Baseball Analyst Doug Glanville joined Wilson & Parcell to discuss the boycott’s in the MLB. He gave his thoughts on the impact, the boycotts from players like Mookie Betts and others can have on baseball.
"It's awareness just to get that started and I think they're trying to shift from the statements of support to trying to figure out what actions to take. Sometimes they don't know exactly where those changes need to be made directly, they just know the status quo won't work. Through that, they express their experiences which connect you to these players who we admire, love, and root for and we humanize that to show that this really matters.
Where is the line of raising awareness of social issues but not turning people off on the product?"
"A lot of that is in education. You have to communicate and part of it is business interests and they're objectives and sometimes it's pushing those lines to realign them and reset them to a different sensibility, and yes sometimes you might take beatings sometimes but are those beatings going to be permanent from the standpoint of your balance sheet? But you also have to weigh ringing the cash register for black players who are afraid of making it home you have to ask if that is a viable business at the same time.
So I understand if you're a fan of something and this wants you want to see and there is this desire to not tune into these things, but black players don't have that luxury. They can't compartmentalize their life and say oh yeah, I just want to be a ballplayer and that's it. They'd like to, but they're not afforded that opportunity. And it's not just law enforcement challenging it as I could give you stories from shoveling yards, to trying to buy a house, to trying to get a cab in Chicago so this is daily existence. When you have those experiences and you don't have this luxury to say hey I'm just a ballplayer just like a person who just wants to catch a ballgame, there's a collision there. Were trying to sort it out that preserves the sport, but also pushes our country forward in a way to see humanity as the common thread to all of this.
It should be unacceptable to humanity, especially in a sports world where everyone cares about fairness, rules being applied equally across the board, and caring about teammates no matter where they came from in this world. I think we need to look to sports as that example as opposed to pushback against it."