The Bag Skate – Patrick Kane, Fully Krausened

by: Tony Leva
email: tonytrucker1969@gmail.com

Patrick Kane needs to learn how to drink

Over the Cinco de Mayo weekend, Deadspin cover boy Patrick Kane visited the University of Wisconsin at Madison campus and proceeded to get so liquored up that pics of him and accompanying stories of debauchery swept this glorious thing we call the internet. What, you missed them? Well, here’s a sample of KANER’s weekend fun…

So what’s the big deal, you ask? Surely there’s nothing wrong with a 23 year old multi-millionaire superstar athlete having a good time cruising the co-ed population and drinking enough to kill a large yak, right? Well, yes and no.

Here’s what’s no big deal….Kane is of legal drinking age and his team is out of the playoffs. He didn’t do anything wrong aside from acting like a drunken buffoon. (As of today, Madison police said no charges will be filed against Kane and they are unaware of any complaints filed by anyone against him. Kane was rumored to have choked a co-ed at some point during his weekend.) Even with his appalling fashion sense, I’m sure he got a little somethinsomethin as long as the whiskey dick wasn’t overwhelming. Hell, I wish I had gone with him.

Here’s what is a big deal….Kane represents a first-class hockey organization and this isn’t the first time he’s acted like a wank. He has been a Deadspin favorite for years now and is always good for some drunken hijinks. The Vancouver limo pics are a personal favorite of mine.

He’s guilty not only of hogging here, but also of being a pattern dickhole. The incidents like this have been piling up over the past few years. Remember the parade on June 11, 2010? I was there when Kane was crocked out of his mind and slurred his way through his turn at the mic. Not a big deal as the first championship for anyone, especially the guy who scored the Cup-winning goal, is bound to be an occasion where you totally overserve yourself. Pattern behavior like this isn’t good.

CHUG-A-LUG!!

When you are a superstar like Kane is, you need to make smarter choices, especially in this day and age when EVERYONE has a cameraphone and is all too happy to snap away when a guy like Kane acts like this. You simply can’t continue to give the masses who want to tear you down ammo to blast you with. Until he starts making smarter choices and either tones this WAY down or opens his own private bar and drinks alone like the George Thorogood song suggests, I’m sure Kaner will be social media’s favorite drunken clown.

As for his future, the TRADE KANE!! faction is up-in-arms again, imploring the team to get rid of him ASAP for any return he can bring. Those people should not only be beaten with a rubber hose, they are hypocrites of the highest order.

First off, trading Kane right now would be stupid for a couple of reasons. One, you will not get anywhere near full value for him. When you have a 23-year-old who is an elite playmaker and possesses a resume like Kane does, you don’t deal him when his value is compromised. We went through this last season when Kane was slumping. Giving away an asset like this, only to watch him find his game again for the next decade or so would be grossly incompetent.

Secondly, you are hurting your team on the ice in a huge way. We need another top 6 forward as it is and with Hossa’s return uncertain, we may need two. Dealing Kane would leave a hole as big as the hangover I’m sure he had after the weekend in Cheeseland. For a team with its championship window still wide open, this would be a catastrophic blow and isn’t in the best interests of the team or the fans.

As for the hypocrite part of my statement, the fans screaming to trade Kane are the same fans who cheer Bobby Hull unreservedly. Hull, in his day, was the biggest lush ever seen on Rush Street. He was a carouser of the highest order and would make Kane look like a Boy Scout on a mild sugar high in comparison. Add in the numerous domestic abuse charges Hull encountered and the little incident where he said, “Hitler had some good ideas. He just went a little bit too far” (kinda makes Ozzie Guillen’s comment about Fidel Castro look like a love song, doesn’t it?) and Kane again looks like a pussy cat. You can’t ignore what Hull did and condemn Kane for far less. He’s not the “bad guy” some idiots in the media claim him to be, either.

While Kane is still young and immature, it’s far too early to give up on him. He has a vast amount of skill that is still untapped and is readily apparent. The guy who scored a goal-scorers goal to win the Stanley Cup is not to be whisked out of the organization. We need him here to do this again….

Through Both Lenses: #42, Minnie, and Afro Latinos in Baseball

“People see dark faces out there, and the perception is that they’re African American. They’re not us. They’re impostors”

-Torii Hunter

by: Mauricio Rubio Jr.
email: mr@99sportsproblems.com
twitter: @MRubio52 

Note: This article is the start of something, the history of the Afro-Latino in baseball cannot be summed up in one blog post or even a series of blog posts. It began as a simple email response and it has grown into an ongoing project whose end date I’m not sure of. This is a snippet.

