W. Kamau Bell | How to Define Blackness in Baseball, Plus a Conversation About Glen Kuiper

Black Diamonds

SiriusXM

History, Baseball, Black History, Sports, Negro Leagues, Documentary, Equality, Society & Culture, Civil Rights

4.8 • 617 Ratings

🗓️ 11 May 2023

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What does it mean to forgive, but never forget? Bob Kendrick addresses the racial slur used, and apology given, by A's broadcaster Glen Kuiper, and why he himself has chosen the path of forgiveness, while using the moment to remember the triumph over adversity of Negro Leagues baseball. Bob also takes a moment to remember his dear friend and a member of the Black Aces, the late Vida Blue, before writer, documentarian, and comedian W. Kamau Bell joins Bob for a nuanced discussion of how Blackness has been defined through the history of baseball, on the heels of Bell's HBOMax documentary "1000% Me", examining mixed race identity. Where was the line drawn for light-skinned stars like Charlie Grant or John Donaldson? And why? Did the first ever Black Major Leaguer KNOW that he was Black? And how did Blackness evolve in baseball past a skin tone, and into an entire style of play? Laugh and learn with Bob and W. Kamau Bell, as they walk through American history.

Transcript

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0:00.0	On Friday, May 5th, I welcome Oakland A's broadcasters Glenn Kuyper and Dallas Braden to the Negro
0:08.7	Nigs Baseball Museum. It was a trip that had been enthusiastically arranged by Dallas,
0:15.1	who I had reconnected with a couple of weeks prior when I was in Arlington, Texas, as a guest
0:20.4	of the Texas Rangers during the Rangers series with the A's.
0:24.6	Dallas called me the week before the A's made it to K.C. to play the Royals to see if I would be around the museum.
0:31.5	When he and Glenn arrived, I was wrapping up a tour with folks from the Savannah, who were in town to play a three-game exhibition series against our Kansas City monarchs minor league tune.
0:46.6	I caught up with the two broadcasters near our barrier breaker section of the museum, and both men expressed their gratefulness for the work that the NLBM does
0:56.2	to preserve and celebrate the rich history of the Negro Leagues. After all, there's a story
1:00.7	born out of the ugliness of American segregation. And as typical, I told stories about a number
1:08.0	of Negro League ledgers, including Satchel Page, who pitched in his
1:12.0	final official major league game for the Kansas City Aiton on September 25, 1965, shortly before
1:20.5	Charlie Finley moved the team to Oakland.
1:23.8	Page, who was reportedly 59 years old, if you believe he was born in 1906, which I don't,
1:31.0	tossed three shutout innings giving up only one hit to a young Carl Jastrimski against the Boston Red Sox.
1:38.5	Yes, gets a double against the old man, and Satchel left him at third during his age-defying outing.
1:46.1	We laughed and took photos before I had to leave for a presentation.
1:50.7	At this point, I and the museum were riding an incredible high,
1:55.6	as we had just a few days earlier announced our plans to build a new 30,000 square foot museum that would be
2:02.5	connected to the former Faisal YMCA, the historic building that the Negro Leagues were established
2:08.6	by Andrew Rube Foster in 1920 and the future home of the Bucco Neal Center.
2:15.5	The project will see us create a Negro Leaks campus for both black
2:19.4	baseball and social history as our international headquarters and the gateway into historic
	...

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