Thread: An All-Star agenda to protest Arizona immigration law

An All-Star agenda to protest Arizona immigration law


Philadelphia Daily News

Published Tuesday, Jun. 14, 2011



PHILADELPHIA -- Just to be clear about this, Rebecca T. Alpert wants you to help manipulate the selection process for the starting lineups for next month's Major League Baseball All-Star Game in Phoenix.

The Temple University associate professor of Religion and Women's Studies is a lifelong baseball fan with an agenda.

Alpert wants baseball fans to stuff the ballot box with votes for Latino players.

Her goal is to have 18 players of Latino descent starting for both the American and National leagues to draw attention to Arizona's Support Our Law Enforcement and Sage Neighborhoods Act, which allows law-enforcement officials to request documentation and legally detain anyone who might look like an illegal alien.

"Just imagine if others jump on this campaign and this gets legs," Alpert said. "If we voted two entire starting lineups of Latino players, wouldn't somebody notice and make the connection to the irony of the game being in Arizona?

"Wouldn't the media have to ask the players questions about it and put the issue back under the spotlight?"

What Alpert is not asking baseball fans to do, however, is compromise their votes. She's not asking them to vote for an undeserving player on the team simply because he is Latino.

She said she doesn't need to.

Alpert, who grew up a Brooklyn Dodgers fan but now cheers for the Phillies, said that by using the known voting logics - popularity, statistics, past performance, career achievement, current play - she can easily come up with 18 Latino starters.

"I really hope people take All-Star voting seriously," said Alpert, whose book, "Out of Left Field: Jews and Black Baseball," chronicles the roles Jewish people played in supporting the Negro Leagues. "Don't just vote for the familiar names.

"I want people to look at the statistics of the Latino players and see that there are a lot of darn good players who deserve All-Star recognition.

"There are a lot of Latin players who are not so famous now who are having darn good years."

Alpert began her initiative by word of mouth and email, simply asking her friends and colleagues to stuff the ballot and encourage others to do the same.

She said she has received messages from people who have blogged about it and posted it on their Facebook pages.

Alpert says she understands the attitude of a lot of fans that sports and politics should not mix. To that she says she would simply point to the Olympics, which is all about politics.

As far as Major League Baseball, she said she actually came up with the "Stuff the Ballot" idea while watching the 2011 Civil Rights Game between the Phillies and Braves on May 15.

"Major League Baseball, more than any other sport, claims to be our national pastime," Alpert said. "The Civil Rights Game, that's not a political statement?

"Baseball is always pointing out what breaking the color line did for our society."

Well, here's a situation where Major League Baseball is holding its showcase event of the summer in a place that legally condones the racial profiling of a significant number of its players.

Alpert said it would have been ideal if Major League Baseball moved the game out of Phoenix a year ago when Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed it into law on April 23, 2010.

Alpert said she believes the law is demeaning to people of Latin American ancestry and she can't understand how the league cannot see the relationship to its own shameful past with the color line.

"Why didn't Major League Baseball just say this place is not hospitable to a third of our players and move it?" she said. "Well, Major League Baseball has to please its conservative fans as much as it wants to please its liberal fans. It kept quiet on the subject.

"I didn't want to call for a boycott because, frankly I like watching the All-Star Game."

Imagine the uproar if a group of Latino players walking back to their hotel rooms during All-Star Week got detained by Arizona police officers?

Frankly, that would be just the type of incident that would turn the spotlight back on this subject, but I'm assuming Arizona officials are smart enough to tell police to ease off enforcement during All-Star Week so as to avoid any potentially embarrassing incident involving a Latino major leaguer or his family.

Alpert knows what she is up against. She knows that there might not be enough fans who actually care enough about the law in Arizona to be motivated to take a stance.

She knows that she will be fighting major league teams who have a well-primed promotion machine to encourage fans to use their votes on hometown players.

"But, heck, you never know," she said.

Rebecca T. Alpert isn't necessarily a crusader. She's just a woman from Brooklyn who loves baseball.

"I'm passionately interested in baseball," she said. "I grew up in Brooklyn and the Jackie Robinson story was a significant moral story of my childhood.

"If Jackie Robinson could make it, the Jews could make it and maybe the world could be a better place.

"Unfortunately a lot of that has fallen by the wayside. It just hasn't worked out the way my childhood dreams expected it to."

She's got 25 Major League Baseball All-Star votes to make a statement about that.

www.sacbee.com

Just goes to show you--passes all the tech courses and flunks common sense 101. Gets an "F" in "love of country", an "A" for" treason" and a B+ for "being a jerk!"

Originally Posted by misterbill

Just goes to show you--passes all the tech courses and flunks common sense 101. Gets an "F" in "love of country", an "A" for" treason" and a B+ for "being a jerk!"

LMAO! Tell me how you really feel misterbill...