Ron DeSantis strikes out again...

Get the Point!

During a recent Christian Broadcast Network interview, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called basketball players "freaks of nature" in comparison to baseball players, which the interviewer called a "thinking man's game."

During the interview, DeSantis said:

"There's so many places that you need to have on a baseball team and there are different skills that are required—so some people can be a pitcher, some people can be a middle in-fielder, some people can be a catcher. And so I think that there's kind of a place for everybody in a baseball team if you're willing to work hard, if you're willing to practice. I kind of thought it was always a very democratic game, a very meritocratic game. Whereas I kind of viewed like basketball as like these guys are just freaks of nature. They're just incredible athletes. In baseball, you know, you have some guys that might not necessarily be the best athletes, but maybe they've got you know that slider that nobody can hit, or they have the skills that allow them to compete at the highest level."

I know that there are a LOT of Republicans who despise Donald Trump for his open bigotry, but as I've said many times before—Ron DeSantis is just as bad as Trump…if not much worse!

For those unaware, baseball at the youth, high school, and collegiate levels in the U.S. is predominantly white, while basketball at the same levels in the U.S is predominantly Black. By making this shallow comparison, DeSantis either forgot—or didn't care—that famed sportscasters Howard Cosell and Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder got fired from their jobs as sportscasters back in the 1980’s for expressing similar sports stereotypes.

Howard Cosell infamously said “look at this little monkey run” during an NFL game in 1972, and called Washington Redskins receiver Alvin Garrett the same in 1983—and never recovered his stature…

But that's just the thing about stereotypes—they are often biased positions based upon lies! Now, I'm quite sure that DeSantis legitimately didn't think that he was rattling a racist hornets nest by making a comment that I'm sure was meant to make himself look like a hard working intellectual jock as opposed to a gifted athlete, what with his having played baseball all the way through his college years at Yale University.

But I could only shake my head in disgust because DeSantis, who is seven years younger than I am, grew up in the same sporting era and surely watched athletes in basketball and football, the predominantly Black sports, work year 'round to perfect their crafts. Thus, DeSantis simply reworded the old stereotype that Blacks, specifically Black men, were “gifted” with skills, not hard workers!

From left: FAMU High classmates Walt Brown, Brian Holiday, Ricky Davis, Ken Rice, Chuck Hobbs, Eric Henry, Fred Higgs, and Ken Riley. Hidden from view are Jason Ward and Forrest Walker

Pictured above are a group of my oldest friends from the FAMU High Class of '90 during our 10th reunion in 2000. We all grew up playing all sorts of sports, and there were some really outstanding athletes among us who excelled at multiple sports through high school with one, Ken Riley II, who later became a star cornerback at Florida A&M University with another, Ricky Davis, later becoming a star basketball guard at FAMU in the 90’s.

Now, you may find this hard to believe these days because I'm rather wide and heavy set 😆, but I was a decent basketball player during my school days, despite being asthmatic (I kept an inhaler in my sock on the court). As FAMU High was a K-12 school, I grew up dreaming of the day that I would get to wear the orange and green and play against our rivals at Rickards and Shanks High School in our gym.

Well, when 9th grade rolled around, I joined my classmates at the first meeting for the junior varsity basketball team that was being coached by Mr. Steve Scroggins; barely cracking a smile, Coach Steve got my attention during that meeting in October of 1986 when he said, “the first two weeks of 🏀 practice we aren't going to even touch a basketball. We are going to run, run, and run some more. We will run up the hills, we will run down the hills. We will run around the campus, downtown, and back. We will sprint up and down the basketball court over and over again to make sure that you are in the best shape for the fast pace with which we will beat our opponents this year.”

What my friends didn't know is that Coach Steve ended my entire competitive basketball playing career right then, because I knew that the way my bronchial tubes were set up, that I wasn't going to be up for all that extreme cardio conditioning 😂.

What I did know is that my classmates who remained to tryout, Fred Higgs, Sterling Hollingsworth, Jason Ward, Ricky Davis, Ken Rice, Eric Henry, and Ken Riley, among others, were in excellent shape and got in even better shape during practices and games! Heck, ever since we were kids, Sterling and Eric Henry were literally the only Black dudes that I knew who won trophies as cross country distance runners, so I knew that Coach Steve was going to love coaching them if they stuck with it 😆. So, instead of sulking, I became one of the biggest FAMU High JV basketball supporters and bided my time waiting for baseball practice to start in the spring, where I played 1st base and stayed in my limited conditioning lane 😆.

Hobbs (l), first baseman on the first row, during picture day at FAMU High School.

Now, if you're thinking, “but wasn't DeSantis making a similar point, Hobbs” the answer is a hard “no!” You see, my childhood friends were not “freaks of nature” at all, they were just really talented athletes who practiced extremely hard to play the game(s) that they loved. As did I, even if my physical type was better suited for sports with rest breaks between the action (football/baseball), as opposed to basketball or soccer—both of which required literally non-stop movement.

But what's most troubling to me is that DeSantis and his defenders seemingly shrug their shoulders when I or any number of Black men from my era tell them that such stereotypes are old, lame, and typical racist drivel. Perhaps those of this ilk will never understand our position on social media, so we will help them understand it fully come election season 2024—if DeSantis somehow beats his former mentor, Donald Trump, in the GOP Primary.