Political Correctness has struck once again. The New York Mets this week fired Bill Singer one week after they had hired him. What Singer had done was to make what were called “racially insensitive remarks” to an executive of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The incident happened at a meeting of baseball executives in Phoenix, AZ. Singer, who had been hired as a special assistant by the Mets, approached Kim Ng.
Ng is an assistant general manager for the Dodgers. She is one of the highest-ranking women in baseball administration.
Singer was said to have asked Ng about her ethnicity. According to accounts, she replied that her ancestry is Chinese but that she was born and raised in the U.S. Singer then reportedly spoke in a mocking, pigeon Chinese.
Singer pitched in the major leagues for 14 years, recording two 20-win seasons. He and the Mets apologized to Ng. Mets general manager Jim Duquette hired Singer, who had been a special assistant to the General Manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Duquette announced the firing on Tuesday. He said it is a matter of policy in the organization to not tolerate any comment or conduct by an employee that suggests insensitivity or intolerance to any racial ethnic or religious group.
That’s a good policy. But it is a harsh one. I would have to admit that Singer’s conversation was insensitive, but probably was not intended that way. He probably was making an inept attempt at “hitting on” Ng.
It is apparent that one must be extra careful when at the top.
Saturday this weekend is the day of The Game … Michigan-Ohio State. What a phenomenon. This year, as in many years, it will decide the Big Ten Championship and probably, it will determine Ohio State’s chances of getting back into the national championship game.
But it always is the game on which the success of the entire season hinges for many Buckeye and Wolverine fans.
Saturday also, as you probably have noticed, is the 40th anniversary of the assassination of President John Kennedy … certainly one of the most significant days in U.S. history. It’s hard not to play the “Where were you …?” game this weekend.
I was a senior at Columbian High School and a member of the Tiffinian student newspaper staff.
As it turned out, November 22nd was the day we published the paper. It was one of the duties of my friend Richard Shelton and me to get the papers from Haefling Printing, drop off the correct number of copies at East and West Junior Highs and bring the rest to Columbian.
Neither Richard nor I had a car to drive to school but Richard Dryfuse, who was dating one of the girls on the staff, did. So the three of us were in Dick’s ’57 Chevy when we heard the news from Dallas on the radio, somewhere between Haefling’s and the two junior high schools.
As we dropped off the papers at East, we passed along the news we had heard. I’ll never forget the disgusted look we got from the school secretary, who obviously thought we were making some kind of sick joke until we convinced her to turn on the radio.
On the way back to Columbian, I remembered having seen a draft of a story someone had written for that issue. It was a take-off on Macbeth, which we were studying in English class at the time.
The story eerily replaced the characters of Shakespeare’s play with members of the Kennedy administration. If that went public a lot of bad things could happen.
I quickly grabbed one of the copies and looked to see whether the story was in there. Thankfully, it was not. The newspaper adviser told me later that there had not been room for the story in that issue.
Needless to say, it never was published.
For better or worse, watching local reporters in distant Dallas, Texas cover the story of the century, convinced me to make journalism a career.