I May Be Wrong But I Doubt It - Charles Barkley [47]
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One of the things I don’t understand, and one of the things that bothers me, is young athletes not paying homage to the people who came before them. The people who came along earlier created a situation or environment that the guys who came along later wanted to be a part of, right?
I’m going to pay homage to Bill Russell. And for a whole lot of reasons. First, he was a better player than me. Second, and this is a personal reason, the black players forty years ago were playing in such a difficult environment. Now, you know Michael Jordan is my best friend. But he shouldn’t have been voted the No. 1 athlete of the twentieth century in the ESPN SportsCentury poll because I don’t think any black athlete today has to deal with what black athletes endured twenty-five, fifty, a hundred years ago. If you had to deal with all that overt prejudice and bigotry and still managed to become a champion in your sport, how much does that say about you? I don’t think we can imagine how much garbage those guys put up with just to have a chance to compete in their sports. Imagine if they were just free to play ball and not deal with all the other shit that caused stress and sucked the energy and life out of them? We can’t even imagine having to fight just to find a hotel that would let you stay there, or a restaurant that would let you eat there. Michael never had to play with people screaming “Nigger!” as he shot a free throw.
Joe Louis, Jackie Robinson, Josh Gibson, Muhammad Ali, the early black players in the NFL . . . I feel Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player, but to say Michael’s greater than those guys is just bullshit. People are talking about Hank Aaron a little bit more these days, but for the most part I don’t think people know a fraction of the shit Hank Aaron went through, and we’re talking about the 1970s, not the 1940s. Hank Aaron got so much hate mail, so many death threats as he approached Babe Ruth’s home run record. I don’t know how he hit any damn home runs in those years. I don’t know how he kept it all together.
And I’m supposed to sit here now and believe that today’s athletes, black or white, have to perform under conditions as difficult as the ones Hank Aaron had to perform under? Hank’s a living legend to me. I was glad to see Kobe Bryant wearing Hank’s Atlanta Braves jersey during the NBA Finals last summer, just to put Hank into our consciousness again. Maybe it caused some kids who don’t really know anything about him to ask their parents or look him up on the Internet. Why is Hank Aaron treated as just another great ballplayer? If Babe Ruth is a god for what he accomplished—and Babe Ruth earned everything he got—then shouldn’t Aaron be approaching that status since he broke Ruth’s record? I always found it amazing that Joe DiMaggio wouldn’t go to any baseball event unless he was introduced as “The Greatest Living Ballplayer.” Can you imagine if a black ballplayer said, “I’m not appearing anywhere, I’m not going to any old-timers games, unless I’m referred to as ‘The Greatest Living Ballplayer’ “? He’d be tarred and feathered.
I just get upset when guys who have made significant contributions to sports and society are forgotten. How can anybody drawing a paycheck in sports today not know about Curt Flood? He’s one of my heroes, and he gets lost in sports history, Curt Flood. He’s never gotten an appropriate amount of credit. How did his contributions get so overlooked? Athletes had no say in where they played until Curt Flood stood up and refused to be traded. How can