It’s pretty clear that people just don’t know what to do with Latinos. In the Trayvon Martin case Zimmerman was labeled a minority by some because he has Spanish roots, thus making him Mexican or something. The Ozzie Guillen story provided an interesting chance for Latinos to have a serious conversation about race and hate within the community, instead we got an overreaction to the suspension with no real discussion on why what he said stung so much. One of the more surprising aspects of this controversy was the lack of cultural awareness when it comes to Hispanics. People genuinely did not know that Castro is seen as a tyrannical despot on the level of Hitler with the Cuban community. The caricature was the only impression people had of him and were shocked that Ozzie’s comments cut so deep.

The inspiration from this commentary, however, came from a nugget of information that Dan Bernstein gave us 2 weeks ago. The Chicago Cubs are currently shopping most of their big league roster, and it’s been speculated for months that Marlon Byrd will be traded. Should he find a new home between now and April 15, Jackie Robinson day, Chicago will have no African-American representative on #42’s day. That is a rather interesting piece of information, and I don’t have much issue with it. A caller brought up the name Alex Rios, who was born in Alabama and is considered Puerto-Rican-American.

And that’s what really got me thinking about what Jackie Robinson day means. For the purposes of his point, I can somewhat see where Mr. Bernstein was coming from, he dismissed Rios as a Latin born player and not African American in the typical sense of the term. However, I think this is a classic example of the media, and the world in general, having no idea what to do with Afro-Latinos. Torii Hunter’s quote above illustrates that point as well. Afro-Latinos are not properly represented nor are they accounted for in America.

The implication that Mr. Bernstein was making is that Afro-Latinos shouldn’t count as proper representatives for Jackie Robinson Day. That’s a dangerous implication to make and I think it’s one that a lot of people make. The inverse of this is also dangerous however, to consider Alex Rios as simply black without considering what his heritage and his lineage is. The point of Jackie Robinson day is to celebrate the tearing down of the color barrier. That’s a broad term, color, and it’s one that’s classically been assigned to African-Americans throughout history, with a good reason. It was the label that an oppressive white society put on blacks to strip away their sense of worth. But color is a defined differently today as it applies to a broader population.

The truth is that the gentleman’s agreement about “colored” players extended beyond just the African-American players. If you sent Alfonso Soriano, Starlin Castro, Marlon Byrd, Alex Rios, Carlos Marmol, Dayan Viciedo, Alexei Ramirez, Hector Santiago, and even Geo Soto back into a time machine set for the 30’s, not a one is playing in the Majors. They would all be New York Cubans.

The history of the New York Cubans is muddled, which is common for a Negro League team. For the purposes of this column, understand that they were a Negro League team comprised of mostly Afro-Latinos, but occasionally they took on lighter skinned Latinos because MLB didn’t want anything to do with people of color. They began in 1899 as the All Cubans, became the Cuban Stars in 1907, folded in the late 20’s and were recreated by a former member of the Cuban Stars, Alex Pompez, in 1930. If that name rings a bell White Sox fans, it’s because he scouted Minnie Minoso and brought him over from Cuba to play ball in the US.

The New York Cubans employed players of color that were not allowed to play in the Majors. These were not strictly African American players that fit neatly into a small category. The NY Cubans took on all that were of color and shunned by MLB, until Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier and opened the door to all people of color, not just American born Blacks. The Negro Leagues were where Minnie Minoso got his start in professional baseball.

On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson was 0/3 with a RS, but on that day he began the process that cemented himself as arguably the most important player in baseball history. In the wake of integration  we had Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe, and Minnie Minoso. That’s a lot of talent that MLB was ignoring before Jackie. A date that should be similarly remembered is May 1, 1951.

The “Cuban Comet” paved the way for Latino players, but is remembered by the White Sox as being their first black player in the post Jackie Robinson era. On May 1, Minnie paved the way for Latino players to enter the Majors, which of course came at the price of discrimination, racism, and untold stress and heartache. Reporters rather famously phonetically spelled his quotes in print, he was called all sorts of names everywhere he went, and he had to use the “Coloreds Only” stalls as well.

It’s irresponsible to dismiss Afro Latinos because they aren’t the “right kind of black.” I think it’s about time to have a serious discussion about race in America, one that centers around Hispanics. The race issue is alive and well in America, it’s disguised as other things and somewhat hidden, but we Hispanics have a lot of issues to resolve with ourselves. There’s an alarming trend of self hate and lost identity within our community. Ozzie’s insensitive comments confront us with an uncomfortable reality that we aren’t as unified as we’d like to think sometimes. I’m guilty of talking shit to Puerto Ricans, and I’m sure most Hispanics have similar stories. We’ve come a long way since Minnie, but we still have a long way to go. Our story is frequently misunderstood in America, let’s work on that.