The Friday edition of MSNBC Reports spread some fake news and tried to portray Florida in 2023 as if it was 1947 in an attempt to get Major League Baseball to denounce Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Host Lindsey Reiser wasted no time getting to the fake news, “Back in DeSantis's home state his fellow Republicans are pretty busy this week with lawmakers introducing three new bills that would expand on legislation that critics call the Don't Say Gay Law, another that would ban abortion after six weeks of pregnancy and a proposal to require bloggers who write about Florida politics to register with the state.”
DeSantis has explicitly denounced the blogger bill and just because critics say something, doesn’t make it true. The latter would be a theme, “This all comes over a month after Governor DeSantis's decision to block AP African-American studies from Florida schools, but as Florida sees all kinds of controversy over those proposals, it's also in the middle of a spring tradition with 15 Major League Baseball teams currently holding spring training and the league and players facing growing calls to speak out against those bills.”
Growing calls from who? Hard-left sports writers:
Joining me right now, ESPN panelist and sports commentary writer for the Washington Post, Kevin Blackistone. He's out with a new piece called ‘Baseball can no longer ignore Ron DeSantis's culture wars.’ Kevin, thanks for being with us. I want to talk to you about the piece. You outlined Major League Baseball's move out of Florida for spring training in yesteryear-- late '40s, a state with some of the harshest Jim Crow laws as the league was introducing black players to the league.
After Reiser invited Blackistone to give a history lesson, including how teams moved their spring trainings out of Florida during the 40s, Blackistone noted, “So that is the through line to what is going on now.”
He also recalled “And baseball has in the very recent past, right, in 2021 they moved the All-Star game out of the state of Georgia in protest to some of the election laws that a lot of people in the state of Georgia felt were burdensome on black voters in particular and other people of color and people who were marginalized in that state.”
And those people were proven wrong and MLB still hasn’t apologized. Still, Blackistone saw that as a blueprint, “I just think that, you know, baseball has spoken out on these issues before, and I think it should express if it has some uncomfortableness with the things that are going on in the DeSantis campaign, in the way that he's run the state of Florida, and in some of the other legislation that has been passed there that they should speak out.”
Blackistone then proceeded to spread some fake news of his own:
You know, we talked about -- and I know this network has -- about the review of books for youth in the public schools and the state of Florida, and some of those that have not yet been allowed back on the shelves. One of those books happens to be a book about Jackie Robinson, so think about the irony of that. They also temporarily suspended the distribution of books about Roberto Clemente and Hank Aaron, two of the great black stars of baseball.
The Roberto Clemente controversy came about because political actors were trying to make a scene not because of any DeSantis policy. Another big swing and a miss for MSNBC.
This segment was sponsored by Liberty Mutual.
Here is a transcript for the March 10 show:
MSNBC Reports
3/10/2023
10:29 AM ET
LINDSEY REISER: Back in DeSantis's home state his fellow Republicans are pretty busy this week with lawmakers introducing three new bills that would expand on legislation that critics call the Don't Say Gay Law, another that would ban abortion after six weeks of pregnancy and a proposal to require bloggers who write about Florida politics to register with the state. This all comes over a month after Governor DeSantis's decision to block AP African-American studies from Florida schools, but as Florida sees all kinds of controversy over those proposals, it's also in the middle of a spring tradition with 15 Major League Baseball teams currently holding spring training and the league and players facing growing calls to speak out against those bills.
Joining me right now, ESPN panelist and sports commentary writer for the Washington Post, Kevin Blackistone. He's out with a new piece called “Baseball can no longer ignore Ron DeSantis's culture wars.” Kevin, thanks for being with us. I want to talk to you about the piece. You outlined Major League Baseball's move out of Florida for spring training in yesteryear-- late '40s, a state with some of the harshest Jim Crow laws as the league was introducing black players to the league.
In 1947, again Jackie Robinson, joining Brooklyn Dodgers, his team moving spring training to Havana, Cuba. That same year the Cleveland Indians, the New York Giants moved spring training to Tucson, and in 1949, the next two black players to join the league in St. Louis moved spring training to Burbank, Florida.
By yesteryear—I mean this is recent history here. Walk us through that history and what parallels you see today.
KEVIN BLACKISTONE: True, well, thanks for having me on. You know, baseball champions itself as being in the vanguard of social change in this country, and you know, we all have talked about the Jackie Robinson story, but, you know, one part of the story we really haven't talked about is his first and earliest experiences with the farm team of the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1946 who, when they came to spring training in 1946, they found that the team could not get into some of the places that they were supposed to practice.
That they were supposed to put on exhibition games because of Jackie Robison's presence and John Wright who was another black player on that team. They had fields that were padlocked so that they couldn't enter them. They had places they wouldn't allow Robinson and Wright to walk onto the field, and so baseball reacted, right?
And they started to depart from -- or certain teams did from Florida, and that really began the tradition of the Cactus League in Arizona.
So that is the through line to what is going on now. And baseball has in the very recent past, right, in 2021 they moved the All-Star game out of the state of Georgia in protest to some of the election laws that a lot of people in the state of Georgia felt were burdensome on black voters in particular and other people of color and people who were marginalized in that state.
So I just think that, you know, baseball has spoken out on these issues before, and I think it should express if it has some uncomfortableness with the things that are going on in the DeSantis campaign, in the way that he's run the state of Florida, and in some of the other legislation that has been passed there that they should speak out.
You know, we talked about -- and I know this network has -- about the review of books for youth in the public schools and the state of Florida, and some of those that have not yet been allowed back on the shelves.
One of those books happens to be a book about Jackie Robinson, so think about the irony of that. They also temporarily suspended the distribution of books about Roberto Clemente and Hank Aaron, two of the great black stars of baseball.
