Okay, MLB has done as much as it probably can at the moment to save face in the light of Mets announcer Keith Hernandez's recent unthinking remarks concerning women, and specifically Padres' massage therapist, Kelly Calabrese, on a live television broadcast. Hernandez was reprimanded byt the Mets, by baseball, by the media machine that feeds the bigs, and hopefully by his own wife and mother. Women are good, baseball likes women, and not in the "You know I love ya ladies" way that Hernandez said. No, baseball really likes women. It respects women. Really. The latest balm being this positive piece touting the value Calabrese brings to the Padres as a member of the training staff. Fine. Good. Thank you MLB for clearing that up. I feel okay spending my dollars on Rockies products again knowing you've got my back on this.
Now, let's talk about what Keith Hernandez and his like are really afraid of, probably what some readers here can't picture or fathom, and what, should it ever happen, will eventually be considered by the rest of us as an event as important to baseball as Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier:
Women can have just as much tactical baseball knowledge as men, they can have as much an eye for player evaluation, they can motivate just as effectively. If you've ever seen a woman argue you know she can go toe to toe with an umpire as forcefully as Lou Pinella. If the argument is about modesty, than you haven't been paying attention for the last thirty years. There's nothing that says the manager has to be in the locker room with the players, if coaching members of the opposite gender were such a societal taboo we wouldn't allow male coaches of female athletes in other professional sports such as basketball, soccer or softball. No, the entire hang up at this point as far as I can tell is one of a jocular culture hanging onto the last vestiges of sacrosanct mysogyny it has.
Look, I know this isn't going to happen anytime soon, perhaps not even in my lifetime, which would be sad, but we need to wake to the possibility now. So this post is just starting a dialog, putting it out there in your heads so you can come back with all your counter arguments before you realize that what should matter most is a person's ability to lead a team to victory, that's it. I just don't see the point in limiting our options here to half the population. Anyway, that's my thought...