This isn't exactly "in the news" per se, but in MY news: Last week, I had two childhood dreams come true: I threw the first pitch at a Baltimore Orioles game and I saw Beyoncé in concert for the first time. Both things may seem very separate from each other, but together they reaffirmed my feelings about my place here in the United States.
If you were a Black Orioles player in the ‘90s, my parents probably cornered you to get their daughter an autograph. (My apologies to Harold Baines, Eddie Murray and Eric Davis in particular). And as I stood in front of the pitcher’s mound, preparing to throw the obligatory 60 feet towards home plate, I thought of my late grandparents who would sit with me on their front porch after dinner, listening to the O’s games on the radio. I thought of Mamie “Peanut” Johnson, the first and only woman to be a pitcher in the Negro Leagues, and the iconic image of her leaping in the air to catch a ball. I’d walk past it every week in the public library where I’d grade student papers for the college film classes I taught at the time. And I thought of a speech from Take Me Out, a play about a Black baseball player who comes out as gay to his team and the press. A character says, “Baseball is a perfect metaphor for hope in a democratic society… everyone is given the same chance.”
Peyton Stoike/Baltimore Orioles
It’s a romantic thought to have in the rain on a baseball field, even if the stats of it aren’t necessarily true.
Right now, the percentage of African-American baseball players in the major leagues rests at 6.2% compared to its 1977 peak of 27%. Some say it’s lack of cultivation, while others believe this is because there’s a longer investment to get into the major leagues with baseball than there is with basketball and football, thus less interest. Players past and present have shared their complicated experiences with the sport, and Major League Baseball is now trying in earnest to cultivate Black and Latino players. Should be noted that the 6.2% number is an improvement from last year’s 6%.
But this led me to an unexpected moment last Thursday night in New Jersey. I got to watch Beyoncé cement her legacy for three hours. (I cried for at least the first 20 minutes.) In the first section of her concert, Beyoncé performs her cover of the Beatles’s “Blackbird.” It’s a song written by Paul McCartney, who’s described it as “a song from me to a Black woman, experiencing [Civil Rights injustices] in the States: ‘Let me encourage you to keep trying, to keep your faith, there is hope.’” In the middle of “Blackbird,” Beyoncé weaves in Jimi Hendrix’s version of “the Star-Spangled Banner,” which she sings over. The moment is both heartfelt and disconcerting, whether it's the complicated feelings towards the National Anthem or the sense of urgency from Hendrix’s guitar.
My feelings towards “The Star-Spangled Banner” begin and end in Camden Yards at Oriole Park. At the beginning of “O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave,” Orioles fans pump their fist in the air and shout “Oh!” It’s a compulsion that I was fully prepared to do during “Blackbird,” only for the words to flash behind her, “Never ask permission for something that already belongs to you.”
Maybe I’m more Black and Baltimorean than American. But all of it is mine.
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ON THE POD
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If you’ve got Criterion Channel, it’s currently streaming the rarely available online 1995 Kathryn Bigelow film Strange Days. It looks toward a dystopian New Years Eve of 1999. The film was inspired in part by Los Angeles’s response to the ‘92 Rodney King verdict. But, if you’ve got some time and want to watch a film that has strong feelings about virtual reality, trip-hop music and the LAPD, have at it. What are you watching these days? Let us know at CodeSwitch@npr.org.
Written by B.A. Parker and editedby Dalia Mortada
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