There’s a scene from the movie “42” that still builds up anger in me every time I watch it.
The scene shows Jackie Robinson coming to the plate for an at-bat. As he approaches home plate, Philadelphia Phillies manager Ben Chapman, who didn’t believe Blacks should be playing baseball, can be seen antagonizing Robinson by shouting racist epithets at him.
It gets so bad, at one point, that Robinson calls a timeout to gather himself.
When Robinson steps back in, Chapman continues to attack him with vicious words.
Robinson ends up flying out. As he walks toward the dugout, Chapman continues with the racist names and then says, “Look in the mirror. This is a white man’s game. Get that through your thick monkey skull.”
Sadly, some of those same vicious words have apparently been used regularly at a Virginia Beach high school.
What’s worse, those words aren’t being spewed by opposing players, but teammates.
Last week, Kempsville High School’s baseball season ended early after “a lengthy investigation” found that “racism, hate speech and harassment” have been prevalent on the team for multiple years, according to a note principal Melissa George sent to parents in recent weeks.
The note continued by saying, “Working with the Senior Executive Director of High Schools, Dr. Walter Brower, the Chief of Schools, Mr. Matt Delaney, and Coach (John) Penn, we came to the decision that we cannot in good faith play baseball knowing the number of players involved. Please know that this is much broader than the initial allegations brought forth and stems across multiple years.”
I wrote a story when the news first came out. But before writing a column, I wanted to take a couple of days before I responded because I didn’t want to do it in anger, but with a clear mind.
This story is wrong on so many levels.
The first is that it had been “prevalent on the team for multiple years.”
How does this happen?
A week before the story came out, I spoke to a mother whose son was one of the persons who was harassed.
I was hoping that the mother would want to go on record to talk about this incident, but she didn’t want to. I also asked to speak to her son and she told me “he is not interested at this moment in speaking out to the media yet.”
I totally understand, but this is a story that needs to be told.
While she didn’t talk to me, she did voice her opinions with videos on social media.
She said she knew something was wrong with her son for awhile because his demeanor had changed. An honors student, his grades had also dropped. When she and her husband asked their son what was going on, he said he would take care of it.
But everything came to a head recently when he told his mother, “I can’t take it anymore. I’m going to punch someone.”
The same words came out of Robinson’s mouth in “42.”
After he returned to the dugout, he walked into the hallway and smashed a baseball bat to pieces in frustration.
Dodgers owner Branch Rickey went to the hallway to check on Robinson. As he arrived, Robinson told Rickey that the next time someone says something racist to him, he will “smash their teeth in.”
“You can’t do that Jack,” said Rickey.
“I’m just supposed to let this go on?” Robinson said.
“These men have to live with themselves,” says Rickey.
Robinson said, “I have to live with myself, too. Do you know what it’s like having somebody do this to you?”
Rickey answered, “No.”
This Kempsville player and his teammate have had to endure this same harassment for two years.
He kept a notebook of some of the things done to him and the hurtful words that were said at him.
His mother told me about some of the ignorant things that he went through, like being teased during Black History Month. And during the recent eclipse, a teammate acted as though they couldn’t see this young man because of the darkness in the sky.
Ridiculous, right?
I just want those players, and the countless others who think this is funny, to look in the mirror and put yourself in this young man’s shoes.
How would you feel? How would you deal with it?
As one Beach District coach told me last week, “We should be so far from this, but we’re not. We’re still how it was before Jackie. It’s 2024 and still feels like it’s 1944.”
Let’s not be naïve to think that these incidents are just happening at Kempsville either, because they’re not.
I’ve received several phone calls since the incident, and it’s going on all over Hampton Roads.
Maybe this is why so many talented Black baseball players leave to play football and basketball, where there are many more athletes who look like them and they don’t have to deal with this kind of ridicule.
At one point, the mother told her son to quit the team.
He responded, “No. I’m not going to give them that power.”
I can remember playing rec baseball in Syracuse, New York, in the 1970s. I wasn’t just the only Black kid on my team, but in the whole league.
I was never called a racist word, at least not to my face, but there was definitely subtle racism that I saw and felt. I ignored it and instead took my anger out with my performance on the field.
I recently spoke to another parent, whose son was a star player in Hampton Roads and now plays Division I baseball.
“Man, I shielded my son from the racism of baseball,” he told me last week. “But the story doesn’t surprise me.”
Some have asked why didn’t any players tell the coach what was going on. The mother I spoke with said her son didn’t say anything because he didn’t want to be benched. She felt coach Penn, in his first season at Kempsville, didn’t know what was going on.
So, where do we go from here?
Several years ago, our paper had a diversity training session.
I think the same should be done for coaches, athletes and their parents. Yes, parents, because children aren’t born racists, but it’s a learned behavior.
So just like when coaches have parent meetings before a season, have all of them, including the athletes, attend a diversity training session.
My brother, Kevin, runs a business called KMC Empowerment LLC. He does executive coaching and soft skills training under the development business slogan, “Empowering Leaders to Empower Those They Lead.”
He has many different classes that he teaches, including a critical conversation on diversity, equity and inclusion for a cultural perspective, which looks at the organization as a whole.
Another is called critical conversation on diversity, equity and inclusion.
“It’s more conversational, and we talk about actual incidents that happen,” he said.
As we talked, he told me, “We need to begin to have a candid conversation on how our races get together and how our cultures and backgrounds are different,” he said. “When you see those differences, the one thing that we can always find is common ground. And that’s key. Because once you can find something in common, that’s when you can build upon what you’re going to do differently, how to see things from a different lens, how we’re going to grow each other, how are we going to add value to each other.”
Going back to Chapman, the manager who harassed Robinson. He was interviewed in the 1990s before he died. He said, “A man learns about things and mellows as he grows older. I think that maybe I’ve changed a bit. Maybe I went too far in those days.”
He added that the world was changing, too. He talked about how his son coached a football team with kids from all races.
“Look, I’m real proud I’ve raised my son different,” he said. “And he gets along well with them. They like him. That’s a nice thing, don’t you think?”
Let’s hope this situation at Kempsville — and other programs — won’t just be dropped and swept under the rug, but that we can learn from it and grow from it.
Larry Rubama, 757-575-6449, larry.rubama@pilotonline.com
