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MLB’S Umpire Background Check |
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MLB’S Umpire Background Check Techniques Strange, Divisive
Washington, D.C., January 29, 2008 – This month, we celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who sought to bridge our country’s profound racial divisions and bring our country together in meaningful and enduring ways. Dr. King left us this lesson among others – there are wicked paths that we have followed before that all should fear walking again. We forget the past at our peril, for we are then destined to repeat prior mistakes.
In the aftermath of last year’s insider-gambling scandal involving NBA referee Tim Donaghy, Commissioner Bud Selig and Major League Baseball commenced background investigations of its veteran umpires. One of the league’s security officials arrived in Northern Kentucky recently to interview the neighbors of several umpires. These neighbors were strangers to the MLB official and not necessarily close acquaintances of the umpires. Among the standard questions to the neighbors was this errant bombshell – do you know if the umpire is a member of the Ku Klux Klan?
Setting aside the First Amendment rights to freedom of association and freedom of speech, liberties so dearly defended by Dr. King, we must wonder why, some 50 years after Rosa Parks and the march on Selma, Alabama, we are still talking about organizations and symbols of hatred and discrimination that potentially divide us.
“One has to ask, what does the KKK have to do with being a major league umpire?” said Lamell McMorris, spokesman for the World Umpires Association. “From a league that deeply cherishes the importance of history and tradition, the fact that these questions are being asked in Kentucky – a border state during the American Civil War and a place not regarded as a hotbed of racial discord – is sadly ironic and deeply troubling.”
As Dr. King would surely advise us today, walk the other path, the one where people are judged individually on effort and ability rather than collectively based on surface characteristics.
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