Book Review: Lisa Doris Alexander, When Baseball Isn’t White, Straight and Male: The Media and Difference in the National Pastime

Abstract

Book Review: Lisa Doris Alexander, When Baseball Isn't White, Straight and Male: The Media and Difference in the National Pastime. McFarland & Company, Inc., 2012. ISBN: 978-0786471133 (Paperback). 200 Pages. $39.95[Article copies available for a fee from The Transformative Studies Institute. E-mail address: journal@transformativestudies.org Website: http://www.transformativestudies.org ©2013 by The Transformative Studies Institute. All rights reserved.]Lisa Doris Alexander's When Baseball Isn 't White, Straight and Male: The Media and Difference in the National Pastime becomes even more poignant now that the Baseball Writers Association of America failed to elect Barry Bonds to the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility. If one follows Alexander's arguments regarding sports journalists' attitude toward Bonds, the results of the 2013 balloting by the BBWAA are no surprise.In her collection of essays, Alexander takes aim at the news media and the hierarchy of Major League Baseball. One of her prominent themes is that what is now more commonly referred to as white privilege still exists, and that racism, though vanquished from the surface of society, flows like an undercurrent through the coverage of athletes and their connections to various issues, in this case, use of performance enhancing drugs, personality portrayals, and respect for the game and fellow players. Alexander uses players, historical baseball figures and the MLB itself as vehicles to explore these issues. Citing black feminist scholar Patricia Collins, Alexander describes white privilege as the advantages whites have over blacks and others of color, although whites attribute those advantages to their ability, talent, motivation, self-discipline and hard work. (p. 8) As she further contends, seldom whites or press or the media writ large acknowledge what she identifies as the unfair advantage emanating from their group classification as whites in a racial formation that privileges whites... (p. 8)Alexander argues that white privilege permeates the work of journalists who cover baseball. For one thing, most of those journalists are white, but the proof lies in the stories that populate the newspapers and sportscasts. For example, Alexander claims that the home run chase of 1998 and the exploits of Barry Bonds a few years later serve as prime examples of how white privilege molded the public depictions of Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Bonds. Press and media framed McGwire as a Paul Bunyan of baseball and Sosa as his smiling and likeable sidekick. Alexander says this became a controlling image that reaffirms the racial hierarchy within the United States with the white male at the top and the 'other' at the bottom. (p. 91) On the other hand, sportswriters cast Bonds as a curmudgeon who didn't deserve accolades while breaking McGwire's home run record.The coverage of McGwire and Bonds also diverged when it came to the issue of performance enhancing drugs. Alexander writes that reporters knew of McGwire's use of Androstenedione during his 1998 home run record year, but they gave it little notice. His use of andro, banned by other sports organizations but not by MLB, did not detract from the adulation sports writers heaped on McGwire. Those writers saved their venom for Bonds. They muted the adulation, as did MLB. Bonds broke the home run marks (McGwire's and Aaron's lifetime record) under a cloud of suspicion and constant innuendo. Consequently, sports writers implied that Bonds was not operating on a playing (p. 104) But Alexander makes a compelling case when she argues that Major League Baseball never operated on a level playing field. If Bonds' entries in the record book deserve an asterisk, so the records of all major league players who played before 1947, when Jackie Robinson re-integrated baseball. [S]portswriters, she writes, do not question whether Ruth would have hit 60 home runs during a single season or 714 career homers if he had had to face the likes of Satchel Paige or Willie Foster on a regular basis. …