John Rocker has opinions. The 25-year-old 6-foot-4, 225 pound Atlanta Braves pitcher says he doesn't like foreigners, minorities, gays, and just about anyone who doesn't look, act, or think like he does.

    He called a Black teammate a "fat monkey," and said that Asian women are bad drivers. He says he'll quit baseball before ever being traded to a New York team because he doesn't want to take the subway to work, "looking like you're [riding through] Beiruit next to some kid with purple hair next to some queer with AIDS right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids." His views, brewed in a cauldron of ignorance and stupidity, aren't any different from many Americans--probably millions of Americans. He's said them before, to friends, fans, teammates and, maybe, even a few sports writers. Unfortunately, this time John Rocker said them to a reporter for Sports Illustrated who included it in a four-page spread at the back of the 3.3 million-circulation magazine.

    "I'm not a racist or prejudiced person," Rocker claimed, "but certain people bother me." One of those people is likely to be baseball commissioner Bud Selig.

    "Mr. Rocker's recent remarks [are] reprehensible and completely inexcusable," said Selig who ordered Rocker to undergo psychological tests.

    Punishment for Rocker's opinions are warranted, chimed in Atlanta Braves president Stan Kasten. The Players Association, with one-fifth of its members foreign-born and about 40 percent Black or Hispanic, isn't objecting.

    Under pressure from Management, Rocker apologized. But, Major League Baseball will probably discipline him for having views it doesn't consider to be acceptable—at least in public.

    This, of course, is the same sport that banned Blacks and Hispanics from its fields for more than a half-century, which didn't allow a Black to be a manager for another three decades, which still bans women, and for which the owners were at least half the reason why there was a strike in 1994. But, baseball officials think they, like private enterprise, can dictate what their employees think and say.

    The American revolution was built upon a libertarian foundation that all views, even ones that may be blatantly stupid or racist, must be heard. In "The Areopagitica" (1644), which Thomas Jefferson freely quoted from, John Milton had written that truth and falsehood must be allowed to compete in a free and open encounter, and that truth will eventually be known. Two centuries later, John Stuart Mill in On Liberty (1859) reaffirmed the libertarian philosophy when he pointed out, "We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still." A few years after that, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes told us that democracy is best served in a "marketplace of ideas."

    On the morning of June 12, 1996, a three-judge federal panel in Philadelphia issued a 175-page decision that declared the Communications Decency Act unconstitutional. "The strength of our liberty depends upon the chaos and cacophony of the unfettered speech the First Amendment protects," wrote Judge Stephen Dalzell.

    That afternoon, the owners of Major League Baseball, apparently having not read the First Amendment, declared the opinions of Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott to be an embarrassment, and ordered her suspended from day-to-day operations for two and one-half years. The sanction came three years after they had fined her $25,000 and banned her for a year following remarks that most people would label as anti-Semitic and racist. In an ESPN interview, she defended Hitler as someone who at the beginning of his career helped the people and accomplished much, although she did say he later "went too far." In a Sports Illustrated interview she insulted Asians, working women, and others. On opening day of the season, after umpire John McSherry died at the plate and the game was postponed, Schott told the Cincinnati Enquirer,"I feel cheated. This stuff isn't supposed to happen to us here."

    Schott's latest suspension, Bud Selig told the media, was the "result of a succession of events," including her tight-fisted financial control and her nauseous beliefs that "quite frankly were not in anyone's best interest."

    "Purists" rightfully claim that the First Amendment applies only to governmental infringement, and that private enterprise, such as Major League Baseball, can do what it wants. However, Major League Baseball enjoys a special status--cities float municipal bonds for stadiums then issue eminent domain orders to tear away houses and lots; and the federal government has waived anti-trust action against a sport that reeks of blatant disregard of the nation's laws against monopolies. Because baseball willingly accepts extensive government assistance, it shuld be compelled to adhere to the tenets of the First Amendment.

    In 1927, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, in Whitney v. California (1927), wrote that "the remedy to be applied [to evil and falsehood] is more [free] speech, not enforced silence."

    Perhaps Rocker and Schott, as well as those justifiably outraged by their opinions, will one day sit down to listen to each other, and realize that education not gags should be the solution for ignorance. Major League Baseball once silenced those who tried to speak out for integration. It was wrong then. It is wrong now.

Copyright 2001 Walter M. Brasch