Why No Negro League Uniforms in KC?

That's the question Joe Posnanski posed to the mutts that run the Royals organization in 2002. The response he got from a since departed marketing guy, was "we forgot". Yes. They forgot. And the KC Royals Marketing guy would not budge off that point. He refused to tear himself off the cross he volunteered to nail himself to for the Royals' ownership. The ownership that was too cheap to spend $6000.00 for commemorative uniforms to mark the annual Negro League game in Kansas City, the official home of the Negro Leagues. 

But you think that getting humiliated in print once would be enough. Apparently not.

Joe Posnanski writes here about it in a post entitled "Blunder From the Past"  and it begs the question on why stuff like this happens. And I have my own ideas on why idiocy reigns supreme at times like this.

Because Bud Selig allows it to happen.

It happens because guys like David Glass of the Royals, Lew Wolf of the A's, Peter Angelos of the Orioles, Fred Wilpon of the Mets, Jeff Loria (who has managed to trash two franchises), Robert Nutting of the Pirates and Team McCourt clowns own baseball teams that mean little more than their matching McMansions, McYachts, and McCountry club memberships. And I haven't even touched on Reinsdorf, Lerner in DC, or the Goldman Sachs cronies in Tampa, Sternberg and Silverman.

For the most part they have no first or even second-hand experience with the career path of most other employees. And it is that way because it has always been that way for spoiled children of privilege, and/or those fueled primarily by Gordon Gekko type greed. But mostly it is because they don't care.

They don't care because there are no consequences for not caring if there are no Negro League uniforms for what should be Kansas City's most important game. Apathy and greed and insulation from consequences is why Dodger Stadium is 2/3 empty every night and in last place. Its where fans get killed and maimed in their parking lots because the owners are skimping on security.  Its why the Pirates haven't had a winning year since Barry Bonds left almost 20 years ago. It is why the entire top of the Oakland Coliseum is covered with puke-green tarps. And it is why the Mets owners obsession for loan-sharking rates of investment returns put them in bed with Bernie Madoff. I guess you can never have too many $Millions.

Greed and Ego, and let the fans eat cake. You have things like this happen every year because the guys who are ultimately responsible, do not care if they offend the sensibilities of normal folks who have a sense of perspective and respect for traditions that actually do unite folks who have a history of not always getting along.

These guys don't care what Joe Posnanski thinks or writes. Though it may have happened, I have no recollection of any owner ever speaking out against the travesty that was Buck O'Neil's exclusion from the HOF while he was alive. They didn't care when the All-Star game was moronically called a tie and they proceeded to encourage Selig to make an ass of himself with the home-field-advantage-fairy tale.

These things happen because the people who could prevent them from happening couldn't be bothered less. Anway, I wrote something up a couple of days ago on Giants vs Dodgers ownerships, Burns vs McCourts