Melissa Harris-Perry: This is The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. Good to spend part of our day with you and glad you're with us for part of yours. We begin today with some major news that emerged this week from one of our country's most consequential deliberative bodies. No, y’all, I’m not talking about the retirement of Justice Stephen Breyer from the Supreme Court. We're going to get to that next week when everyone has actually had a moment to digest things and think about the future and analyze a bit. Breathless coverage? Y’all are going to have to miss me with that. But no, I am referring to Cooperstown, the National Baseball Hall of Fame. As the kids say, we're talking baseball.

Speaker: I'm trying to reach David Ortiz, please.

David Ortiz: This is David Ortiz.

Speaker: I'm calling you from Cooperstown, New York to let you know baseball writers have elected you to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

[cheering]

Josh Rawitch: Arriving at their individual decisions, the electors took into consideration the following voting criteria, the player's record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, contributions to the team or teams for which the player played.

Melissa Harris-Perry: So David Ortiz was voted into the Hall this week while pitcher Roger Clemens and all-time home run king, Barry Bonds did not make the cut. Now as a reminder for some of our non-sports or non-baseball people, or maybe even just younger folks, since it's now been a whole generation, Clemens and Bonds are statistically arguably the best players at their positions. It's worth noting because Clemens and Bonds missed for the 10th straight year and that means they will no longer be on the main voting ballot going forward.

The Baseball Writers Association votes on the Hall, and the reason Clemens and Bonds have been not voted in is their association with the steroid scandal of the 1990s and oughts. They were the biggest faces that were part of it, but it's a little weird that the writers were okay with Big Papi Ortiz getting in because he failed a steroid test in his career as well.

Speaker: What do we learn Palmer?

Speaker: I don't know, sir.

Melissa Harris-Perry: This news got us thinking about some of the other important news going on right now in the sports world, which is of course also a business world and a world of culture. From the baseball diamond to the football field, we're talking about players, coaches at halftime entertainment. That's right.

[music]

Melissa Harris-Perry: Mary J Blinds, Dr. Dre, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar and Snoop Dog will be on stage during the Super Bowl in what is sure to be a fantastic performance. So fantastic in fact that we’re completely distracted from the controversies off the field like the fact that in a sport where over half of the players are Black, there's only one Black head coach in the entire league.

So yeah, SCOTUS can wait we're talking sports and with us is Amira Rose Davis Assistant Professor of History with African American studies and co-host of the podcast Burn it All Down. Welcome to The Takeaway, Amira.

Amira Rose Davis: Yes, always great to be here.

Melissa Harris-Perry: All right. Let's start with the NFL and Brian Flores recently, let go as head coach of the Miami Dolphins, there is now only one Black head coach in the league. What is going on? Did somebody like trash the Rooney Rule? What's happening?

Amira Rose Davis: Yes, it’s the annual mess. Mike Tomlin is the only black head coach in the league. I think it’s the reason why these particular firing them on what's usually called Black Monday really caught everybody's eye because it's right in the annual discussion of the Rooney Rule really not really doing anything and the huge disproportionate number of Black players and then you have one Black coach, it’s ridiculous. Especially when you have somebody like Brian Flores, who Dolphins weren't great, but he also led the team to consecutive winning seasons for the first time since 2003, which is when I was a high school freshman.

It's not like he was doing nothing there, but the other firing that really caught headlines was of course Coach Culley down in Houston, Texas, because it was his first year. First year playing with QB controversy, and not a lot happening there, still won four games, which is probably more than we expected. He was let go after one year, which is fairly rare and also they were like, “Yes, we have a different philosophy,” which is something, I don't know, that I feel like you should figure out when you interviewed the person a year ago. Especially when they now are rumored again to be considering Josh McCown, who has no head coaching experience at any level, but was of course their former quarterback.

It just feels like we're stuck on this broken record loop that, “Hey, maybe we should have Black representation in coaching staff,” and everybody being like, “Yes, yes, yes, totally,” and it never happening.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Wait a minute. I'm still recovering from you being in high school in 2003, but okay.

