Why Can't You Accept Me? - The Story of Vida Blue

Vida Blue grew up in Rural Louisiana in the era of legalized segregation. Growing up in an all-segregated environment meant that Vida was not really directly exposed to racism as a child. He went to all-black churches, all black schools, his parents were buried in an all black cemetery. "Listen son, you don't wanna be nowhere where you're not wanted" is a mantra he was told as a kid when he would wonder about why they were not welcomed in certain places. As a result, he was raised to brush aside the issues faced during segregation as minor inconveniences rather than something he should fight against. "We didn't really know what prejudice was because we were generally kept away from it".

"It didn't bother me that my parents didn't want to go to the city pools", so when Vida was plucked from rural Louisiana and moved to a mostly white community in Burlington, Iowa, he was a stranger in a strange land. To earn the money to pay for his first baseball glove, he picked cotton for a week for a man named Horace Dinkins back home in Rural Louisiana. Eventually, he was a high school football star and one of the most dominant pitchers in the state as a teenager and signed a contract with the Oakland A's to become a professional pitcher. Blue was fast-tracked through the Minor Leagues, playing only the 1968 and part of the 1969 season before making his Major League debut. Blue was dominant in the Minors and was largely spared the brunt of the racism that was impacting the majority of black players at the time. "In Class A ball, I was like a deer in the headlights. I was just trying to establish myself back then." He was supporting his family back home after his father had passed on, so Vida had a lot of pressure to succeed and to stay away from controversy. "I went there to play baseball, that was my focus, and luckily I survived Burlington, Iowa".

The next year he went to Birmingham, Alabama...in the late 1960s when tensions were extremely high. "I heard stories of my teammates who played in the outfield who were getting all the racial slurs and stuff being thrown at them. Being a pitcher, I don't remember hearing anything, but I think it was because the people behind home plate paid more for their seats and were generally a higher class of people." Vida was hurt by these revelations from his teammates and truly felt it in his soul. "Why can't you accept me? We're all the same in the eyes of the lord." Vida spoke at length about the power of the spoken and written word to hurt and to cause deep wounds. "Words do hurt, and they go deep".

At the time Vida was making his progress to the Majors, he was seeing stars like Muhammad Ali, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Jim Brown speaking out (often with consequences) but most of his fellow black ballplayers remained silent. "It's not that they didn't have a platform, it's just that they didn't use it. Elgin Baylor, Wilt, you think of all these black stars in the 70s but they didn't use their voices then. But now is the time for us to make the changes and make them happen." Vida's passion for the movement's progress in 2020 is evident. Vida has been extremely involved in philanthropic activities for years, but has generally been a more quiet activist for change. Speaking about the Black Lives Matter Movement and the NBA walkout in August of 2020, "I'm Lebron James, but I'm still a black man in America. I'm World Champ, but when it comes to being pulled over, I'm still nothing more than a description. I've had 'the talk'".

"The Talk" has two different meanings in America. For white kids, "The Talk" happens when a kid is hitting puberty and their parents sit them down and talk about sex, sexuality and relationships. A simple Google search of "the talk with your kids" brings you to a bunch of pages talking about the "birds and the bees", but if you add in the simple word of "black" in front of kids, the result is VERY different. The first result on Google (on September 2, 2020) was the following article: "Having 'The Talk': How Families Prepare Black Children for Police Interactions". In the article, it tells how just about every teenager gets copious safe-driving tips from their parents when they get their first driver's license. But for black teens, the freedom and independence that comes with driving necessitates an added conversation - one often referred to simply as "the talk." This one offers advice for safely navigating potential encounters with police.

The fact that this is such a starkly different moment in a child's life depending on the color of their skin is obviously sad, but it is also telling of how deep this issue goes in American society. Vida's feeling on this disparity is that it is not causing deliberate ignorance of the problem, but rather it is merely just another piece of the privilege pie. "When you're so privileged, you have a blind eye to the rest of the world." People would ask him why he was mad, and his answer was "Why you mad? I'm mad because I get fucked with every time I step out of the door...give me something besides 'probable cause'." Vida is extremely focused on changing the world today. He has deep involvement in so many charitable organizations and he feels a strong affinity towards the new generation of ballplayers. "This is not about me, this is about us. I'm just so glad these young players have stepped up to the plate (he did ask me to pardon the pun in this instance) in this moment."

For many athletes, the path to success was extremely precarious and history is littered with extremely talented athletes who had promising careers derailed by one moment in time or a lack of structure keeping them focused on their sport. As a coach, I have seen quite a few of these players over the years, but it has always been much harder for the poor kids to overcome those obstacles and for those poor kids the obstacles are often far more numerous than their wealthy peers. While Vida made it, there were countless others like him in the South in the 1960s who suffered from a lack of opportunity, or worse, suffered from the consequences of their situation in life. Those complications could be physical, mental, psychological or they can be things like incarceration, lack of opportunity to play, alcoholism or drug abuse, etc. For Vida, baseball was his way out. "Baseball saved my life. During my teenage years I would've been rebelling but instead I was in these small towns playing ball and being held to a higher standard".

In 1971, Vida made history for being the first black man to start on the hill in an All-Star game. It took 24 years from the time Jackie Robinson integrated baseball to have a black starting pitcher in the All-Star Game. Interestingly enough, it was the only Major League All-Star game to ever feature two Black starting pitchers. Dock Ellis and Vida Blue started for the National League and American League, respectively, because they were both having historically good seasons. But historically good seasons were never a guarantee for an All-Star start, as Bob Gibson in 1968 would attest to. Because of that history, Dock Ellis made a concerted effort to place pressure on the manager of the National League team, Sparky Anderson. "Ain't no way they gonna start two brothers against each other in the All-Star Game...when it comes to black players, baseball is backwards and everyone knows it." Ellis is a legend in baseball for reasons beyond his all-star performance in 1971 and his politics, but Ellis was also known in baseball circles for his incredible intelligence. By speaking out on the issue, Ellis knew what he was doing, he was setting the stage for people to question why he was not the starter if Anderson chose to go in a different direction.

TO READ MORE OF VIDA BLUE'S STORY, LOOK FOR THE REST IN MY UPCOMING BOOK "You're Not Welcome Here: Stories of Discrimination and Exclusionary Practices in Baseball"