Obama, baseball & the racial scorecard

SO, WHAT does Barack Obama's victory mean to a middle-aged white guy from the 'burbs?

Plenty. And it's got a sports angle.

As a baseball fanatic, the 1971 all-star game in Detroit was more important to me than the last day of school or Christmas morning. I was 9 and baseball ruled my every thought. And being from the Philly area, I was ready to cheer on my National League heroes.

Shortly before the game, my big-baseball-fan grandfather, who lived with us, informed me that we'd be rooting for the American League. Why?

"Too many n-----s" on that National League team.

Just look at the pitchers: Dock Ellis, black; Juan Marichal, a "one-and-a-half" because he was a dark Latino (gramps called blacks "twos"); Fergie Jenkins, black; Don Wilson, black. Three "twos" and a "one-and-a-half." And four of the other eight National League starters were black. In our house, the rally towels would be waved for the whiter American League during the 1971 all-star game.

Problem arose right away. A black pitcher named Vida Blue started for the American League. National League white guy Johnny Bench clubbed a two-run homer off him in the second inning. Should I be sad for the American League or cheer for the white guy? An even bigger dilemma surfaced in the third inning: Reggie Jackson, a black American Leaguer, sent a ball over the roof at Tiger Stadium for a two-run homer. Do I cheer?

Three years later, Hank Aaron was closing in on Babe Ruth's magical home-run mark of 714. There was no ESPN, no Internet - just newspapers, box scores, the "Game of the Week" on NBC, Baseball Digest and highlights on the local news. I followed as closely as a 12-year-old could as Hammerin' Hank ascended Mount Cooperstown, enduring the sounds of my grandfather praying in his easy chair, "I hope that n----- breaks a hip or something so he can't take away that white man's record."

That white man's record.

IT DIDN'T STOP there.

The Dodgers were quite a team in the 1970s. And a quick inventory of the players suggests the team was pretty darn white. No matter. The Dodgers, remember, ushered in Jackie Robinson, breaking baseball's color barrier. The team, my grandfather snorted, "let in that n-----" back in 1947, forever muddying the landscape of baseball.

Brooklyn, Los Angeles, whatever . . . the Dodgers represented an end to all that was white about his beloved sport. A thousand years' worth of Hail Marys and acts of contrition would never absolve the Dodgers of such a sin. Don't ever root for them, I was warned.

My grandfather didn't know that I secretly cheered my National League heroes that night in 1971 and during every other all-star game that followed. Yep, Aaron, Mays, McCovey and Stargell all got silent "yippees" from me on that July night. To a 9-year-old, they weren't "one-and-a-halfs" or "twos." They were merely ballplayers - and the best ones, too.

That was the world I grew up in. I like the world of 2008 much better. *

Joe Berkery is a copy editor at the Daily News.