I’m not knocking baseball, but I am knocking the men who run the Little Leagues, Midget Leagues, all youth leagues, baseball and football. More emphasis should be put into baseball and less into football. There’s room for all three sports, as well as soccer and tennis.
Just look at what Serena Williams is doing in tennis. Why aren’t there any Black men at least in the Top 10?
And soccer, I take my hat off to Ambassador Sports Pittsburgh and Partners who held one of its Summer Camps at Josh Gibson field in the Hill District in an effort to get more Blacks involved in the number 1 sport in the world, Soccer.
Once again, this is not a complicated sport and Blacks have the athletic ability and intelligence to play this game at a very high level and make tons, and tons of money at it. I would love to see a Summer Soccer League with communities such as the Hill District, Homewood, Manchester, Garfield, East Liberty, Braddock, Duquesne, Homestead, North Side and others with teams in it to get more Blacks involved in this sport.
Back to baseball, the same is true. Little League baseball should last through the summer months of June, July, and August. Little League kids shouldn’t be touching a football until September. The summer should be about Baseball. The fall about Football, and the winter Basketball.
You say what about the spring? Soccer.
Since I’m on sports, I have to mention my colleague Bill Neal’s’ Overtime column. He listed Muhammad Ali as the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time. He was right. But Mike Tyson ahead of Joe Louis? Please? Please? Please? Tyson was a carbon copy of Joe Frazier, which means Louis and George Foreman would have killed him. Could you imagine 5’10” Tyson walking into the 6’ 4” plus Foreman or Louis in their prime? Did you see what George did to Frazier, and Ken Norton, two of the greatest of all time? He hit them so hard he literally lifted them off their feet.
My Top10 are: 1. Muhammad Ali, 2. Joe Louis, 3. George Foreman, 4. Larry Holmes, 5. Jack Johnson, a tie between Tyson and Frazier for 6th, 8. Rocky Marciano, 9. Evander Holyfield and 10. Sonny Liston. Liston probably would have killed Holyfield, Marciano, and Tyson but their reigns were more impressive. I agree with Bill, there are no quality heavyweights anymore. Maybe boxing is on its way out?
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Pittsburgh Police Officer Alphonso Sloan’s sketches featuring his anti-police brutality and abuse illustrates why there is such a great need for more Blacks on the police force from the community and less need for suburban residents coming in to keep what they see as the animals under control.
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I’m still trying to understand the new National NAACP President Cornell William Brooks. Walking from Selma to D.C., what is it suppose to accomplish?
“We are marching because we believe our lives, our votes, our jobs and our schools matter,” he said.
He said the NAACP and the Black community is fighting for their lives. That the NAACP is not content to stand on its past but must be about the now, and the future.
He called the 860-mile two-month march through five states “America’s Journey for Justice.”
I hope he has put together a program to effectively fight for these issues after the march and speeches are over. We appear to be in a mold now for marches and speeches but no active program to confront and deal with these problems.
Remember, if you watched the movie “Selma,” and every Black and White person in this country should have watched it. If you haven’t it’s available for rent or purchase where ever videos are sold or rented. But Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., always had a purpose for his marches. The Selma march was about Voting Rights. So the NAACP needs to focus nationally and locally on what they are demanding and go after that be it jobs, education, health care, voting or whatever. A lot of that effort needs to be directed at us, not just the White establishments. We don’t vote. We are killing each other on the streets. We aren’t supporting Black businesses.
No matter who’s in office, Republicans or Democrats, Blacks are going to have to fight to make sure we aren’t forgotten. A backlash started when President Obama took office and there will be a bigger one when he leaves. So we had better realize that we have a long way to go in our equality fight, and marches and speeches are only the beginning, not the ending or the overall solution.
(Ulish Carter is the managing editor of the New Pittsburgh Courier.)
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