Baseball Prospectus 2008 is a massive book with a lot of words in it, and sometimes we use some of the space as a personal soapbox. Consider the player comment on Brian Barton, located on page 134:
The Cardinals made Barton the best position player taken in this winter’s Rule 5 draft. Based on his age and skill set, the resulting big-league promotion should simply accelerate what should be a pretty nice career as a bench outfielder. Barton is among the smartest people in the game; he complete a degree in aerospace engineering at Miami, but turned down a high-paying job with Boeing to give this baseball thing a shot. There were some whispered concerns about Barton’s makeup during the year, but they amounted to little more than an ugly reminder that, even more than half a century after Jackie Robinson, there remains a small segment of the baseball community that is unable to accept intelligent black players.
Now, we normally do not put bylines in the book, as it is very much a group effort. But I wrote those words, and I stand by them. At the same time it has come to our attention that the comment could be construed as my saying that the reason the Indians did not place Barton on their 40-man roster was because he was black, smart, or some combination thereof. In reading the comment again, I can understand where that inference comes from, and I want to make it clear that it was not my intention at all, and in fact, that inference couldn’t be further from the truth.
Here are a pair of facts related to that comment that help clarify things.
Those ‘whispered concerns about Barton’s makeup’ came from people who are not under the employ of the Cleveland Indians.
Any feedback I received about Barton from people directly related to the Cleveland organization was quite positive in terms of his makeup.
It was that dichotomy that had me think of some of the struggles that Doug Glanville encountered during his career, which led me to write what I wrote. Like nearly every aspect of our society, there is still some element of racism in baseball, to be sure, and that’s all that I was trying to point out. But to be clear, I was not pointing a finger at any one party, and in no way do I believe that any percentage of any personnel decisions made by the Indians concerning Brian Barton revolved around his ethnicity.
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