late
And man, wouldn't you liked to
have seen old Josh, behind Home Plate
in Cleveland Stadium as Satchel's
steady battery mate ?

They rode those old buses
from town to town
never letting their guard down
or they wouldn't be around,
At times they had to eat out of cans
however, they still kept a loyal following
among their dedicated fans,
They loved the game of baseball
and played it merely for fun,
Now we all know why they will
always have a special place
in the sun.

I remember seeing the Grays and
Monarchs play at Forbes Field
for those great men also had dreams
although many were killed.
Where they not the true boys of summer
playing that game,
and since Jackie and Larry came on the scene
the national pastime
has never been the same.
They were the ship, all else the sea
for they made all of our lives
a little more joyful and free.

The Negro League players were
the true pioneers that paved the way
for the Bonds, McRae's, Griffey's
and Alou's of today
Special thanks to Hamerrin Hank
Say Hey !
Willie Mays !
Let is not forget the Afro-Cubans,
Afro- Dominicans, Afro- Puerto Ricans
for they could also play that game
And a few of them like Roberto Clemente
and Juan Marichal are enshrined along
with many of the great Negro League players
in Cooperstown, N. Y., the Baseball Hall of Fame
By
Ronald B. Saunders
( 1993 )