It seems like every few weeks during the baseball season, you have people in the media or around baseball, mostly white men, making gross generalizations around Latinos in the sport. It has become commonplace to undermine their strong presence in the game as well as their accomplishments.
Well, add Fox Sports’ Doug Gottlieb to that list after he went on a bigoted screed about Adrian Beltre that wasn’t so much a dog-whistle as it was a foghorn.
Lets break down this sack of heaping trash of hot-takery for a second:
Gottlieb starts out by talking about how the Texas Rangers had a history of having players on their team (Alex Rodriguez, Jose Canseco, Rafael Palmeiro) who either were suspected of using PED’s or tested positive for it. The only problem here is that Beltre was never on the team with them. So is the assumption he’s making that the Rangers organization continues to be complicit in hiding PED use? Not really sure where he was going with that.
He then justifies making the unsubstantiated assumption, considering there have been no rumors or positive drug tests, that Beltre could have been/is still using PED’s. The reasons he provided were as followed: He has sustained success throughout his career even into his late 30’s, and he’s Dominican. Seems pretty flimsy, huh?
This is blatantly a blanketed statement that is recklessly based on conjecture and where Beltre was born.
Yes, there is a problem when it comes to some Dominican baseball players, especially with some of the younger ones, and P.E.D.’s.
Jeff Passan on Twitter
@GottliebShow He is right about the D.R. and PEDs. A disproportionate number of those from Latin American countries, particularly the D.R, get suspended.
Jeff Passan on Twitter
@GottliebShow There is a PED problem in the D.R. Trainers hungry for big signing bonuses provide teenagers with illicit drugs. It’s despicable. Subhuman.
Yahoo Sports’ Jeff Passan points that out, but also chastises Gottlieb for what he categorizes as the “idea of the ethnic bogeyman.”
Jeff Passan on Twitter
@GottliebShow Where @GottliebShow makes the mistake is where so many others have. I thought we were past the idea of the ethnic bogeyman. I guess not.
What Passan is saying is that grouping all Dominican baseball players and labeling them as one thing — in this case cheaters — is the prime example of a stereotype. If one were to use Gottlieb’s reasoning, you could say that since the majority of white collar crimes are committed by white males, then Doug probably committed a white collar crime of some sorts at some point.
See that wouldn’t be fair to him. Oh wait, you’re telling me Gottlieb committed credit card fraud while he was going to school at Notre Dame? Okay, maybe that isn’t the best comparison.
But this is part of a larger trend.
This isn’t the first time someone in the media made these blanketed, bigoted statements about Dominicans and Latinos in general. Here is noted gasbag Colin Cowherd saying baseball is not a super complex game because a “third of the sport is from the Dominican Republic.”
…YEAH.
Philadelphia Phillies great Mike Schmidt had some coded words about why Phillies centerfield Odubel Herrera couldn’t be a centerpiece and a leader for the team.
My honest answer to that would be no because of a couple of things. First of all, its a language barrier. Because of that, I think he cant be a guy that would sort of sit in a circle with four, five American players and talk about the game. Or try and learn about the game or discuss the inner workings of the game. Or come over to a guy and say, Man, you gotta run that ball out. Just cant bebecause of the language barrierthat kind of a player.
…YEAH.
Then there’s Goose Gossage saying Jose Bautista was “embarrassing to all the Latin players, whoever played before him,” because he liked…celebrating home runs?
But that’s where we are in these discussions when it comes to Latino players. It’s either complaining about how they act, not liking how they celebrate with flair and personality in a game that so desperately needs it, or diminishing any accomplishments they’ve achieved.
All of these stereotypes are tired and weak and they just look like haters as the sport increasingly grows with Latino talent. For Gottlieb, he can go the “I’m not a journalist” route all he wants, but this assumption based solely on his birthplace and his success is just another intellectually lazy, bigoted hot take.
