Thursday, November 20, 2008

Get Your PC Bullspit Off My Sports Page !

Yeah, I'm talking to you, Yahoo!, and to the AP.

Seems like the Seattle Mariners hired Don Wakamatsu as their next manager. Interesting. What's his resume like? Who knows, because the whole damn article was about his race and the torments his parents endured under the United States government:

Don Wakamatsu is proud to be the first Asian-American manager in major league history. He’s also keenly aware of what his grandparents endured, generations before he took over the Seattle Mariners.
During World War II, the United States government moved his Japanese ancestors across the country from one internment camp to another. Wakamatsu’s father, an iron worker, was born in one.


“I’m proud to represent some of what they went through in their lifetime,” Wakamatsu said. “If I can set a future stepping stone for Japanese-Americans and just the equality in baseball, I’m glad to bear that torch.”
A fourth-generation Japanese-American, the former Oakland bench coach was introduced Wednesday as the new manager of the Mariners.

James Wakamatsu, 93, and 91-year-old wife Ruth were hardworking, modest-living fruit growers in Oregon’s Willamette Valley before the U.S. rounded up Japanese living in this country during the war.
The elder Wakamatsus were first sent to live in an internment camp set up in the infield of a horse racing track in Portland. Then they were moved to Tule Lake, Calif., to Jerome, Ark., and to the Chicago area.

“When they got out, they were offered the barracks to buy. They ended up shipping it to Hood River, Ore.,” he said of his grandparents. “As a child, I had no idea I was living in the barracks they were interned in. It blew me away.”


James and Ruth still live in that former part of an internment barracks in Hood River. They were thrilled when their grandson beat out six other candidates to become a major league manager for the first time.

You need to get 15 paragraphs into the story to learn anything about Wakamatsu's experience. Actually, it seems pretty thin:

This 45-year-old relative unknown spent five years as a bench coach and third-base coach in Texas, then one year as bench coach for the A’s before Seattle called. He has never managed above Double-A.

Sounds like the Obama ploy - when you have little to no experience within a field you wish to be employed in, tout your race as your key asset. Although to be fair it does not seem as if Wakamatsu played this card, it seems as if the etnic aspect is the only interesting angle the media could find within the story.

You know what I think is interesting? That his parents bought - and still live in - the barracks they were once interned in. Seems like Wakamatsu's grandparents are quite "over it" and content with their life in America, and are enjoying the little practical joke they played on it as well.

If only the same could be said for our grudge-hunting, race-obsessed, anti-American media ...

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