Give Dusty Baker A Break — No Really

09 Jul, 2003 by John Hawkins

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Give Dusty Baker A Break — No Really: Dusty Baker latest comments are drawing a lot of heat. Last night Joe Scarborough had a guest on who thought he should be fired, Rush Limbaugh — although more bemused than angry — spent quite a bit a time on Baker yesterday and the editorials are flying fast & furious. Here’s what Baker actually said…

“You have to pretend that you’re a construction worker out there. You have no choice. It’s easier for me. It’s easier for most Latin guys and it’s easier for most minority people. Most of us come from heat.

(Blacks’) skin color is more conducive to heat than it is for lighter skin people, right? You don’t see brothers running around burnt. Yeah, that’s fact. I’m not making this stuff up. Right? You don’t see some brothers walking around with white stuff on their ears and noses.”

First off, let’s be honest here — is anyone offended? I’m certainly not and I really can’t imagine that there are a lot of white people out there who are upset that Dusty Baker doesn’t think they can take the heat as well people with darker skins. After all, it’s not as if Baker went on some sort of malicious Louis Farrakhan style rant about white devils.

Of course, what a lot of people are actually cheesed off about is that there’s a “double standard”. White people (think Jimmy the Greek) are held to one standard and blacks are held to another. But hasn’t Baker been hammered for his comments in more than a few places? Moreover, you have to admit that the old ‘double standard’ is slowly fading away. For example, I remember back in the eighties when just criticizing Jesse Jackson was enough to produce knee-jerk shrieks of “racism”. But today, Jackson is commonly blasted as a shakedown artist & Al Sharpton is laughed at as a clown — well at least in the Conservative media. So things are getting better on that front.

So given all that, why not cut Dusty Baker a little slack?