Orioles Manager Buck Showalter was appalled to learn earlier this week that 19 year old Josh Hart, the Orioles pick in the supplemental round between rounds one and two of the amateur draft, didn't know who Frank Robinson was. Showalter hit upon an unusual solution (via MLB.com's Brittany Ghiroli):
What we talk about when we talk about Frank Robinson
Buck Showalter gives a kid a homework assignment and everybody chuckles, but there’s something more valuable at stake.
Jonathan Dyer-USA TODAY Sports/Getty Images
Robinson visited Orioles camp and spoke to the team... and was walking with Showalter past Hart before the Orioles skipper decided to test the youngster. When Hart didn’t know who Robinson was, Showalter assigned him a one-page paper on the Hall of Famer.
Josh Hart is only 19 years old and probably didn’t go out and buy a book on the history of the Orioles franchise the second he was drafted. Robinson retired 18 years before Hart was even born and hasn’t managed since the youngster was 12. So lay off the kid. He doesn’t deserve to be a punchline. Thankfully, Showalter realizes this too. “I called [director of player development Brian Graham, and] I said, ‘This kid’s not ruined for life or embarrassed?’... I actually feel bad now. I do. I got a good feeling we will be talking about something else concerning Josh Hart than that at some point. He’s a talented kid.”
Frank Robinson, natch.(Getty Images) I want Josh Hart to know who Frank Robinson is. I want everyone to know. Robinson is a giant in baseball history, one of the greatest right-handed hitters, one of the first black superstars and the first black manager. He hit 586 homers, was Rookie of the Year in 1956, a 12-time All Star, and a two-time World Series champion. He won the All-Star Game MVP in 1971 and the World Series MVP in 1966. He was the first player to win an MVP award in each league. He hit his way to the Triple Crown in 1966, was a clubhouse leader of the great Orioles teams of the 1960s and early 1970s. A first-ballot Hall of Famer in 1982, he was even AL Manager of the Year in 1989. Perhaps no one else in baseball history has been honored in as many different ways as Frank Robinson.
I understand what Showalter was trying to do, cluing a young prospect into the history of the game, a history to which he is connected whether he wants to be or not. What’s disturbing to me is the implication that Hart, a prominent African American prospect, is the only minor leaguer in Orioles camp who needs to do his homework on Frank Robinson, one of the most important African-Americans to ever appear in a baseball uniform, and probably the most decorated.
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The history of Frank Robinson, and of African-Americans in baseball, isn’t just for black players, and thinking that it should be appreciated is not just about some snobbish notion of baseball cultural literacy. Knowing who Frank Robinson was will probably not help Hart or any other prospect hit one more home run, steal an extra base, or get a single strike on a batter. And yet, every player in the game should be aware of the struggles of Robinson and his contemporaries because organizations are not just molding athletes but constructing constantly-evolving communities in their clubhouses, which is another way of saying teams.
A key element of a successful community is empathy, which can allow vastly different people to work and play together harmoniously. Time and again, because of this empathy, hyper-masculine and conservative American sports have successfully run parallel with, and sometimes in advance of, society as a whole, becoming more diverse and egalitarian as talent trumps prejudice. For some, empathy is inborn, but for many others, prejudice is something that must be fought and tamed.
This is where the example of someone like Robinson can be valuable, not because players can adopt him as a role model in either the moral or athletic sense (for most that would be futile and frustrating given that few players possess Robinson's talent), but rather because his parallel roles as star player, pathfinder, and harmonizer of clubhouses - in essence, citizen-athlete -- are still so desperately needed, especially as the continues to attract the best players from every walk of life from across the globe. Robinson stood up for equality and fought back against prejudice, but he also strove to be more than just a pioneer. He started his career as a meek locker room presence, shy and withdrawn from the older players on the Cincinnati Reds, and once was even arrested for pulling a pistol in a diner when a worker who called him a racial epithet. Yet, he overcame those challenges and early misjudgments, working to become a leader. Robinson persevered, he improved himself with hard work, never repeated his mistakes, and he became beloved.
(Getty Images)
The injustices that Robinson fought against as a member of the generation of African American players after Jackie Robinson are still relevant. He fought these battles not only in the 1950s and 1960s, but into the 1980s, when he forcefully spoke out against the racist attitudes that kept blacks from coaching, managing, and working in front offices. In the wake of Al Campanis’s infamous comments that African Americans, “may not have some of the necessities to be a field manager or perhaps a general manager,” Robinson hit back, decrying that “Baseball has been hiding this ugly prejudice for years -- that blacks aren’t smart enough to be managers or third-base coaches or part of the front office. There’s a belief that they’re fine when it comes to the physical part of the game, but if it involves brains they just can’t handle it. Al Campanis made people finally understand what goes on behind closed doors -- that there is racism in baseball.”
As we approach the point where baseball’s own Michael Sam (whoever that proves to be) integrates the game again, it’s easy to pat ourselves on the back for being far more enlightened and cosmopolitan than the America of the 1940s through the 1980s, but the truth is that the forces of prejudice and reaction are never wholly gone, and while some players will instinctively be welcoming, others will require a positive example.
So, yes, I hope Josh Hart took away important lessons from researching the life of the Orioles legend, but I want everyone in the Orioles organization to have that same opportunity. I want other teams to learn from Baltimore’s example. Showalter’s little homework assignment isn’t about one kid not knowing his history, or failing to have proper reverence for the sainted figures of his organization, but about transmitting a sense of responsibility and community -- in short, beginning the process of making new Frank Robinsons for the 2000s.
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