Arizona Diamondbacks Tony La Russa on Adam Jones and Colin Kaepernick
Arizona Diamondbacks Chief Baseball Officer Tony La Russa went on The Dan Le Batard Show and discussed the recent comments and actions of Adam Jones and Colin Kaepernick
While appearing on The Dan La Batard Show on ESPN Radio on Wednesday, Arizona Diamondbacks Chief Baseball Officer Tony La Russa voiced his opinion on recent words and actions of two African American professional athletes, Adam Jones and Colin Kaepernick. As usual, La Russa had something to say. He’s never been shy about voicing his opinion, even when it means going into the broadcast booth during a game to argue with the opposing team’s announcer, as he did earlier this year.
Baltimore Orioles outfielder Adam Jones was asked recently why no MLB players have publicly protested racial injustice the way athletes in other sports have done. These protests began with Colin Kaepernick in the NFL and have since spread to athletes in other sports. Jones responded by saying, “We already have two strikes against us already, so you might as well not kick yourself out of the game. In football, you can’t kick them out. You need those players. In baseball, they don’t need us. Baseball is a white man’s sport.”
Jones later expanded on his original interview when he pointed out he was just quoting the numbers. “At the end of the day, I’m one of the most known black players in baseball. There are 58 or 59 of us. Baseball is numbers. It’s eight percent black. I didn’t make that up. In football and basketball the numbers are in the 60s and 70s. These aren’t made up numbers. It just is what it is. I’m part of the eight percent.”
He added, “Here is my biggest thing with it. Society doesn’t mind us helping out the hood and the inner cities, but they have a problem when we speak about the hood and the inner cities. I don’t understand that part.”
La Russa responded by saying Jones was off base when he said baseball is a white man’s sport. “When he says it’s a white, like elitist kind of sport, I mean how much wronger can he be? We have tried so hard, the MLB, to expand the black athletes’ opportunity. We want the black athletes to pick not basketball or football, but want them to play baseball—they should play baseball. And we’re working to make that happen in the inner cities. We have a lot of Latin players, we have players from the Pacific Rim.”
It’s interesting to note that Jones never said that baseball was “a white, elitist kind of sport.” That’s how La Russ interpreted what Jones said. Jones stated a fact: baseball is eight percent black. To that point, there’s no denying that the percentage of African-American players in MLB has dropped since its peak in the early 1980s.
Next: Baseball Demographics Over the Years