Curtis: Remembering baseball’s right-wing rotation
From Bryan Curtis at The Ringer on October 31, 2017, with mention of SABR member Barry Bloom:
Baseball has always offered a safe space for a conservative athlete, the first baseman who squints and spits tobacco into a cup as he talks about big government. But in July 1984, it was still something of a shock to hear three pitchers stand in a major league clubhouse and talk about America’s slide toward communism.
“Capitalist nations will crumble and die from the inside — not the outside,” one of the pitchers said.
“Communism is not the end in itself,” another pitcher said. “It’s only a way to socialize the entire world, so special-interest groups will be the master. And we? We will be the slaves. If, that is, we even live.”
A third pitcher nodded at these ideas and said: “Before, I was just one of those people ignorant of what really goes on.”
The pitchers were Eric Show, Mark Thurmond, and Dave Dravecky of the San Diego Padres. As Los Angeles Times reporter Mike Granberry later noted, they comprised three-fifths of the Padres’ starting rotation.
Read the full article here: https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2017/10/31/16578390/padres-john-birch-society-mlb-alt-right
Originally published: October 31, 2017. Last Updated: October 31, 2017.