Hacking At Slop

Some people are motivated to become journalists by a desire to tell the truth and expose injustice. My motivation was baser. I was angry.

I used to burst with righteous indignation about insults perceived and real against Hispanics in the US. Now, less so.

Maybe it is a question of age. Maybe I have become complacent or simply inured to the constant drumbeat of discrimination. Every now and then, though, I am roused from my torpor.

"Brain-dead Caribbean hitters hacking at slop nightly" is how Larry Krueger described the performance of the San Francisco Giants during a program on a local radio station.

The comment was made "in the heat of describing his disappointment with the Giant's season" according to a press release issued by the KNBR station manager.

Felipe Alou, the Dominican-born Giant's manager, responded on ESPN by calling Krueger a "messenger of Satan", which was the equivalent of whacking Krueger over the head with a baseball bat when a punch in the nose would have sufficed.

Alou explained his anger, in part, by reminding ESPN's viewers that in the 1950's sportswriters would deliberately make fun, in print, of the limited English of Latin ballplayers. I thought it might be worth sharing a particularly egregious example.

In July, 1955, The Saturday Evening Post featured a profile of the late and truly great Beto Avila under the headline "Sensation from South of the Border." Avila was quoted as saying, "Bool fighters and bools not as good as they used to be. Now, Mexican boys play bazeball instead of playing bool fighter in streets."