Is it possible that the 1976 American League batting champion was determined by a demonstrably racist act?
The event was not buried completely in the media. I remember consuming the news reports and feeling rather certain there was racist intent. Our Minnesota Twins were involved. We were on the road playing the Royals in a season-ending three-game series. Steve Brye was a fair-to-middling outfielder for the Twins. He was white. McRae was a quite fine hitter with the Kansas City Royals. He was black. The Royals were created in 1969 and by 1976, they were done paying dues in the expansion process. They were a guaranteed-not-to-tarnish team.
As for our Twins, fans were coming to realize that Calvin Griffith's days as owner were limited - the Griffith family were "church mice," according to Bowie Kuhn's description, in the new world of baseball where money amounts were escalating. In order to dismiss the racist motives of the incident in question, you might have to theorize that the Twins were simply incompetent. An irreverent or frustrated fan might be inclined to think that way. The event was too serious to be dismissed that way.
It happened in the pre-analytics days when we all focused so much on batting average. Fans were not yet bombarded by the exotic stat categories - the alphabet soup as it were - that have become common. It was a big deal who would win the A.L. batting title of 1976. The league's best hitters were at Royals Stadium that day. Our Rod Carew was in his prime. But he was slightly behind the Royals' prime hitters: McRae and George Brett. ESPN of today would be playing up the game and its batting title ramifications. It was the last game of the '76 campaign.
Everything falls apart but why?
Brett hit what looked like a routine fly ball to the outfield. Brye should have been in position to catch it routinely. However, Brye was playing unusually deep. He broke in the wrong direction. By the time he got oriented properly, it was too late and the ball dropped about ten feet away. When the fielder doesn't touch the ball, it is counted as a hit. It is not an error just because the fielder was disoriented or had his head up his butt or whatever.
Not only did the ball land away from Brye, it bounced over his head to the left field wall. Not only had Brett hit safely, he got all the way around the bases for an inside-the-park home run. The essential fact was that it was a hit: a hit that resulted in Brett winning the then-supremely coveted batting title. Brett finished the day three-for-four which pushed his average to .333. McRae came to bat and grounded out. The suspense was over in terms of how the batting title would be bestowed: it belonged to Brett.
The suspense was just setting in, in terms of assessing what was in Brye's head, or the head of manager Gene Mauch who could have helped orchestrate the episode with positioning.
Muted coverage, hardly provocative
Yes there was discussion, enough for yours truly and other attentive fans to become aware of the possibly odious overtones. It was not the kind of tempest you'd see today.
The Twins would never plead guilty to the untoward explanation, naturally, but neither would Ron DeSantis in Florida say he meant "monkey things up" in an untoward way. It isn't hard to perceive the truth. My senses have always been on the side of the racist interpretation, the Twins' possible incompetence put aside.
Things were not very subtle here: McRae gave obscene gestures toward the Twins' bench. A distressed Mauch bounded out of the dugout. McRae had to be restrained from pushing matters further. McRae immediately claimed post-game that the Twins had conspired to give Brett the title. So in his view, if racism was being exercised it wasn't just Brye as an individual.
Mauch denied this but seemed almost too much in a huff, as if pushed on the defensive. Guilty people can behave like this - they "doth protest too much," and in Mauch's case he said the accusations were "the worst thing that's happened to me in 35 years of baseball." Those 35 years included the biggest choke in baseball history, when Mauch managed the 1964 Philadelphia Phillies.
Our Rod Carew finished the season with a sterling .331 average.
Media did not spread sunlight
The Sporting News was "baseball's Bible" back then. How quaint. Exercising its cautious gatekeeper function, this "Bible" wasn't going to toss fuel on the fire. The restraint was extraordinary. Not even a cover "tease." The story was buried on page 31. No editorial on page 2. Amazingly, the publication was complicit in the pulling of levers by the "powers that be" in polite society, not to focus on something so ugly.
Insiders seemed totally to know the truth, just as with the "monkey things up" comment of today. The major media found the topic too unpleasant. That would be no hindrance today - it would in fact be a catalyst for promoting discussion, to get those much-sought "eyeballs." Today the Colin Kaepernick subject reigns. No inhibitions in the media. Our president? Talk about having no inhibitions. The president publicly refers to some NFL players as "sons of bitches." Can you imagine a president of the late 20th Century saying that? We once had a strong impulse toward simple decorum. Not in the modern age of Alex Jones.
Today we'd be watching replays of the controversial fly ball continuously. Every baseball media person would have to weigh in. There might be pressure for Mauch and Brye to be blackballed, in fact. Fox News would take the see-no-evil stance, the type we heard from the network's Martha McCallum when she said the DeSantis "monkey" comment did not ruffle her when she heard it. The pro-McRae camp would be vociferous.
Let us disregard how McRae in later years would become like an African-American Bobby Knight. That's irrelevant in connection with the 1976 incident.
The Royals won their first West Division title in '76 with a record of 90-72. Dean Vogelaar was K.C.'s public relations director. His contemporary comment is: "To this day, I don't think anybody knows the truth." He's a candidate for a Fox News panel, I'd suggest. There is an undertone to all the players' comments - the most credible sources - suggesting the darkest interpretation. Baseball's leaders could thank God they didn't have to deal with the media environment of today.
As a footnote, let's acknowledge that the late Lyman Bostock was with the Twins and was among the premier hitters of that season. He hurt his thumb in the series opener and missed the last two games. He sported a .323 average. He would eventually be murdered. Our president was Gerald Ford and "disco" music was in its prime. Jimmy Carter would be elected in November. Shall we mention the Gong Show?
Inhibitions of the time
If major league baseball had granted Brett's wish and allowed he and McRae to share the batting title, can you imagine the ramifications? The explicit acknowledgment of racism? Wow! But it was 1976, and polite society exercised its leverage: such discussion was supposed to be discussed in whispers. I salute the Nike Company of today and what it's doing with Kaepernick as a symbol, making clear that old pretensions are to be eschewed in favor of frankness and candor. Sunlight indeed.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
Disagree totally. This guy had no racist bones in his body. He worked in Detroit at Ford in the offseason and volunteered with the homeless of Detroit. Unfortunately race baiters like yourself are always going to try to enrich themselves through nonsense like this. You are a blogger, not a journalist.
ReplyDeleteThe truth of the matter is that we really do not know. Mauch denied it until his death in 2005. Brye is still living at the age of 75 and refuses to speak about it now, but in years past, said he had misheard his instructions, played too deep, and then misjudged the ball. Some people who knew Brye claimed that Brye had said he wanted his teammate Carew to win, but if not, then he wanted Brett to beat McRae because McRae was a DH who rarely played in the field.
ReplyDeleteBased on that, if there was a fix, it was more likely Brye acting alone than a conspiracy, doing whatever it took to ensure Brett got a hit. But there is also the possibility that Brye just misplayed a ball, and also the possibility that everyone on the Twins is lying and they did fix it for the white guy.
We will never know unless Brye comes clean (if there is anything to come clean about) before he dies. But if Mauch ordered him to let Brett get a hit, he has no reason not to talk about it now and clear his name.