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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2009 > June > 22
Monday, June 22, 2009
Editorial: Baseball’s history still has power to connect
Bill Cosby, speaking to a crowd in Cincinnati during the weekend about racial integration in Major League baseball, said:
“You need to tell your children this was not a done deal. Henry Aaron had to hear people yelling, calling, telling him the same thing they told your great-grandparents: ‘You are not, you can’t be. And even if you did, it doesn’t mean anything.’”
Mr. Cosby was speaking on the occasion of the “Civil Rights Game.” That’s a promotion for baseball, a way of connecting the game with black Americans, with an eye on the fact that baseball doesn’t have nearly as many black players as it used to.
This useful promotion brings sport into contact with the issues of the larger society.
So often, the instinct of athletes and owners alike is to avoid those issues as diversions from their tasks, as potentially divisive, and, after all, as subjects that athletes are not uniquely equipped to deal with.
One result is that any time a social issue does show up in sports, the occasion is decidedly negative. Think drugs. Or money, as in the amount the big leagues charge for a ticket or a hotdog, and the amount they pay unimpressive players.
The Civil Rights Game saw legendary athletes — Mr. Aaron, Frank Robinson, Muhammad Ali, Tony Perez, Bob Gibson, Oscar Robertson — and Mr. Cosby talking about race in America and race in baseball, along with intellectuals and a former president. The athletes surely won the attention of some people who don’t typically pay much attention to such things, especially young people.
The game itself and ceremonies surrounding it were broadcast nationally, along with interviews with many of the big names and portions of President Bill Clinton’s speech.
That the event was held in Cincinnati made it a promotion for that city, too. Cincinnati was a great spot for a lot of reasons. It was the southernmost city with a big league team when Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s racial barrier in the late 1940s. When his team stayed at the Netherlands Plaza Hotel, he was not allowed to use the dining room or the swimming pool.
Even into this decade, Cincinnati has continued to have high-profile racial problems. That part of the history of southwestern Ohio — Dayton as much as Cincinnati — is something that should be remembered.
By the same token, though, Cincinnati was a key part of the Underground Railroad, the famed route for helping escaped slaves from the South make their way to freedom. Today that story is preserved by the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, which opened in 2004 and is next door to Great American Ballpark.
That was a big reason Cincinnati got the game, which was held experimentally in Memphis the last two seasons, with unofficial games featuring Major League teams.
It always made sense for the game to be in a major league city. The presence of the Freedom Center helped baseball justify the move for 2009 and 2010.
Whether the game can become a tradition isn’t certain. But that would be a good thing. (In Memphis, the crowds for the games were disappointing.)
Cincinnati and Dayton are at the northern end of a long bridge between the north and the south. They are cities where sports did much to break down racial barriers, being central to the cultures of two races.
They are places where baseball’s roots go deep. And baseball is a game whose roots go deep into American history — the worst and some of the best.
If a promotion can capture some of that and bring it to the attention of a community and part of a nation, that’s a pretty special promotion.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Civil Rights, Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, Sports and Recreation
TweetEditorial: Bar should make changes to judicial poll
Last fall, the Dayton Bar Association’s judicial preference poll was at the center of controversy in a race for judge between attorney Dennis Atkins and Frances McGee, an appointed common pleas court judge running for her first election.
Of the six candidates in three judicial races, McGee, the only black candidate, got far lower ratings from local lawyers than the others. Her supporters were angry and blasted the poll. The incident raised questions about potential bias in the polling process.
In response, the association rightly asked researchers from Wright State University to review the poll and its processes. The researchers have produced a thoughtful report; the association should implement the recommendations.
The poll is designed to help voters gauge the qualifications of candidates. The idea is that lawyers have special familiarity with the quality of the work of judges and aspiring judges, because they see them work up close.
Poll results often appear in candidates’ advertisements and in the news media, including news stories and editorials in the Dayton Daily News.
The bar association stresses that the poll is not perfect.
In the case of Judge McGee, who narrowly defeated Mr. Atkins, the poll results were unusual enough to suggest real cause for concern.
Critics have panned the poll as simply a popularity contest. They point out that participation is low. Just 455 of the association’s approximately 1,350 voting members cast ballots last fall. On the other hand, that likely is more lawyers than have first-hand experience at trial with the judges.
