Everybody likes a show nobody examines carefully

Commissioner likes Old England, why not Americas

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aundiced  U.S. Major League Baseball Commissioner eyes brand-selling bonanzas in Old soccer-cricket England and Europe instead of staging big-show annuals in the Americas where baseball has long and established traditions.

 

This weekend MLB took a loss staging a display in England because Commissioner (U.S. lawyer) Robert D. Manfred Jr. is “thrilled” with London and wants “sustained (baseball) play in Europe.” The commissioner aired his position with the Boston Herald and ESPN sportscasters Chris Singleton and Jon Sciambi.

I

n the entrenched capitalist tradition, the baseball commissioner is uninterested in promoting the game of baseball or the joy of playing the game. His game is “branding”: selling brand and selling varieties of “stuff.” His concern is not even with MLB athletes who routinely are bought, sold, and discarded, chewed up and spit out, as so much meat on a garbage heap.

What is baffling (or is it?) is that a major organization composed of one third Latin Americans would avoid staging annual-game series in Latin America, say, Venezuela or Cuba.

Of course, it is not baffling at all. The rule is tribal politics and dyed-in-the-wool selfishness of U.S. capitalists all the time everywhere: stampede, impede and bleed the masses (or “other”) while excessively enriching and promoting the wastefulness of the elite or the few.

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ecently, a young man told me he learned from one of his U.S. textbooks that Americans outsource and off shore labor to China because, in Americans’ character of generosity and caring for the “poor” Chinese, they (Americans) promote sweatshop labor and dangerous work conditions at low wages to help the Chinese live better lives making cheap (planned obsolescent) products for U.S. consumers.

 

He hadn’t the critical thinking ability to sense the inherent contradiction in this and further contradicted by the in-your-face U.S. media, politicians and political parties’ daily anti-China drumbeat.

The young man was taken aback when I informed him that just as capitalism is never charity, capitalists are never genuinely generous.

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rom sports to domestic affairs to foreign relations — at every level and dimension—U.S. capitalists bleed the masses to fund the excesses of a few. And, sadly, many among the masses want to get in on the swindle.

 

The baseball commissioner represents the North American (and no doubt European) offhanded, flippant disregard, disrespect and dismissal of the great masses (the other), their inherent value, their talents, potential, and offerings to world society.

Sources

MLB’s  Many Americas: Latin American players in Major League baseball: 29.8 percent of total 868 player-league (latest report April 2017)

• Federico Anzil’s “Chart of the Week: The Rise of Latinos in Major League Baseball”: in 2017, 27.4 percent of MLB players were Latinos”
• “Five Latin American countries … providing a large number of MLB players: •Dominican Republic •Venezuela •Cuba •Puerto Rico •Mexico
• Roberto González Echevarría’s “Latin Americans in Major League Baseball Through the First Years of the 21st Century … At the start of the 2000 season: from Dominican Republic: 71 major league players; Puerto Rico 33; Venezuela 31; Mexico 14; Cuba 9; Panama 8; Colombia 2; Nicaragua 1. 
• Also in June 29, 2019 news: Trump continues to attack Latin America; Major League Baseball players compete in England

https://www.bbc.com/sport/av/48814290

https://www.rt.com/news/462988-trump-venezuela-regime-time/

https://visme.co/blog/mlb-demographics/

Boston Herald “MLB commissioner Rob Manfred wants ‘sustained play in Europe’

Jason Mastrodonato June 29, 2019 https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/06/29/mlb-commissioner-rob-manfred-wants-sustained-play-in-europe-hopes-to-talk-to-david-price/

U.S. lawyer and business executive, Robert D. Manfred Jr., “is the tenth and current Commissioner of Baseball.” He has been a full-time employee with MLB since 1998, when he was “Executive Vice President of Economics and League Affairs. In 2002, he “negotiated MLB’s first drug testing agreement with the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA); and in 2002, 2006 and 2011, “represented MLB in negotiations with the MLBPA when forming new collective bargaining agreements.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Manfred

ESPN/AP June 30, 2019 https://www.espn.co.uk/mlb/recap?gameId=401075985 “Tradition: Comeback lifts Yanks to London sweep of Red Sox” … LONDON, England: “Britain loves tradition, and the

New York Yankees wrapped up Major League Baseball’s first trip to Europe with one of their sport’s customs: a late-inning pinstriped comeback.”

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