Unclenched Fists
In the summer of 1970, the editors of SPORT proclaimed that the “political awakening of the American athlete, we believe, began with the murder of Bobby Kennedy.” Had they asked Roberto Clemente — a man who seemed to feel things more strongly than many of his peers — he would have told them that their belief wasn’t based in actual fact.
Clemente would have told them that what he saw in the clubhouse following Kennedy’s death was not a political awakening but just the opposite: apathy. Clemente ultimately played in the two games on Sunday that were the subject of so much hand-wringing — but he did so reluctantly and uncertainly. Many of his teammates, he said, simply “didn’t care whether they played or not.”
SPORT magazine shouldn’t be singled out here. Its editors were not alone in making sweeping generalizations that linked sports to important national moments and argued that baseball somehow served as a reflecting pool for the country’s woes. One could point to the Mets and their decision against participating in Bat Day and the handful of ballplayers who refused to play on Sunday, June 9, as representing a poignant moment in baseball history. But by the same measure, it should be noted that when the Astros arrived in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention in August 1968 — which was marked by violent clashes between Mayor Richard J. Daley’s police thugs and antiwar…