But the vast majority of respondents treat the poll with the seriousness it deserves. Privately, some of them said prior to the election that the results reflected real concerns about Judge McGee’s struggles to adjust to the bench and her sometimes unnecessarily brusque temperament.
With her victory, she now has a six-year term to dispel those concerns. Still, a better poll — more carefully crafted and scientific — could inspire greater confidence in the results and reduce concerns about fairness when the unexpected occurs.
Among the suggestions are simple fixes (like using the ultra-understandable A-to-F grading scale for simplicity), and more involved improvements (like hiring a statistician to make sure the final report accurately describes the results). One of the best suggestions is adding a demographic section in which attorneys would report basics like their ethnicity, age, gender, years in practice and how often (and how recently) they’ve practiced in front of the judge in question.
Such data would provide breakdowns relevant to an argument over the importance to be assigned to the poll.
Overall, the researchers said the poll should be transformed from a “preference poll” into an “evaluation poll.” They suggest making the poll an annual exercise. The idea would be to collect data about judges both when they are up for election and when they are not. That would give voters a richer picture of how judges are viewed by their legal peers.
The bar association is still evaluating the report and has much discussion planned before any decisions are made.
The proposed changes would make the poll a stronger tool and the results more useful to voters. They also would give judges and candidates better information about how they are viewed by their peers and why.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Law Enforcement and Public Safety, Miami Valley Politics, Scott Elliott
TweetGuest column: One less law now divides Dayton from its neighbors
Paul Leonard is a former mayor of Dayton and former lieutenant governor of Ohio.
City officials may not feel like it, but the Ohio Supreme Court just may have done Dayton a favor. It was time to bury the archaic residency rule that required that city employees live within the borders of Dayton. Required residency was the ultimate symbol of parochialism, a relic from the days when Dayton used forced annexation to bring new taxpayers inside the city’s borders. It was one of the last remnants of a time of “us against them.”
Admittedly, there was a period in our history when the residency rule was more acceptable. Dayton had nearly a quarter of a million people living within its borders; business leaders lived within the city; corporations made Dayton their home; and the city’s revenues outpaced its expenditures.
Even Kettering, before it became a city, asked to be a part of Dayton — a request which was turned down by Dayton’s leadership. The city’s challenge then was to manage growth.
The negative news stories were about things like investigations into illegal bingo operations, and a city commissioner who ran off with his underage baby-sitter. Today, it’s just the opposite. The negative stories are usually about economics — people losing their jobs and businesses heading south or west. In the “good ol’ days,” Dayton was the essence of Montgomery County. County governments in Ohio were sleepy, rural-oriented governments that didn’t do much more than manage trash and water. The cities had all the power.
It’s different now. Successful local governments must be more regional in their approach to challenges, especially as taxpayer dollars are shrinking.
One might be tempted to argue that a city that’s shrinking needs to keep as many people as it can inside the city’s borders. Here’s the problem: A city can’t profess to be committed to a regional approach to challenges and assume a position of leadership in that region while, at the same time, sending a message to its neighbors that there is something wrong if Dayton’s employees choose to live outside of the city.
Dayton is either going to be parochial and support parochial rules and regulations, or it’s going to claim its rightful position of leadership in the region and accept the court’s decision as a “blessing in disguise.”
Dayton has to be one of the most resilient towns in America. Every time we’re counted out, we survive. This is an easy town to live in. The future will be different, but better. I’m convinced of it.
We may never again see 250,000 people living inside the city. Business leaders will probably continue to gravitate to the more affluent suburbs. And the monster corporations will be replaced with a more diverse community of smaller businesses.
The biggest change, and challenge, however, will be in regional governance. We cannot afford to continue a system of taxation that has to support more than 600 school districts in a state with 88 counties, and 3,500 local governments. That’s just too much government.
Although I probably won’t live long enough to see it, Dayton and Montgomery County are likely to merge some day — not because merger is preferable, but because it’s more affordable.
The day is coming when lower taxes will trump the desire to have governmental bodies for tiny jurisdictions. When that happens, or even before it happens, or even if it doesn’t happen, the City of Dayton must lead this entire community into the future. Borders cannot function as barriers. The days of parochialism must be a part of our past, not our future.
In that respect, the Supreme Court’s decision paved the way for a more intellectually honest commitment to regionalism: We now have one less law that divides Dayton from its neighbors.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment | Categories: City of Dayton, Guest Columns, Ohio politics
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