Bud Selig, NLB Commissioner, says the state won’t lose the 2011 All-Star game scheduled to be played in Phoenix in 2011. The Washington Post says that if the game is played in Arizona, “our favorite all-stars could enter a hostile environment, and the families, friends and fans of a third of the players could be treated as second-class citizens because of their skin color or the way they speak.” Perhaps a bit harsh, but it could certainly be heavy on the minds of those potentially affected.With around one-third of the players in baseball Hispanic, Latino or African American, then add family and friends, plus other ethnic followers, there will be a surge of individuals converging on the Phoenix area that may very well be questioning the safety of their presence. The authors of the WP article, Wade Henderson and Janet Murguia, want the 2011 All-Star game pulled from Phoenix, and give their reasons why.
The embarrassment to those affected who are legal, and could be required to show that they are, perhaps in public. A regression of Constitutional freedoms, and having to face bigotry and intolerance. The perception of a sport that proudly welcomed the first Black to baseball in 1947. And all of it happening in Arizona, because of the authoring of a bizarre and ludicrous law by State Senator Russell Pierce, signed by Governor Jan Brewer.
It’s been done before; several years ago when the NFL moved the 1993 Super Bowl from Arizona because the state had refused to honor Martin Luther King Day. Hopefully, an injunction stopping SB1070 and its subsequent defeat by the feds will make all this moot.
And if not, will the Hispanic community have organized around their rights by then to the extent they have real clout, and demand their players, as well as other Latinos and African-Americans strike and picket the game?
Arizona does not deserve this, nor does it deserve Russell Pierce or Jan Brewer.
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