Everything about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s approach to “CRT” and “DEI” has been a thinly veiled attempt to assure white men that they will retain their primacy. But occasionally, DeSantis lifts the veil entirely.
During a recent interview on friendly ground, the Christian Broadcast Network, the host led DeSantis down a path that gave DeSantis the perfect opportunity to reveal the racism that underlies his approach to anything “woke.”
The host prompted DeSantis by noting that he always thought of baseball as “a thinking man’s game.”
DeSantis, a former baseball player at Yale — and to be fair, a very good one — had the gate opened to lay out some of his views on sports and, by implication, race.
DeSantis believes that baseball is a better game because it’s more open to all, a very “meritocratic” game, and then emphasized that if one is willing to “work hard” and hone their skills, there is a place for “everybody” on a baseball team.
Not so for basketball, a game dominated by black men on the pro level. DeSantis went out of his way to denigrate the hard work and intellectual firepower it takes to play elite basketball. The Root reports:
“Whereas I kind of viewed like basketball as like these guys are just freaks of nature. They’re just incredible athletes. In baseball, you know, you have some guys that might not necessarily be the best athletes, but maybe they’ve got you know that slider that nobody can hit, or they have the skills that allow them to compete at the highest level.”
“Freaks of nature.”
As has happened throughout history, DeSantis reduced basketball players (primarily black men) to nothing more than “bodies,” and freak bodies at that.
Obviously, DeSantis doesn’t believe there’s any “thinking” going on in a game played at that pace, one that requires someone to think quicker and anticipate better.
There is also the implication that a boy or young man doesn’t have to work hard at basketball to “hone their skills,” which is almost hilarious were it not so racist.
The greats in basketball have virtually set themselves apart by their willingness to work hard off the court. Kobe Bryant was famous for his workouts at home (Six hours per day) before he even went to practice.
LeBron James works out and plays all year when he’s not building elite schools for poor kids in his hometown.
Baseball has largely become a white man’s game (or Latin-American) for one reason.
Kids these days who play baseball at a high-level play on travel teams that cost thousands of dollars, crisscrossing the country to tournaments in cities hundreds of miles away.
A lot of people, black, white, and brown, don’t have the money to invest in what it takes to play baseball at an elite level now.
Back when it wasn’t so expensive, baseball was dominated by black men, Bob Gibson, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and – of course, Jackie Robinson, the player so good that they couldn’t keep him out of the Major Leagues.
Basketball is actually the more meretricious game because all it requires is a ball, a court, a willingness to work hard, hone one’s skills, and be smart – see where the ball is going to go, be in the right place ahead of time, know where your teammates are without looking.
The fact that DeSantis wasn’t big and strong enough to play basketball, a thinking man’s game, isn’t basketball’s fault.
DeSantis is, however, a racist freak. And that’s his fault.
Original reporting by Candace McDuffie of The Root.
I can be reached at jasonmiciak@gmail.com and on Twitter @JasonMiciak.
Editor’s note: This is an opinion column that solely reflects the opinions of the author.
