Baseball Players Plan to Boycott Arizona All-Star Game

Despite pressure from immigrant rights groups, Major League Baseball (MLB) has continued to refuse to move the scheduled 2011 All-Stars game out of Arizona. In a recent article on Alternet, the heads of the Leadership Council on Human and Civil Rights and of La Raza called upon MLB once again to move the All-Stars game to another state.

Addressing baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, they write, "We are not asking Selig to weigh in on immigration policy; we are asking him to take a stand against bigotry and intolerance." They further point out that moving the All-Star game is completely within his power, due to a wide-reaching clause in the league constitution that allows him to make any decision in the "best interests of Major League Baseball."

There is precedent for sports leagues relocating a major game due to the racist, intolerant policies of a state. In fact, there's precedent right in Arizona. In response to pressure from civil rights activists, the National Football League (NFL) decided to hold the 1993 Super Bowl in Florida instead of Arizona due to the state's refusal to recognize Martin Luther King Day. When Arizona finally did institute a MLK holiday, the NFL rewarded them by giving the state another crack at holding the Super Bowl, the 1996 one this time.

MLB would also be well advised to listen to the viewpoints of its players on having the game in Arizona. A number of baseball players have come out in opposition to the effective institutionalization of discrimination and racial profiling in SB 1070 (as has the Major League Baseball Players Association), and have said that if they end up on the All-Star team next year, and the game is still happening in Arizona, they will boycott.

In addition to being slated to hold next year's All-Star game, Arizona is a major location for baseball's spring training and rookie league. Many of the new recruits (a lot of teenagers) hail from Latin America and don't speak English fluently, making them easy targets for SB 1070. Some teams are holding special seminars for players to educate them about the fact that Arizona hates them ... I mean, so they understand the political situation in the state and how to avoid arrest. They've also issued special ID cards to players (so they don't have to carry and risk losing their passports and visas, which teams usually insist on locking in a safe), which instruction on what to do and who to contact if they get caught by the provisions of SB 1070.

MLB teams are clearly concerned about the risk to their players from SB 1070. So it seems ridiculous that they're holding special trainings and issuing identification cards in an attempt to protect players, and yet are still willing to hold the All-Star game in Arizona, where sports fans with brown skin have to think twice about coming to attend the game. And shouldn't everybody feel safe going to the ball game?

Photo credit: billaday