Phil Mushnick Told Us Who He Admired Growing Up - And Finally Said The Quiet Part Out Loud

 

 

I've long realized that by far the clearest insight into how Rupert Murdoch sees the world is not Fox News but the New York Post. By comparison to the tabloid headlines and much of the op-ed, Fox News really is fair and balanced.

The front pages and so much of the articles make it very clear the insight to the conservative mind when it comes to their ideology. They haven't been saying the quiet part out loud but they've been whispering very loudly for the twenty years I've seen their front pages and much of their op-ed – and a lot of it was well before MAGA came on the scene. They've never bothered with the 'just-asking-questions' thinking of the Sean Hannity's or Jeanine Pirro's of the world; no their headlines and story make it very clear about the worst parts of the conservative bigotry and how Democrats will destroy the world if you give them an inch. That they are in the most liberal city in America should have put them out of business years ago but I honestly think Murdoch would have rather lost Fox News than have had the Post go out of business.

For all that when it comes to the political part of it, not even the op-ed writers or 'journalists' who write for the Post will actually say that what many conservatives probably believe: that diversity has destroyed America and will destroy the world. (That's the Internet's job, but I'll deal with that at another time.) No that particular work has been left to the sports page and the 'writings' of Phil Mushnick.

This is hardly the first column I've written about this racist ogre who by stretching the definition to its breaking point is a sports writer. His subject is sports and he's clearly literate but in fact he's basically the voice for the most racist aspects of conservatism that I'm pretty sure even Trump and his ilk would never say out loud or even tweet. Mushnick has said the most offensive things about African-Americans, gays, women under the guise of writing about sports and he can just about get away with it because he essentially is derogatory about every single aspect of sports from broadcasting to the commissioners to the front office. And because he has just as often criticized white players as he has black players, he can just get away with saying he's 'telling like it is'. But I've long suspected the kind of man Mushnick is and in today's column he confirmed it.

In what was ostensibly a column about baseball Mushnick gave his usual diatribe about the morality of the game, how the commissioners had failed, broadcasters were destroying the game by broadcasting, how video games were making the youth of America mindless idiots, how morality was absent from Chicago, how Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling were aliens (I don't know what his problem is)…in short, the usual Mushnick diatribe. But the first paragraph had to do with how no one appreciated baseball heroes any more. And Mushnick finally told us who he admired growing up and who he wanted to be: Yankee pitcher Whitey Ford.

Now I know the nickname itself would seem to be saying the quiet part out loud and I'm sure Mushnick is upset we can't just call ballplayers nicknames like Stinky and Dummy and Dizzy without offending people anymore (those like Ford's were all real nicknames). But the difference is later on Mushnick writes a diatribe arguing why the Cubs are choosing to pay tribute to Sammy Sosa and why they haven't taken down the statue of Barry Bonds because they were cheaters.

First things first. Mushnick has spent so much time arguing about the private and public faces of players on every level of the NBA as being 'a disgrace to the integrity to the game'. He has to know that Whitey Ford was far from a model citizen. He knows very well that he and Mickey Mantle were among the biggest drinkers and cavorters on the Yankees of that era to the point that General Manager George Weiss was hired private detectives to follow them. He also knows that Weiss traded Billy Martin primarily because he thought Martin was leading Ford and Mantle astray and never gave them credit for getting into their own trouble.

Just as on point Ford was very much a cheater himself. In the later stages of his career, he became known for doctoring the ball. He famously threw a spitball, a mudball and used his ring to scuff it. This was public knowledge as early as 1974 and was published in multiple books well before Mushnick became a sportswriter. He can't plead ignorance on that fact either.

I'm not saying this to deny that Ford wasn't a great pitcher – he was one of the best to ever play to game. But he was not a role model the same way the Derek Jeter or Andy Petite were, two players Mushnick never had anything good to say about when they were active or now, and he was just as much a cheater in his own way as Sosa and Bonds.

But I'm pretty sure I know why Mushnick admired Ford so much growing up. He could have chosen any number of pitchers of that era, such as Bob Gibson or Sandy Koufax. But this is not the first time he has made it clear the few players he has any admirations for were on the Yankees in their dynasty of the 1950s and early 1960s. And its there that he has finally confirmed what I always believed.

Because Mushnick is not an idiot. He knows that the Yankees of that period famously were the last New York team to integrate. He knows that general manager George Weiss famously said: "I will never allow a black man to where a Yankee uniform. Boxholders from Westchester don't want to sit with that sort of crowd. They would be offended to have to sit with n----ers." Weiss only brought up Elston Howard in 1955 because the pressure from the African-American community – including the New York City liberal establishment – was too much pressure. Weiss would not bring up another black player through the farm system while he was GM and only one more would come via trade. When Weiss left the Yankees, the team would soon pay the price for not having scouted African-American players enough and they would completely collapse in 1965 as a result.

This basically confirms that Mushnick, had he lived during that period, would have been upset at 'the outside agitators' forcing integration. Not just in baseball or sports but in society at large; that's pretty much something he states directly in so many of his other articles over the last few years. This attitude of racism is pretty much the tenor of so many of the articles in the Post but the sportswriters don't go anywhere near it in their writing which makes their writing incredibly liberal. Mushnick, famously, won't acknowledge that much. He's always stated that the Lebron James and Serena Williams are polluting their sports with their 'bad characters'. You know, acting all uppity. He's been far more direct and honestly made more racist quotes in his column over the years but this pretty much confirms that he thinks only white, male athletes can be role models.

I'm well aware that sportswriters have a conservative streak and baseball has the most conservative fan base of all. But of all the professional sports baseball has been going backwards with the number of African-American players on teams to the point in 2023, neither team had an African-American player on either team playing in the World Series. Many commentators and fans saw this as a step backwards. Mushnick probably thought this was a step in the right direction. "Next time, how about none of those spics?" he probably had to be talked out of writing in his column afterwards (but he no doubt drafted it)

Phil Mushnick is the most conservative writer in the most conservative newspaper in America not because of his politics but because of his very bigoted attitudes towards society that no doubt Murdoch wishes his commentators on Fox News could say. Mushnick believes in a purity of the game and not the purity of fairness but the kind Klansmen – who were still quite prominent when Whitey Ford was pitching  – would admire. The irony is that Whitey Ford and the other Yankees were not bigots and respected African-American players and what they went through. Ford died relatively recently and he would not have approved of the kind of commentary Mushnick wrote. Certainly he probably wouldn't have wanted to be called Mushnick's favorite player growing up – or if he did, he'd be ashamed of the kind of man Mushnick grew into as all civilized people should be.