ficance of race in this year’s presidential election, I also realize how important it is to acknowledge now far we have come throughout the decades when it comes to comprehending each other in this country and taking one another seriously.That fact was reinforced in my mind when I realized it has been 70 years to the day since Jake Powell managed to earn his place in this country’s cultural history by opening his mouth and expressing what was the commonly felt attitude toward race relations of the day.
FOR THOSE WHO don’t bury their minds in minutia, Powell is a former professional baseball player. An outfielder, he played for the old Washington Senators and New York Yankees back in the era when Joe DiMaggio was leading the team to what seemed like endless World Series titles (four ina row from 1936-39).
As a result, Powell was in Chicago on July 29, 1938, as the Yankees were playing the White Sox at Comiskey Park. Prior to the game, Powell was partaking in what has become a ritual of broadcast sports – the pregame interview.
While being questioned about various bits of trivia on WGN-AM, longtime WhiteSox broadcaster Bob Elson (he didn’t retire until 1970) thought he would try to get a personal anecdote by asking Powell about his off-season activities.
Powell’s answer was more than anyone bargained for.
THE BALLPLAYER WHO once had seriously thought about wanting to be a police officer exaggerated by telling Elson he was a cop in Dayton, Ohio, and how his favorite part of the job was being able to use his club to whack black people over the head (the fact that it was commonly called a ‘billy club’ as a slur to Irish people is yet another example of the era’s attitudes).
Of course, Powell used a much blunter slur for black people, which went out over the air live to the vast midwestern radio audience that can pick up WGN radio’s signal.
What is significant about remembering this moment, which on a certain level was nothing more than a ballplayer being a jock and saying whatever mindless thing popped into his head? He probably did think his bluntness on the air was humorous, in the same way modern-day athletes will occasionally make obscene gestures on television out of a belief that the broadcaster (and not themselves) is the one who comes off looking stupid.
The reaction of the late-1930s United States of America was split in a way it would be hard to imagine happening today.
WHITE PEOPLE, PARTICULARLY those in the press, were inclined initially to dismiss the incident as just a matter of a jock being a jock. After all, nobody goes to a ball game expecting the athletes to come up with the solution to achieving world peace.
In fact, when Powell died in 1948, his obituary in the New York Times did not even bother to mention the incident until its final paragraph. The Times of that era preferred to emphasize the fact that Powell was a Yankee on some of that storied franchise’s greatest teams.
It was the blackpress of that era that took up the wisecrack as a crusade, and eventually put on so much pressure that major league baseball’s then-commissioner, Kennesaw Mountain Landis, felt the need to do something about the issue.
The black press was calling for a lifetime ban of Powell, similar to the bans received by the eight White Sox ballplayers suspected of working with gamblers during the 1919 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds.
INSTEAD, LANDIS GAVE Powell a 10-day suspension for being stupid in public. The other part of his punishment was that he was forced to make public appearances before various community groups in Harlem.
At those events, Powell tried to portray himself as a nice guy who liked to tell jokes, but didn’t really mean any of it. In short, he offered a non-apology, similar to the way people today who say something stupid have to take it back without really doing so.
Some things never change.
But what has changed is that nowadays, it would not take so long for the incident to become a big deal. The broadcast medium has become so dominant in establishing the public’s view on any given issue.
IF THIS WERE to happen today, WGN-AM radio’s audio would be picked up by ESPN, which would take the snippet and replay it over and over and over again so often on all its various media properties that the word “n----r” would be burned into our brains.
We also would give the ballplayer the equivalent of the lifetime ban that black activists of the era wanted for Powell. We’d never let him forget his gaffe.
Take John Rocker, the one-time Atlanta Braves relief pitcher who played along with a Sports Illustrated writer’s question a few years ago about whether he truly despised New York City.
But in his answer, he claimed to hate it because of the presence of gay and black people to a degree not found in his hometown of Macon, Ga. He also made a crack about a certain black teammate being a “monkey.”
ROCKER'S CAREER SHRIVELED up and died in a way that Powell’s did not (although some like to find humor in the fact that Powell – the man who pretended to be a police officer – died after shooting himself in a police station while in police custody).
Rocker, or anyone else who says something racially stupid, winds up having to defend themselves in a way that white society never woul d have asked of Powell.
The people who come to Rocker’s defense by trying to dredge up the label of “political correctness” themselves can become suspicious, as we wonder why they are so willing to defend someone who would want to attack others.
One other point to consider.
JUST IMAGINE HOW bewildered Powell and the people who were willing to look the other way at his comments back in 1938 would be if they could see us today and be forced to acknowledge the fact that a bi-racial man was able to get a presidential nomination – and may actually have a chance to win the Nov. 4 elections.
The very thought would be beyond their comprehension.
And that is the ultimate evidence of how far we as a society have come.
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EDITOR’S NOTES: Jake Powell’s gaffe of seven decades ago is evidence of how much (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/sports/baseball/27powell.html?_r=1&oref=slogin) our society has changed.
Playing well for the Yankees in the 1936 World Series topped his gaffe, in the eyes of the American public (http://www.thedeadballera.com/Obits/Powell.Jake.Obit.html) back when Powell died. Anyone now who said what he said would not be so lucky.
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