By Nicholas Stix
On Thursday night, following the San Francisco Giants’ 9-0 drubbing of the Texas Rangers in game two of the World Series, Fox Sports announcer Joe Buck interviewed one of the game’s heroes, Colombian shortstop, Edgar Renteria. Buck mentioned that Renteria had considered retiring from the game. Fans who didn’t know Renteria’s official age would not have been surprised; the veteran looks to be 40, or close to it. After all, unless he was really busted up, why would a much younger, still talented player consider hanging up his cleats, when he could still make millions of dollars per season? Indeed, after the 2008 season, Renteria signed a two-year free agent contract with San Francisco for $18.5 million.
As soon as the interview was over, Buck informed the viewing public, “Edgar Renteria is a prince of a person.”
(Joe Buck is the son of late, legendary Cardinals’ announcer, Jack Buck; see also here.)
Afterwards, I checked Renteria’s stats. Though he is finishing his 15th full season as a starting, big league shortstop, the ancient, paunchy veteran allegedly only turned 35 on August 7. Thus, when he was “considering retirement,” he was allegedly just past his 33nd birthday. But over the past four years, starting when he was allegedly only 31, he has been injury-plagued, and went from averaging 152 games per season from 2003 through 2006, to only 114.5 from 2007 through 2010, and missed 90 games this season. Such physical deterioration is characteristic of players in their late thirties or older.
Meanwhile, Renteria’s obese, old-looking, Dominican, Giants teammate, Juan Uribe, is allegedly 31. And Renteria’s middle-aged looking, paunchy, Dominican, former Marlins teammate, Luis Castillo, only turned “35” last month. During the 2009 season, when I asked The Boss how old Castillo looked, she said “40,” which sounded about right to me. At the time, he was allegedly only 33.
And last spring, I celebrated my annual 21st birthday. I did, I tell you! My ten-year-old son even bought me a “Happy 21st Birthday” card. If Uribe can claim to be 31, and Renteria and Castillo 35, respectively, then I can say I’m 21, darn it! Heck, in that alternate universe, VDARE.com’s Joe Guzzardi, who looks fit as a fiddle these days, may only be 20!
Latin players lying about their ages, and even their identities, is an old story of cultural enrichment. But that’s not what has me questioning Renteria’s royal character, or Buck’s judgment.
Whatever Renteria’s real age may be, I know that he is not “a prince of a person.” For one thing, he has conducted a feud with Colombia’s second-best ballplayer, Orlando Cabrera, in a less than princely fashion.
More importantly, as Joe Guzzardi reported on May 29, 2009, Renteria, who with his brother, Edinson, owns the Colombian Professional Baseball League, entered into a two-year affiliation agreement with the independent Golden Baseball League to run the on-field operations of the GBL’s Yuma Scorpions, whereupon the Renterias fired every single American player, and replaced him with a Colombian.
(Reports on ownership of the Scorpions were murky; some reports said that the GBL owned them, while others identified Diamond Sports & Entertainment as the owner. But since David Kaval was cited as the CEO of each organization, it’s his show. However, as one might expect of the flying-by-the-seat-of your-pants world of independent baseball, Kaval is constantly on the prowl for new investors, affiliates, and “creative” ways to reduce overhead, such as the 2% tax, referred to variously as a “Hospitality Tax” and as a “Two Percent Special Revenue Excise Tax” on all bars, restaurants, hotels and motels that the City of Yuma levied in May, 2009. Kaval inked the affiliation deal with the Renterias “less than 12 hours after the hospitality tax passed.” Yuma’s citizens had no idea what they were really voting for. Thus did Americans unwittingly subsidize the massive firing of American ballplayers and their replacement by inferior foreigners.
Baseball owners are unsentimental businessmen whose fortunes are based to a large extent on their ability to pluck the heartstrings of sentimental fans. The lower one goes on the sports business food chain, the more the Field of Dreams mystique comes into play. But David Kaval had no compunctions about a team of American ballplayers getting cut loose.)
Renteria could not possibly argue that the American players stunk, and that the Colombian players were an upgrade. As Guzzardi observed, Colombia—in contrast, say, to the Dominican Republic—has never been home to an abundance of great baseball players. The only successful Colombian players are Renteria and his nemesis, Orlando Cabrera. And 10 of the American Scorpions whom Renteria shafted, quickly managed to sign on with other teams.
Then, on opening night, the displaced American Scorpions, many now playing for the Saint George Roadrunners, hammered the Colombians 13-3. A day later the Roadrunners inflicted more of the same, beating the Scorpions 11-6. Through the season’s first week, the Colombian Scorpions occupy last place with a 1-5 record.
Making the case that the current Colombian Scorpions are better players than the past American Scorpions, as [Dave Kaval] tried to do, is hard when the South American pitchers can’t get anyone out.
Bad News Baseball: Yuma Scorpions’ American-Born Players Displaced by Imported Colombians by Joe Guzzardi, VDARE.com, May 29, 2009.
In fact, far from improving the team, the Colombians made the Scorpions the worst team in the entire Golden League. Although they had finished a respectable 47-39, with a .547 winning percentage in 2008, the Colombian Scorpions finished 29-47, with a .382 winning percentage, in 2009. Meanwhile, the Scorpions’ South Division rival Saint George Roadrunners, fielding several of the discriminated-against, American former Scorpions, finished 48-34, with a .585 winning percentage, to win the South Division.
