Set the counter back to zero. An MLB broadcaster said something racist on live television again.
This time — during a mid-afternoon playoff game, no less, when all the eyes in the sports world were on the White Sox and Astros’ ALDS Game 2 — it was MLB Network’s Jim Kaat.
With Chicago’s Cuban infielder Yoan Moncada at the plate, Buck Showalter recalled being the Orioles manager and seeing Moncada for the first time. He made a comment about Moncada having all the physical characteristics of a superstar and asking the Orioles’ front office to go get someone like him. It was a harmless, chuckling anecdote about a manager wishing his team was better.
Then Kaat joined in.
The 82-year-old former pitcher added to Showalter’s story by saying, “Get a 40-acre field full of ‘em.” What he was trying to say was that any manager would want their team’s farm system to be stocked with guys like Moncada. What he did say was racist. The slavery implications of Kaat’s comments were shockingly obvious, and like Bob Brenly and Jack Morris before him, Kaat delivered his racist rhetoric with an alarming amount of comfort.
The flavor of the year in MLB broadcast booths is playful racism disguised as boys-being-boys banter. When it happens for the third time in a single season, though — and this time as part of a national broadcast hand-selected to do these games — it is unquestionably an institutional problem.
For all the talk about the sport appealing to a younger audience and propping up young superstars of color as faces of the league, there are still people like Kaat infecting the game from the inside.
Perhaps Major League Baseball should look at the people representing the future of the game and fill its television booths with people more like them, rather than a man who was born before World War II and played so long ago that his debut came for the Washington Senators.
Kaat gave — rather, read — a statement later in the game apologizing for his comments. He claimed that he was trying to compliment Moncada but instead used a “poor choice of words that resulted in an insensitive, hurtful remark.” Classic mistake.
