Quote:
Originally Posted by djson1
The athletic world (not just the HoF) is FULL of jerks, racists, haters, etc. You have to guess that these guys are so Type A and just look out for #1, that they don't care a lick about anybody else. Truly nice guys are rare, but there are some great nice ones too (too many to list).
I'm still hoping that all those rumors of great baseball players like Speaker and Hornsby (maybe even Cronin) being associated with the KKK are not true (that would make them real big jerks!). Many of these are based on rumors, according to my research, but some are convinced that they did have ties. That would be disappointing as I admire Tris Speaker and Hornsby as the best of the best. BTW, wasn't Enos Slaughter a big racist jerk? Plus, his numbers weren't even that great.
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As I understood the KKK stuff, there were some parts of the country where membership was extremely widespread and considered almost respectable among the general population of whites. At least one Supreme Court justice [Hugo Black] was a KKK member in the 1920s, joining because he felt he needed the KKK vote to win elective office in Alabama. His record on the bench and as an employer of law clerks did not jibe with a racist viewpoint.
As for Slaughter, there was a highly publicized incident [as shown in
42] when he spiked Jackie Robinson but he [Slaughter] always denied it was racial and in his 'defense' it is true that he injured numerous white ballplayers with his spikes and was widely known as one of the dirtiest players in the game, so whether he was being his normal self or a racist is by no means clear.
As a guest a card shows I always experienced him as one of the good ones, happy to be there, willing to chat and accommodate fans, etc. I got this one at a show about 20 years ago:
