While it’s improbable that the president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman phones him for personnel input, Ice Cube believes he knows what the Los Angeles Dodgers lack.
In a word, it’s more black players. Indeed, you’re reading that correctly. The music mogul and Los Angeles icon Ice Cube tells TMZ that if they ever want to win, they need more black players.
Ice Cube Says Dodgers Need More Black Players If They Ever Wanna Win https://t.co/7343k0zkiw
— TMZ (@TMZ) October 14, 2019
Simply put, Ice Cube issued the following quote:
“They need to get some black ballplayers.”
Without question, every team could use more African American players on the roster. Right now, there just aren’t a lot of players of that race in the league in general. It’s a problem baseball is trying to deal with beginning at the youth age, something that has been prominent in the past in Cube’s home state of California.
While this is a news piece, I disagree with Cube’s assessment. First, he doesn’t provide any reasoning behind his statement. To me, if you’re going to come with a statement like this; you should have something behind it that backs it up. Why would this make the Dodgers ‘win anything’? Next, he forgets that two of the most prominent figures in the upper ranks of the Dodgers, Dave Roberts and Magic Johnson; are black.
Finally, I don’t think baseball people in front offices whether successful or not are concentrating a lot on the race of their players. In the end, it comes down to analytics and numbers, and there is not likely to be an algorithm bonus for being white, black, hispanic, or any other descent. There are too many jobs and legacies riding on the line to think otherwise.
The Dodgers have done a great job of having many different players of international backgrounds on the roster both in the recent and distant past.
In my opinion, this was a misguided or not well thought out take by the rapper. Someone quiz him and ask him if he knows what a safety squeeze is. Then, leave us your thoughts in the comments; is Ice Cube right or wrong on this?
