Can the old baseball movies still pass muster?

Any room for BLM pride?

Old baseball movies exude a charm of their own, don't they? They entrance us in an irresistible way. We feel entranced like when observing Norman Rockwell magazine covers. I apologize but when I say "we" I'm probably practicing some unintended exclusion. Doesn't the fact jump out at you from such movies that it is a segregated world?
So, while such movies have the charm element, they are surreal in how they present a world of homogeneous human beings. As if no one should notice or care! A confession for this horrible sin was at the end of the '90s HBO documentary "When It Was a Game." The narrator expresses shock at how in his own childhood, he didn't particularly notice or care about baseball's exclusion.
The old baseball movies scream "segregation" yet we seem not to feel alarm about this. Such movies appear not to be banned or blackballed. Legally they cannot be banned but forces within the commercial world could be applied. A concerted push has happened with BLM and the George Floyd incident, to not merely shrug about such offenses.
 
Circling of the wagons maybe?
We're seeing a creeping defensiveness from entertainment as it tries to keep dated artistic works from being killed off. We're seeing disclaimers now about offensive qualities, as if there's a pleading to see these things in a historical context. You may have seen news items about this being done with "Gone With The Wind." Of course it's not going to end there.
So more recently we've heard about "Blazing Saddles," of all things, getting the treatment. It's ironic because the "brains" behind that movie were the opposite of racist. They just tried making their points with a broad parody of racism. Of course, such indirect techniques as parody and irony fly over the heads of many people. Remember the line "the sheriff is near" from Blazing Saddles? Well, "near" was not the word spoken - a ringing bell caused confusion. My generation laughed uproariously.
We laughed not because we were racist but because we saw racism as archaic and indefensible. We were mocking it.
Hollywood still mines the old material to be sure. I guess it's called "residuals." The archives are stuffed with entertainment reflecting all tastes over a wide and disparate spectrum of our history. Will the old westerns with the unsympathetic and stereotypical presentation of Native Americans be blackballed? Until recently most of this stuff could be defended the way we once defended cigarette smoking in public. "Hey, it happens."
Hollywood people probably started losing sleep a while back about how far the scythe might go. You might call it a political correctness scythe. Political correctness has many virtuous aspects, make no mistake about it. We just wonder how far the scythe will go for ferreting out unfair portrayals.
Old baseball movies present a genuine problem. Robert Redford made a retro baseball movie called "The Natural," remember? It was set in the heart of segregated baseball days. Hey, were we supposed to not notice? Guys my age, honestly, probably have a hard time simply noticing. We realized in our boyhood that integration was a good thing. But we were not going to blot out baseball's inarguably rich history from before Jackie Robinson. We could not shut out that history.

We reveled in various "light" baseball movies like "The Kid From Left Field," "Angels in the Outfield" and "It Happens Every Spring." These movies were made around 1950, when technically the color line had been broken, but I'll wager there were no African-Americans in them. Baseball's progress with integration was halting and hard to understand even for my generation. Kids my age could not draw a line and blot out all the baseball that preceded it. At present it seems the prevailing impulse is to, in fact, blot out the sordid history. That would mean pushing aside the legendary names like Babe Ruth. While some of those guys were surely racist, I'm sure many were not.
 
Enlightenment vs. history
So do we throw out the baby with the bathwater, as it were? Tough question. If you doubt the present push, consider what happened in Minnesota where the statue of Calvin Griffith has recently been spirited away. Now, Griffith was without doubt an "Archie Bunker" type. I think that nails it. He "stepped in it" when appearing before a Lions Club in outstate Minnesota once. Were his comments cause for crucifying him, excising him from Minnesota sports and business history? The current attitude would tilt in that direction.
People my age realize this is a losing battle, but we saw so many of our own beloved parents be less than totally enlightened on cultural issues. Many of them lived in a white bread world and we didn't condemn them for that. Tom Brokaw's famous book "The Greatest Generation" had a chapter about this. I believe it was called "Shame."
This trend setting in with "Gone With the Wind" and "Blazing Saddles" - well, how far is it going to go? There is precedent for thinking it could go a very long way. It could wipe out reams of old entertainment. For the better? Many would argue "yes." I would implore people to cut some slack and remember that entertainment cannot resist reflecting the norms from when it was produced. "Three Stooges" shorts had black people like kitchen servants scaring easily, with eyes bugged out, running off etc., and my father informed me that was an old stereotype.
Will we excise all such entertainment? Well, we're talking about the potential "slippery slope," aren't we? How would I like it if I were in an ethnic group portrayed in an insulting way by old Hollywood? Well, I guess I wouldn't like it at all.
 
There can be a gray area
We can beg for people to appreciate satire like "Blazing Saddles." But, you'd be surprised how many people have a hard time grasping satire. Or irony. The movie "Texas Across the River" with Dean Martin ran on network TV periodically when I was a kid. It was a comedy that poked fun at all categories of characters in the standard western. Well, that included Indians. Sometimes you have to rely on your intuition to sense if a movie is mean-spirited or not. My intuition had no problem with "Texas Across the River," or with Johnny Carson's "Aunt Blabby" character which some saw as an affront to old people.
Well, I am now old. I'm 65. And I can still laugh at "dear sweet lovable. . .OLD Aunt Blabby." Ed McMahon spoke the line. Remember how she had a "thing" for Ed? Carson of course played the character.
When you watched the movie "Pride of the Yankees" about Lou Gehrig, remember that in those baseball times, blacks "need not apply" for any roles in baseball. When Hollywood glorified baseball, it was a tip of the hat to white culture 100 percent. I could take seriously any push to excise such movies. That would include "It Happened in Flatbush," a delightful romantic comedy that I could celebrate were it not for the Neanderthal segregation.
We cannot overlook it anymore.
We should all share the consternation expressed by the narrator of "When It Was a Game" at the ending. "I didn't notice, I didn't object." The time for objecting is now.
Jim Bouton in "Ball Four" wrote about how Satchel Paige was confused about a new exhibit at the Hall of Fame "honoring" the Negro Leagues. Paige said he didn't know what it was all about. Bouton enlightened, saying that black stars like Paige were being ushered to "the rear of the place by the kitchen," the way restaurants of the South used to treat their black patrons.
Paige gave us a sense of humor that helps disarm us some. He once said "age is a case of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it don't matter."

Addendum: Some critics might read this post and say I'm coming at the whole subject from an "entitled" perspective. Maybe I'm too stubborn to admit it. I cannot challenge such criticism.
 
Podcast extra:
Please visit my "Morris Mojo" podcast where I talk about the movies "Safe at Home" and "Whistling in Brooklyn." You may click on permalink:
https://anchor.fm/brian-williams596/episodes/Baseball-movies-ei6nrp
 
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com