In case you missed it in the USA Today and on HardballTalk this morning, Torii Hunter said something monumentally stupid yesterday.  Quoth Torii:

"As African-American players, we have a theory that baseball can go get an imitator and pass them off as us," Hunter says. "It's like they had to get some kind of dark faces, so they go to the Dominican or Venezuela because you can get them cheaper. It's like, 'Why should I get this kid from the South Side of Chicago and have Scott Boras represent him and pay him $5 million when you can get a Dominican guy for a bag of chips?'

"I'm telling you, it's sad."

Yuck. 

Despite his stellar reputation around the league, Hunter has an extensive history of rubbing teammates the wrong way and putting his foot in his mouth.  Despite his own injury history, he has been quick to jump on other players who have had to sit out and question their tolerance for pain, including The Baseball Jesus, Joe Mauer.  He instigated a fight with Justin Morneau over similar comments, but missed with his punch and hit Nick Punto.  And he openly insulted Minnesota fans on his way out of town as he signed a big contract with the Angels.  Now, Torii's penchant for letting his mouth run ahead of his brain is catching up with him again.

From a factual standpoint, what Torii is saying is wrong.  While race is a subjective concept created to artificially differentiate groups of people for the purpose of categorizing and subjugating them.  One of my son's favorite stories is Dr. Seuss's The Sneeches, in which sneeches with stars on their bellies discriminate against sneeches with no stars.  And once the issue of race is muddled by Sylvester McMonkey McBean's star-off and star-on machines, the sneeches are forced to confront the artificiality of their criteria for being members of a privileged caste.  Alas, despite the election of Barack Obama and the diversification of Major League Baseball, we are not living in Dr. Seuss's post-race beach of sneeches.  And so Hunter uses another artificial distinction to claim that Latino players aren't "Black." 

But if Latino players, many of whom descend from African slaves brought over by British and Spanish colonizers to work on sugar cane and tobacco plantations, don't count as "black," frankly, Torii shouldn't get to be either.  Now, we can say that these players are not African-American, but they are black, and to deny them authenticity based on their birthplace is exactly the same kind of justification used to enslave "blacks" in the first place.  "Look how different and backwards they and their culture are.  They are not like us; we are better than they are."  It is dehumanizing and insulting.

In a certain light, it's easy to see why Hunter may want to differentiate himself and his fellow African-Americans from their Latino teammates (though that doesn't make the instinct any less repulsive).  Matt McCarthy's Odd Man Out (which I am now reading) has a lot of flaws, many of which have been extensively documented.  To call McCarthy ignorant of baseball history is to insult the ignorant (not that, by definition, the ignorant would know they were being insulted).  And his apparent casualness with the truth and willingness to throw teammates, many of whom never amounted to anything in the minors, under the bus and mock their lack of education says a lot about McCarthy's personal integrity.  But McCarthy is right about one thing:  there is a gulf that exists between Latino and American players in many baseball clubhouses.  The gulf starts early in the minor leagues, as players from Latin America tend to be younger than their American teammates, and have not yet learned enough English to converse.  Plus there is a shared expatriate bond, as these players miss their homes and families and are befuddled by a new country.  Naturally, these players tend to congregate.

Before I became The Common Man, before I was a father, I spent two summers as the clubhouse manager for a team in the New York-Penn League.  In our clubhouse, we had what American players called "Dominican Alley," where Latino players would congregate.  Ours was just inside the clubhouse door, near the table where I would lay out the pre-game and post-game spreads.  People entering the clubhouse would be confronted immediately by a talkative group of 5-8 semi-clothed guys speaking in Spanish.  Undoubtedly feeling isolated and ostricized, some of these players would (in my opinion) overcompensate by being especially loud and gregarious, to their fellow Latinos and to the American-born players.  One pitcher, a six-foot, seven-inch, 240 lbs. giant from the Dominican Republic would enter every morning and bellow "HELLOWWWWWWW BEEETCHES!!!" to announce himself (of course, he was released a couple seasons later for taking a bat to the knees of a teammate).  Minor league clubhouses are also generally pretty small, and busy places, so a large clump of players tends to stand out.

In such an environment, it's easy to see how American-born players might not have sympathy for the young kids who are fighting with them for playing time and instructional attention.  It's easy to see how the gulf is perpetuated and how players may want to differentiate themselves from what they perceive to be a loud, insular, and arrogant group of kids.  Call it "Get Off My Lawn" Syndrome.

As a side note, I have no idea whether or how this gulf manifests itself at the higher levels of the minors.  As they get older, obviously, most of the young prospects mature significantly; and the more exposure they have to English, the better they get at picking it up.  Perhaps, by the time they get to the Majors, many of these barriers are lessened.  However, it's likely the first impressions remain strong in many minds.

It seems to me that the first step in addressing this divide is to provide better instruction and preparation in the Latin American baseball academies, though I know a great deal of instruction already goes on.  Baseball teams will not stop signing such young, talented players, but teams can be encouraged to prepare these players better for what they will expect.  Moreover, teams should also work to prepare their American players for what to expect in the minor league clubhouse.  Players who have not benefited from exposure to other cultures might benefit significantly from getting a head's up about what to expect.  Teams might also consider sending young American players to their academies more often as instructors and ambassadors, so they can get a sense of where their teammates come from and a sense of some of the adjustment problems these players are likely to face.  Finally, teams need to work harder to encourage their players, of all backgrounds, to be bilingual.  In both of the seasons I worked for my minor league club, there was an unofficial "interpreter," usually a Latino player from the United States, who would facilitate interactions between American coaches and players and players whose English was especially poor.  An additional effort to promote cross-clubhouse understanding (in the most literal sense) would do a great deal to minimize the divide and allow players the opportunity to interact more often outside the ballpark.  And one would hope that increased exposure to their Latin teammates would make Torii and other African-American athletes less inclined to distance themselves so crassly from their teammates.

Mike blogs as The Common Man three days a week.  You can also follow him on Twitter.