Commentary: Colin Kaepernick is acting like a punk...there it is

Colin Kaepernick: Disrespectful to the US

FEATURE COMMENTARY

 By JIM PURCELL

Colin Kaepernick and his protests during the playing of the National Anthem before football games should never have begun. America is not perfect. Since it is a democratic republic, the United States exists by the rule of law. Leaders are elected. There is a lot of bureaucracy in this country. America struggles with hate, conflicted politics, unending wars, an economy that is sometimes predatory, and the span between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ has never been wider. So, Kaepernick thinks his protest will do…what?

Let’s see…is Kaepernick’s taking a knee at the National Anthem change anything? No. Will his protest put anyone back to work? No. Just what is he ‘raising awareness’ about? I haven’t heard anything. He just decided to protest because the United States isn’t perfect. Well, as imperfect as this country is, it is still the freest nation in the world. Don’t believe it? Go shopping for another country and move. Try it out.

I respect protest. I have protested for peace during the early days of the Iraq War. I have protested for civil rights in New Jersey during my tenure as an NAACP volunteer. In both cases, both kinds of protest were specific. I protested the war in Downtown Manhattan as part of a group that had its specific ideas about Iraq – and why the U.S. shouldn’t be fighting there – broadcast on television, in the newspapers and online. When it came to the NAACP, we protested establishments that were, in the group’s view, demonstrating bias based on race and color. Before and during the protests, the targets of those protests were met with and very specific goals for policy changes were submitted to the persons concerned.

How is Kaepernick’s protest different? Because he doesn’t make a clear case about what he is protesting. Without that, I suppose he is just protesting an imperfect world. He is not protesting whomever he believes is doing wrong. He is protesting in front of scores of people who neither know nor care about what he doesn’t like. He is protesting as part of his job as an over-paid, only so-so quarterback talent for a poorly performing 49er team. His message is to disrespect the American flag and our National Anthem because it’s fun and can be done.

Baseball Hall-of-Famer Reggie Jackson

According to CBS Sports, Kaepernick does give about $1 million per year to charity. Meanwhile, I guarantee you that the money he gives to charity does 1000 percent more for real problems than taking a knee and telling the country responsible for his success to ‘go blow.’

I haven’t watched much of the NFL this year, because I am sick and tired of over-indulged, high-priced, mediocre players who have been given everything and seem to give back only nonsense, guff and headlines for stupidity. This Kaepernick is just the icing on the cake for me.

Reggie Jackson was a free thinker. I have met Reggie before, at a job I used to work at for a sports memorabilia company. By the way, he was nothing like the showman he portrayed during his Yankee days. He was a prince: modest, affable and just a total gentleman. 

Reggie was probably the most dangerous two-strike hitter ever in MLB ever, but certainly so in the late 1970s. He was considered a showboat and not a team guy by some people. He made fun of most everything – but never the United States, its flag or its National Anthem. Why? It’s a matter of class. Class can’t be bought or paid for, it cannot be ordered through Amazon, someone can only fake class for so long and then there is knowing that there’s a line and being cognizant of where it is so someone doesn’t cross over it.

All-time great Roy White

Colin Kaepernick gives the game a bad image. His actions reflect not just on him and the 49ers, but the National Football League. By the by, why the heck hasn’t anyone at the top of the NFL stopped this mockery?

The problem doesn’t begin or end at with Colin Kaepernick, the 49ers or even the NFL. The problem is that athletes today act like spoiled children, not role models. I weep for sports.

I have met, a few times, Roy White, the steady handed outfielder for the New York Yankees during the Bronx Zoo days of the late 1970s. I have never asked him about how he would feel about someone protesting during a game. So, what I am giving is my own opinion, not his. 

Roy was a steady .290 hitter against some of the toughest major league pitching talent that ever existed, from Nolan Ryan, in his prime, to Jim Palmer, Mike Cuellar, Luis Tiant, Bill Lee, and so on.  He is grateful for his playing days, for the fans that followed his career. He is a real gentleman and created his own business from the ground up during and after his playing days. Roy White was also a black ball player when it wasn’t an everyday thing. He suffered being under-paid, harassed for his color and a mercurial fan base and club house that might make many of us shrink.

Why didn’t Roy White protest? Oh yeah, he is a grown man, unspoiled by life. He understands the world as it is. He respects people, especially his fellow players and fans, and he loves this country. Roy White got noticed for his exceptional play at a time when the talent pool of MLB was extraordinarily high, before expansion when people who should have still been playing AA or AAA ball were in the minors and not playing in the show. He didn’t get noticed because he took a knee for some ridiculous protest.

The NFL will little note nor long remember the career of Colin Kaepernick. Yes, he is a good quarterback – not great, not very good, not particularly all that talented. What he will be remembered for after his playing days won’t be his touchdown to interception ratio, or his passing statistics or anything that happens on the field. He will be the guy who told the United States to go shove it on some of the biggest stages of his day. He’s a punk and there it is.

Baseball Great Tiant Discusses Castro's Passing

By JIM PURCELL

In the mid- and late-1970s, baseball was the king of American sports and the biggest show on the stage was the rivalry between the "Bronx Bombing" New York Yankees and the Red Sox in the American League East. On that stage, no one cared that side-armed pitching phenom Luis Tiant was a Cuban refugee. What they cared about most was his killer curve balls and exploding sliders. Today, though, one of Cuba's most notable exiles remembers the life of the late Fidel Castro, who died a few days ago at 90 years old.

Luis Tiant today

In an article posted today by the Washington Post, by Des Bieler, Tiant discussed his thoughts about Castro.

Tiant said Cuba produced a great deal of Latin American players in Major League Baseball until the Castro regime "set everything back." He noted that there were generations of ball players who never had the chance to succeed at their sport. Though he was a famed starting pitcher, Tiant said that, at the time he left Cuba as a young man, there were 50 or 60 players better than him.

Luis Tiant in the 1970s

What Tiant reflected upon was the loss of opportunity for the Cuban people, not just baseball players but certainly them. At the time Castro came to absolute, untethered power in 1961, Tiant was playing professional baseball in Mexico and did not return home.

One of the consequences to his decision was that Tiant would not be reunited with his parents, who were Cuban residents, until 1975. And, it wasn't until 2007 that the cigar-smoking former big league pitcher was able to return to his homeland without the threat of imprisonment.

Somberly, Tiant said that the exact number of people who lost their lives trying to make the passage between Cuba and Florida, often in rickety boats and rafts, would never be known. Was it 20,000? 100,000? A million? Tiant said the world may never know exactly how many people perished reaching for freedom, but for him it was 40. "They all died. All of them. Just gone," he said.

Castro was an avid lover of the sport of baseball and there are unsubstantiated reports the former dictator came close to being signed by a professional team in the United States during his youth.

With Castro gone now, Tiant warned it was not yet time to celebrate the end of totalitarianism in Cuba yet. He explained the Castro regime is still in place, albeit without their inspirational leader.

Tiant likened the passing of the Cuban despot to a "little door cracking open" for the future. He concluded with his hope that, one day, Cuba would be open again -- for its people to travel as they like and for its exiles to finally return home.