That season, one of the American Scorpions whom Renteria had discriminated against, A.J. Valentine, was named one of the two Golden League Players of the Month for June:
GBL June Players of the Month are 1B AJ Valentine and LHP Isaac Hess
St. George 1B Leads League in HR & RBIs, Victoria Starter Posts 5-0 Record
“San Ramon, CA. July 8, 2009 – The Golden Baseball League announced today that the Players of the Month for June are St. George Roadrunner 1B AJ Valentine and Victoria Seal LHP Isaac Hess. Both players have also been named GBL All-Stars and will be performing at the GBL All-Star game in St. George, Utah next Tuesday on July 14th.
“Valentine, 26, 6-6, 220 went undrafted [as did Hess, after leading “South Mountain Community College … to the junior college world series”!] out of Cal State Stanislaus after putting up extraordinary power numbers. He has been a prolific slugger in the GBL for two years as he was signed by the Yuma Scorpions part way through the 2007 and hit 22 home runs and drove in 106 runs in 129 games in Yuma over the last two seasons. Joining St. George this year, his power numbers continue to climb and his batting average has soared as well. During the first month of this season he led the league in home runs with 8, RBIs with 46, and Slugging Average at .678. He was also second in doubles with 13 and second in runs scored with 42 as he went 45 for 121 and posted a batting average of .372. In addition, he is considered one of the top defensive first basemen in the league and was key to his Roadrunner's winning the first half South Division title….”
Renteria obviously had no choice but to dump Valentine!
Though the American former Scorpions enjoyed a measure of revenge, and the Colombian Scorpions’ hapless season was poetic justice, according to the 1964 U.S. Civil Rights Act, Renteria was guilty of a classic case of national origins discrimination.
Unfortunately, by then, the White House and Department of Justice were both under occupation by racists and traitors who were and remain determined to rob white, heterosexual Christians of all of their rights, while granting to blacks, Hispanics, foreigners, homosexuals, etc. all sorts of illegal privileges.
More poetic justice: For the 2010 season, Kaval ended the affiliation agreement with the Renterias, and entered into a new affiliation agreement with a married couple named Ricky and Romy (Acevedo) Smith, who represented themselves in America as “Golden Gloves Professional Baseball” (GGPB), and operated the Scorpions on behalf of Edwin Zerpa, the president of the Venezuelan Baseball Federation, who alleges that Ricky Smith represented himself to Zerpa as the head of the Golden Baseball League—that would be Dave Kaval.
The Smiths’ visionary business plan involved replacing the Colombians with over 40 Venezuelans, and not paying any of them (or anyone else)! By late July, after months of the Smiths not paying anyone, while claiming to have problems transferring money from Venezuela to Arizona, Kaval took over operating the club.
(The Venezuelans played well in the first half, tying for first place in the South Division at 27-18, but losing on a tie-breaker, before folding in the second half, to finish 41-49.)
Kaval has promised legal action against Ricky Smith who, according to Edwin Zerpa, was well-known in the highest circles in Venezuela, but who, it turned out, had a long record of bilking people in Canada. And according to Edwin Zerpa, Romy Acevedo Smith was wanted by Interpol, but Dave Kaval insists that Zerpa has no credibility.
My hunch is that since the former Romy Acevedo reportedly acted on some level as go-between with the Venezuelans, that she is from that country. What Ricky Smith’s background is (Canadian?), remains to be seen.
By the way, I didn’t have to go cherry-picking for “Latin baseball corruption” stories; the phrase is redundant. The striking thing is how rarely America’s Hispandering MSM report on such fascinating, vibrant, diverse doings.
Thus, when Joe Buck called Edgar Renteria “a prince of a person,” perhaps he was thinking in multicultural terms: ‘For a Latin, Third World baseball guy, he’s a prince of a person.’
I’m an American; I don’t think in multicultural terms. Thus, there are many words that I can think of to describe what kind of person Edgar Renteria really is, but Peter won’t let me use them, and so, “criminal” and “dirtbag” will have to do. Foreign Hispanics like Renteria (and Edwin Zerpa and Romy Acevedo Smith) are culturally enriching our national pastime, just as they are culturally enriching our nation, by introducing levels of corruption and chauvinism that are the norm where they come from, but which over generations had been reduced to aberrations here… until the Hispanic invasion took place.
America is today a place where opportunities and privileges are largely divvied up between the children of the rich, members of unconstitutionally protected Third World/affirmative action groups, and the criminal class that exploits the latter. The American dream of making it on one’s own hard work and talent is on life-support.
I wonder what that old patriot, Jack Buck (1924-2002) who, while in the 9th Infantry Division, got shot up holding the (Ludendorff) Bridge at Remagen would say about that, if he were still alive.
1 comment:
I grew up listening to Jack Buck. At night, I could hear KMOX radio where I lived and listened to Jack and Harry Caray do the Cardinal baseball games. In later years, he was one of the best play-by-play football announcers, radio or TV, I ever heard.
I also heard him do sports call-in shows on KMOX. Jack Buck didn't bring politics into it, but from some comments he made over the years, you could tell he was not a politically correct liberal.
He would entertain you while letting the game come first.
David In TN
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