Solution to statues is to quit building them
The path between Calvin Griffith’s mind and his voice was always treacherous.
In 1982, he proclaimed that Minnesota center fielder Jim Eisenreich was “doomed to be a superstar.” When someone asked Griffith about the nature of his knee surgery, he replied, “They took out the cartridge.” Irrigate that path with alcohol and you get the Waseca Lions Club meeting of 1978.
Unsolicited, the Twins’ owner told the group that his family moved the Washington Senators to the Twin Cities because the place was nearly all white. Griffith said Black people don’t go to baseball games, but they’ll put up “such a holler” at professional wrestling events “that it’ll scare you to death. You’ve got good hard-working white people here.”
This, of course, mortified most people, including Rod Carew, habitual batting champion for the Twins.
Until then, Griffith was only known as a skinflint. With free agency in motion, the Twins
were doomed to lose all their good players. But Griffith did spend money on scouting and development. Nine years later, Minnesota won a World Series. Four years after that, they won another one.
On Friday, the Twins removed Griffith from a display of statues at Target Field. This was applauded, of course, but there is a problem with the chronology.
The statue was not installed until 2010. That’s 22 years after Waseca.
In other words, the lava of racism that bubbled up within Griffith and finally rolled out of his mouth was not a problem for the organization, not until 2020 and the events therein.
When does a serious discussion about the malignancies of American history give way to just another showy piece of virtue-signaling? Right there in downtown Minneapolis, a few miles from East 38th and Chicago Avenue, scene of the sadistic murder of
George Floyd.
Forgive your stockbroker for failing to invest in a statue-removal business. All sorts of graven images are toppling, many of them Confederate soldiers, but not all.
A statue of Ulysses S. Grant, who won the Civil War for the Union, fell in San Francisco. Christopher Columbus is also hitting
the bricks throughout the country, and there is even a petition to rename the capital city of Ohio, perhaps to “Urban.”
A statue of the Texas Ranger was taken down at Dallas’ Love Field Airport, but the baseball team is ignoring commands that the nickname be changed.
Jerry Richardson, inventor of the Carolina Panthers,
has been hauled off, too, thanks to various indefensible remarks that canceled the rest of his life, including his refusal to re-sign Greg Hardy after Hardy’s domestic violence incidents.
Woodrow Wilson High in Long Beach, established 95 years ago, might get a new name. That particular president led the U.S.
to victory in World War I and created the Federal Reserve, the graduated income tax and the eight-hour workday. Those aren’t debated. Wilson’s history as a segregationist is, with plenty of evidence that damns him.
But we tore down nuance long ago.
The perennial cries to rename the Washington Redskins, Atlanta Braves, etc., resound throughout the land, without much concern about the actual, and awful, living conditions of Native Americans.
CNN commentator W. Kamau Bell said he was bemused by “white people patting themselves on the back” over the demise of Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben. Bell said he was more concerned about real inequities in education, jobs and law enforcement than the picture on a bottle of syrup or box of rice.
Two days later, the folks who make Eskimo Pie announced they would purge their guilt as well. No word from Manfred Mann about the lyrics of “The Mighty Quinn.”
Here’s an idea: Let’s quit building statues.
The whole point of a statue is permanence. Unlike
a plaque or a star on the sidewalk, a statue is an outsized image to preserve the person.
Unfortunately, people can’t be buffed into perfection the way a statue is.
Penn State built a statue of Joe Paterno because of his football wins, the millions of dollars he contributed to the school, the identity that he lent to the school, and the fierce loyalty shown by his players.
When Paterno proved to be tragically human, the school wasted no time dumping the statue, although it didn’t return any of the money he generated.
Somehow, perfection is expected from statues built to honor a species that never was meant to be perfect. The aspiration isn’t worth the demolition. Neither is the hypocrisy.
The Twins knew exactly who, and what, they were memorializing. They just couldn’t resist Statue Creep.
Maybe they forgot that Carew, when he learned he was joining the Hall of Fame in 1991, made his first call to Griffith. That is what distinguishes statues from human beings. Statues aren’t complicated.