Who the hell is on the cover of Sports Illustrated?!

(11:38:05 PM)
Joey Votto is on the cover of Sports Illustrated. WTF?, you may ask, wondering either a.) Who the hell is Joey Votto?, or b.) I didn't know you paid any attention to anything besides politics. But Joey Votto is the first basemen for my long-ago-hometown baseball team, the Cincinnati Reds. Legendary in the '70's, almost unheard of since their 1990 'wire-to-wire' domination of all of baseball, 'my' team has been a joke since the mid-'90's.
Suddenly, as of this writing, they are 7 games ahead of the next team in their division. I have no illusions about their chances at getting to, much less winning the World Series, but I can dream.

I started paying attention to the Reds when I was five or six. My hero was Frank Robinson, but my favorite name on the team was Vada Pinson. I loved the way the name sounded, how it came off the tongue. "vay-DUH PIN-sun." It didn't hurt that he was great in the outfield and could really hit. I was already a true Reds fan by the time Pete Rose showed up. I would fall asleep listening to the games, looking at my baseball cards for pictures of each player as he batted.

Frank and Vada were black ball players. Not until years later did I learn that Vada Pinson had started out in the Negro Leagues, and had moved from the Black Barrons of Birmingham to my Reds. I didn't know there was a "Negro League." I just knew about 'baseball.' Pete Rose was, and is, about as white a specimen of homo sapiens as there will ever be. I didn't know that I should care. I just knew their stats, listened to the plays, heard them lose the first World Series I ever listened to. They were my team. They weren't black or white. They were Red.

I understand why Obama is so threatening to so many small people. Their children might grow up with a president on TV, in the web, in the news, that also happens to be black. Their children might not find that to be strange, or amazing, or scary. They might just think that's the way things are. They'll be learning new things every day, every week, about how the world is, at the age of six, seven, eight. They'll see black stars in movies, in video games, in music, in sports. Because they are there, everywhere they look. Even in industry, finance, politics, power.

And if that is allowed to seem normal, how will they be convinced that it is bad?

This year's incoming college freshman was born in 1992. She doesn't remember Clinton's presidency. She didn't watch his impeachment. FOX News is normal. And Nirvana is "classic rock." But a black president is amazing to her, because she's from what is already 'back then,' before there were presidents that were black. But eight-year-olds today? It is what it is. And where's my juice box?, they ask, unimpressed.

It's such a shame that they don't know the genius of Joe Morgan threatening to steal second, dancing miles off first, while George Foster, the home-run king, stood in the box, then stepped out, then stepped back in, the two of them completely destroying the pitcher's concentration, until Foster blasted another one over the fence, and both of them strolled across home plate, game after game.

Both of them were black. Both of them were brilliant, and were heroes, of mine and of thousands of little white boys across ever-so-Republican Ohio. I didn't know who Jackie Robinson was when I was a kid. I didn't care. I'd like to think that that was part of the point to Jackie Robinson coming to the majors.  

Joey Votto, this week's SI cover, is a Canuck who can't (not doesn't, can't) play hockey. But he plays baseball well enough to be threatening to win the batting Triple Crown. It hasn't been done in my memory, since Frank Robinson won it (in the American League) in 1966. Remember he was black? Guess what? Nobody cared then, nobody cares now. What they care about is what he did. Cause in the end, it's what you do that matters. And they can't deny it.

Except on FOX.
(12:16:24 AM)(12:20:53 AM)