Tori Hunter: Activist or Bigot?

Over his entire career, Tori Hunter has always spoken his mind about a wide range of topics. It is what makes him one of the most sought after interviews in baseball. This leads us to this little gem that Tori told the press recently in regard to "Jackie Robinson Day."

For those that don't know, "Jackie Robinson Day" was introduced by MLB five years ago. Clubs playing at home on April 15th would commemorate "Jackie Robinson Day" with special pre-game ceremonies which will feature Jackie Robinson Foundation Scholars and will showcase activities that reflect Robinson's legacy. Clubs that are not playing on April 15th hold "Jackie Robinson Day" celebrations at a later date. Players are even allowed to wear Jackie's jersey number, 42, which has been retired from all clubs.

On a day as special as this for all minorities, one would expect Torii to be all for this move. Well, that's not exactly how it went. This is what Los Angeles Angels outfielder Torii said, to USA Today: "This is supposed to be an honor, and just a handful of guys wearing the number. Now you've got entire teams doing it. I think we're killing the meaning. It should be special wearing Jackie's number, not just because it looks cool."

What upset Hunter, he says now, was this: The Houston Astros had no black players on their team last April, and yet the entire team wore No. 42. "That got it away from, 'OK, we don't have any blacks,' " he said. To Hunter, a roster with no black players did not represent the progress for which Robinson stood, and baseball celebrated. "When you have a team that doesn't have any African American players on the team, and then everybody on the team wears it, yes, it's watered down, because they don't have blacks to represent Jackie Robinson over there," Hunter said. "It's pretty weird. That's just my opinion."

Needless to say Torii has been called a racist and even exhibiting reverse racism for his comments. Personally, I feel his comment is reasonable. Anyone who knows statistics knows that the chances are pretty slim that a team will have zero blacks on it (as the Astros did in April last year) when blacks make up ten percent of the league. This is particularly worrisome because this seems to be the trend with some teams. You can argue that he's mistaken, or that Blacks just don't want to play for Houston, or whatever, but at least realize that the comment is legitimate as a starting point.

And the idea that "there just aren't any qualified Blacks playing MLB" is absolutely silly in just the same way the idea that, "The reason there are almost no women heading Fortune 500 companies is because no qualified women are out there" is silly. Consider the facts. Don't just knee-jerk react and scream at the messenger.