[laughter]

Melissa Harris-Perry: Really, I was like, “Wait, what?” Let's dig in one more step here because I feel like there are few groups of people for whom it is harder to gin up sympathy than NFL players and NFL coaches. This is a very highly re-numerated field. Unless you're really talking about the injuries or the head injuries, which I think all of us have a very human relationship to, I can imagine there are some folks like, “What difference does it make?” These are professionals being paid a lot of money to play a sport. If your coach is white, pull yourself together and go play anyway. Why should we care whether or not there's a Black head coach?

Amira Rose Davis: I think we should care about power or regardless of where it manifests. I think that what we see is people getting stuck in the pipeline. I think if you take a interest, for instance in Josh McCown, who's never coached at all after firing a head coach who waited 27 years in the assistant ranks to get that opportunity, we're talking literally just about discrimination. We're talking about these ideas of what makes a good coach? Why is there this thought, this untested person with high football IQ and all these like code words that we use to talk about industrious white quarterbacks like Josh McCown, why is that the criteria that front offices feel more comfortable with?

Now, some of this, we know the answer to. Even when we set up the question, you're like, yes. We know who's assumed to have knowledge and who's assumed to be strategic thinkers. I think that what we see across multiple sports is that Black coaches have less second chances. Usually what that means is that a lot of people-- and they don't get the chance, and when they do, as we've seen this year, it gets taken away quite fast.

I think that frustration when you see coaches like Eric Bieniemy, of course from Kansas City, like who-- The coordinators. If you watched the games in the past few weeks, the coordinators who are giving us these really great play calls and defensive schemes, et cetera, are often not finding any purchase at these upper ranks of head coaching. I think that that is concerning because it tells the players and it tells the audience that Black bodies are good for one particular thing and that's to gladiate themselves, but please don't think that you can lead a team.

Melissa Harris-Perry: All right. Why don't you take me on out to the ballgame now? You do not have to buy any peanuts or Cracker Jacks, but let’s talk about Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and the Hall of Fame rules. Can you help us to understand the rule change, and its history, and how is it that Barry and Roger struck out?

Amira Rose Davis: Yes. As you heard in the criteria, that sportsmanship character, et cetera line, which is really what everybody trips over. For the last decade, there has been this battle annually about how you evaluate that character component of these Hall of Fame votes. It's been a decade and what this signals is essentially that those who have a vote have decided to just shut out folks from the steroid era despite the fact that it was widespread, despite the fact that some people, it was based on insinuation, never a test. It feels arbitrary especially as you mentioned Big Papi. Now I'm a Red Sox fan so I’ve got to, whatever.

Melissa Harris-Perry: You're like, “Whatever, come on Big Papi.”

Amira Rose Davis: These are facts, these are things right, but I also think that it is about the hysteria of that era and are continued way that we apply these doctrines of fairness and I feel like we do it quite unevenly. For instance, we've started to see that character debate also encompass other folks on the ballot for their politics, but rarely for harm. We don't talk about accusations with Bonds in terms of like his abuse of his wife allegedly. We don't talk about that it's all about did you cheat?

I think that even this idea of like, oh, this character conversation is the big one or was a particular part of the character conversation, this idea of like, what do we think fairness looks like in our sport? As you mentioned, it was a era where they were already pacing in front of people because they were just good. I think I'm of the mind personally, where I'm just like, okay, if they're still hitting the bar father then everybody else who was also on steroids and I think they're pretty good at baseball, maybe they should be in the Hall of Fame.

I think that the controversy over it every year really gets to the heart of these myths that we tell ourselves about what fairness or ethics look like in sport and it's really not a Black and white issue despite the fact that the voters of the baseball Hall try to make it one.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Let's zoom out a little bit and talk- -about a more global sporting event that's upcoming, the Olympics.

Amira Rose Davis: Urgh.

[laughter]

Melissa Harris-Perry: I just want to-- I know I'm sorry.

Amira Rose Davis: I'm still recovering from this Summer Games. I can't believe the Winter ones.

