Sport: The Black Dominance

(6 of 6)

The prejudice of white fans against a black man calling signals and directing the team does not help. Joe Gilliam was one of the first black N.F.L. quarterbacks, starting six preseason and another half-dozen regular-season games for the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1974. His record up to that point was 10-1-1, but his life was hell in a very small place. Lynn Swann recalls: "He would get anonymous phone calls. They said they could rip him off any time they wanted to, there were two guns pointed at him, that if he started the ball game, he'd never see another day." Gilliam's performance declined steadily under the pressure; Terry Bradshaw took over and led the Steelers to their first Super Bowl title.

Another reason that black athletes do not get a fair chance on some teams is that few front-office and head coaching jobs are held by blacks. There is one black major league manager, but no black has been trusted to send runners home from the third-base coaching box. Only the N.B.A. has blacks in major decision-making positions. Even the bench is a white preserve. Unlike some white athletes, blacks do not have the luxury of being marginal players. For them, it is stardom or back to the minors. According to a 1967 study, black players had higher batting averages than their white counterparts at every position.

Despite some of these difficulties, the black athlete has become folk hero to millions of Americans—particularly black youth. This disturbs Arthur Ashe, the only black among the top 100 professional tennis players. In an open letter to black parents, printed early this year in the New York Times, Ashe pointed out that there are only some 3,100 major positions open to athletes in professional sports, the annual turn over is low, and a black child has less than one chance in 1,000 of becoming a pro. "Unfortunately," Ashe wrote, "our most widely recognized role models are athletes and entertainers—'runnin'' and 'jumpin'' and 'singin'' and 'dancin'.' While we are 60% of the National Basketball Association, we are less than 4% of the doctors and lawyers ... less than 2% of the engineers ... less than 11% of construction workers."

Ashe urged parents to "instill a desire for learning alongside the desire to be Walt Frazier," and called on young blacks to spend two hours in the library for every hour on the athletic field. "We have been on the same roads—sports and entertainment—too long," he continued. "We need to pull over, fill up at the library and speed away to Congress and the Supreme Court, the unions and the business world." Then, in a humorous tone but still expressing what many blacks feel is true—and what whites are coming to acknowledge—he predicted: "Don't worry, we will still be able to sing and dance and run and jump better than anybody else."