Now, Baseball Has Spoken

Apparently Bud Selig’s first action after baseball owners empowered him to act in the best interests of the game was to act in the worst interests of free speech.

Monday, the commissioner suspended closer John Rocker of the Atlanta Braves until May 1--essentially sitting him down for the first month of the season--for the offensive remarks Rocker made during a Sports Illustrated interview in December.

Who is Bud Selig to determine what is and isn’t appropriate speech?

While (hopefully) any educated person saw Rocker’s slurs of homosexuals and various ethnicities as out of line, how appropriate is it for Selig to potentially alter the outcome of pennant races based on what a person says in his own free time?

Rocker wasn’t posting KKK propaganda in the clubhouse; he was speaking his small mind to a reporter in the off-season. Even blockheads such as Rocker are entitled to their own beliefs, so long as those views don’t interfere with the rights of others. Likewise, sane people are entitled to disagree with the John Rockers of the world.

The trouble begins when others attempt to regulate what can and can’t be said.

The framers of the Constitution wrote the 1st Amendment to protect citizens from censorship by the government, not private entities. But just because Selig has the power to punish Rocker doesn’t mean he should.

This case is different from when the Dodgers fired vice president Al Campanis and baseball suspended owner Marge Schott of the Cincinnati Reds for racially insensitive remarks. They were in positions of power, with the authority to hire and fire personnel and players. Baseball’s track record on minority hires off the field was dismal enough; failure to punish Campanis and Schott could have opened the door to lawsuits from any minority who was denied employment or opportunity for advancement by them. The integrity of the sport was at stake.

Rocker is a guy whose decision-making consists of “fastball or curve?� He isn’t paid for his opinions, he’s paid for his arm.

Any and all punishment should have come from the Braves. He’s their employee, a reflection on their team and not the sport of baseball.

If the Braves thought Rocker’s presence in the clubhouse was going to destroy the chemistry of the team, they could have dumped him. If other teams really feel Rocker can be of service and justify whatever outrage they would incur by adding him, they should be free to do so and to use him for the entire season.

Fans would then be free to voice their opinions by boycotting that team’s games and telecasts.

But for Selig to make the decision for the Braves and every other team is wrong.

The PGA Tour didn’t slap sanctions on Fuzzy Zoeller after he played on African-American stereotypes in the wake of Tiger Woods’ victory in the 1997 Masters. Zoeller got what was coming to him when he lost a Kmart endorsement and a club sponsorship.

That’s the right way to do it. Let the marketplace determine the punishment.

Selig just took the first step down a slippery slope. Will he monitor every interview and have spies listening to every clubhouse conversation? What about context? How is he supposed to know when people are just joking around when he isn’t there?

I once walked into the New Jersey Nets’ locker room and heard forward Rick Mahorn unleash practically every Latino slur one could imagine at Newark Star-Ledger reporter Dan Garcia. Garcia laughed. It was a running joke between them.

But Mahorn said some words that, on their own, were just as offensive as Rocker’s. Should NBA Commissioner David Stern have fined him?

(The next season, Stern did fine Net Coach John Calipari $25,000 for calling Garcia “a . . . Mexican idiot� during an argument in the parking lot, and hit a Miami Heat broadcaster with a $2,500 fine for an odd on-air ramble that likened today’s basketball players to Thomas Jefferson’s slaves.)

But Stern apparently realized the difficulty in enforcing these shaky, shifting standards, because he has essentially stayed out of the word-police business ever since. It’s an impossible situation. He would have spent all his time reading transcripts of Charles Barkley interviews.

Then again, Stern hasn’t had a John Rocker on his hands.

Selig got caught in a nationwide fire, with people all over the country screaming for someone to do something.

So he panicked. First he ordered Rocker to undergo psychological testing, which was laughable. Then he overreacted by handing down this suspension.

Selig is treating the symptoms and not the disease. Suspending Rocker is like fighting a viral infection with a cough drop.

If Selig wants to show he’s changing attitudes in baseball, he should be strong-arming the owners to make sure they’re really doing all they can to hire minorities for managerial and front-office positions and not accepting the tired old excuse that “we tried but there just aren’t enough qualified minorities.�

He should abolish the Cleveland Indians’ nickname and grinning logo, force the Braves to drop the team-encouraged tomahawk chop and rid the game of any other elements Native Americans find offensive.

Those would be bold steps toward changing the perceptions of young people, the type of perceptions that create Rocker’s type of mind-set.

Instead, Selig is trying to create the impression he’s fixing things. He didn’t change any racist players’ ways of thinking; he just changed the likelihood that they will speak out about their beliefs. And silent racists are the most treacherous kind, because you can’t hear them coming.

I can’t say I feel sorry for John Rocker. But when people are punished simply for expressing their beliefs, I feel sorry for all of us.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at his e-mail address: [email protected]