Melissa Harris-Perry: If there is one weird like time folding on top of time thing that I just can't quite get my head around, it is the Winter Olympics coming months after the Summer Olympics. I keep feeling like maybe I missed a year or two of my life somewhere. Shouldn’t there have been some time in between? But because although there was some time, there hasn't been a lot. COVID is still the story. Can you talk us about what's happening there?

Amira Rose Davis: Yes. Well, a mess. COVID is still a thing, yes. We just saw the first positive test for a bobsledder on Team USA. Yes, it's absolutely still a thing as we have yet another mega event. COVID, in many ways, is constraining, certainly, participation in terms of athletes who might test positive, also in spectators, but it's also kind of taking a backseat to a lot of the political concerns coming out of Beijing, as we head into the Winter Games.

It’s interesting because the Winter Olympics generally are fighting for attention compared to the Summer Games. The run up to the Summer Games have a lot of human interest stories. We already know and love these athletes we get packages on and the Winter Games usually are fighting to fly above the radar. It's interesting, as we move into these games, the dominant stories are not about the sports are not about the athletes, they're really about the politics and the pandemic. It's an interesting position to be moving into where it's like this huge cloud hanging over the games, both in terms of public health concerns, as well as political ones.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I want to take one beat on the diplomatic boycotts and whether or not they're impactful or make a difference.

Amira Rose Davis: Well, they make a difference in the eyes of the Olympic officials. I think that it's also a way for people to politically-- it's essentially like a warning. It's like if you ever got a yellow card in school, it doesn't have much of an impact.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I did. It made not the best sportsman on my soccer team. Sometimes my big mouth got me into trouble.

Amira Rose Davis: Exactly, but honestly, if it's not backed by like any other kind of action, it's just that, it's just paper. I think that there's some real there. Whether we're talking about human rights violations in China, or also what is emerging as a concern is the way that athletes’ voices are being policed at. We had this conversation during the Summer Games, particularly around the IOCs continuing enforcement of Rule 50, but also the way they were trying to say, “Okay, you can protest, but only a little bit,” et cetera.

Now, Chinese officials have warned foreign athletes to make sure that they are not running afoul of Chinese law about speech, which is drawn more restrictively, then the IOC, which is saying something because the IOC is still very restrictive. I think that is something to keep an eye on in terms of how athletes’ voices are actually endangered here. Not to mention, of course, China's record on human rights violation, which is promoting or prompting a lot of these international boycotts.

Ultimately, how does any of this amounted to anything when the IOC is still decided that it's fine for Beijing to host the Games. When we're already at the process of a mega sporting event, despite concerns that have been raised since it was awarded, then all of this feels like gestures that are just exactly that. They’re gestures that will be made and the Games will roll on, as they do, and everybody will try not to get COVID. It's like the Summer Games all over again, it will just come and go.

It's frustrating to be at this point because there's all these different points in the lead up where there could have been different decisions or if people actually cared about human rights, maybe they want to have been awarded the Olympics in the first place.

Melissa Harris-Perry: As we're signing off here and you're talking about and [unintelligible 00:14:23] here, the question of athletes’ voices. I do want to just point out to the whole Takeaway listening family that Amira has a new gymnastics podcast series. It is dropping on February 24th on Apple's New and Notable. She got some voices for real interviewing Black gymnasts from the 1980s on Up Forward and got a lot of folks saying things they’d never said before. We can't wait here at The Takeaway for this podcast, and we're excited for you Amira.

Amira Rose Davis: Thank you. I'm so excited for everybody to hear their stories in their voices on their terms and let me just tell you now, buckle up because whoa.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Okay, so I'm listening to that one late at night with a glass of wine. I got you. No problem.

Amira Rose Davis: Yes, maybe two glasses are best fit. .

Melissa Harris-Perry: Amira Rose Davis is an Assistant Professor of History and African American Studies and co-host of the podcast, Burn it all down. Thanks again Amira.

Amira Rose Davis: Yes, thanks for having me.

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