04/15/2026 6:40 pm EDT Kansas City Royals at Detroit Tigers

[NorthWoods]

41 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

n word was still in very wide currency in '50s America.

What's acceptable and what's not has changed so much in my lifetime and has nearly come full circle.  N***** has always been a slur.  On the other hand Negro replaced Colored which was the common term for my Grandfather's generation.   He used colored and not in a derogatory sense.  Then Black replaced Negro.  And African American seemed to pretty much replace Black.   Then it seemed like some mved back to Black.   And of People of Color came into use which nearly brings us back to Colored.

Of all of those I don't think any outside of N***** was/is meant to be a slur.

 

[NorthWoods]

38 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

I had friends that used it in the early 70s.  Whenever a fight broke out among us, they would shout out "Fight, fight, n***** and a white".  I never thought it was funny and knew it was wrong.  I don't know whether that was a common expression at the time or whether it was just them.  I had some friends from weak familiies.  My house was was the main gathering place for my group of friends.  I figured out out later it was because my parents were nice to them.   

That phrase was somewhat common where I grew up in rural Michigan only different in the sense it was "Fight, fight, a n*****, a black and a white".....not sure why but that's I recall hearing it.   Then again it's been a long time since someone would shout that.

[IdahoBert]

52 minutes ago, Sports_Freak said:

Sirens and very LOUD phone alerts woke me out of a sound sleep at about 1:30 AM. I finally got up and went to the basement at about 2 AM when thunder totally woke me up. I had just settled in when the lights went out. Luckily, I had the brains to take a lantern down there with me. 10 minutes later, the light came back on. The tornado warning (not watch) was over at 2:30 AM but I stayed down there until 2:50 or so. I was pretty surprised I fell back asleep, usually after waking up I toss and turn.

Whoa. Reminds me of Indiana as a kid. Nothing will ever compare to the Palm Sunday tornadoes in 1965. In Northeast Indiana we were without power or water for three days. We suffered no damage, but the infrastructure we were connected to was completely disrupted. If we got tapwater, we were told to boil it and fortunately, we had a gas stove.

We drove further north several days later and many of the small lake communities in Northeast Indiana were completely obliterated with every lake house completely demolished, and the only thing still standing was the bathroom fixtures.

We drove up to Coldwater Michigan, and the devastation was honestly unspeakable. 44 people died there.

Glad Detroit is relatively “safe.“

[IdahoBert]

32 minutes ago, NorthWoods said:

That phrase was somewhat common where I grew up in rural Michigan only different in the sense it was "Fight, fight, a n*****, a black and a white".....not sure why but that's I recall hearing it.   Then again it's been a long time since someone would shout that.

Oh yes, that was a common phrase in northeast Indiana 

[Sports_Freak]

34 minutes ago, IdahoBert said:

Oh yes, that was a common phrase in northeast Indiana 

I also remember kids on the playground using the n word while saying eenie meany miney moe...catch a _____ by the toe.

[chasfh]

I remember being so steeped in casual racism where and when I grew up—around Warren in the 60s/70s and then working at any number of crap manual labor jobs into the mid-80s—that when I finally got an office job in the late 80s, I specifically remember remarking to myself how surprised I was that I had worked there an entire year and not once did I ever hear anyone drop a N bomb. Once I started thinking about and examining that phenomenon more closely, the way I thought about racism and racist language shifted radically.

I have been back to the area plenty since I left over three decades ago and i can tell you that too many working-class white east side suburbanites are still like that. Sigh.

 

[Tenacious D]

4 minutes ago, chasfh said:

I remember being so steeped in casual racism where and when I grew up—around Warren in the 60s/70s and then working at any number of crap manual labor jobs into the mid-80s—that when I finally got an office job in the late 80s, I specifically remember remarking to myself how surprised I was that I had worked there an entire year and not once did I ever hear anyone drop a N bomb. Once I started thinking about and examining that phenomenon more closely, the way I thought about racism and racist language shifted radically.

I have been back to the area plenty since I left over three decades ago and i can tell you that too many working-class white east side suburbanites are still like that. Sigh.

 

I grew up in Warren during the same era and agree racist comments/jokes were commonplace.

[chasfh]

Just now, Tenacious D said:

I grew up in Warren during the same era and agree racist comments/jokes were commonplace.

Do you remember what else was commonplace during that era? Don't bother guessing, I'll just tell you: Polish jokes. I heard them constantly, several of them every day during my childhood, in and outside the home. And this in Warren, a city which is in the conversation for most Polish city in the United States.

And that's another thing that brought home the insidiousness of racist words and ideas to me: it took me until well into my 20s before I completely eradicated the notion that Polish people are naturally intellectually inferior because they are Polish. I know, sounds dumb, right? And of course it is. But when you're a child growing up in a certain time and place, and you're constantly inundated with rhetoric disparaging the intellectual capacities of Polish people, even in mostly joke form, and nobody around you is even bothering to dispute it, that's how a child becomes acculturated to thinking about it. It took me a long time to get past that idea to the point where it doesn't even occur to me in that way anymore, not even as an historical artifact of my upbringing. I'm not proud of it, but I don't consider it my fault, either.

Words matter.

[romad1]

5 hours ago, oblong said:

it's not a criticism of Jackie but a reminder of why we know of him beyond being a great player.  When we say he broke the color barrier what we mean is he was picked by racists as acceptable in an attempt to make it look like they were righting their wrong.  To me it's like someone writing a check to charity for domestic violence support after being discovered as an abuser.

 

Branch Rickey was no racist. 

[Tiger337]

2 hours ago, Sports_Freak said:

I also remember kids on the playground using the n word while saying eenie meany miney moe...catch a _____ by the toe.

Yeah, I heard that one in the 70s too.  

[Tenacious D]

1 hour ago, chasfh said:

Do you remember what else was commonplace during that era? Don't bother guessing, I'll just tell you: Polish jokes. I heard them constantly, several of them every day during my childhood, in and outside the home. And this in Warren, a city which is in the conversation for most Polish city in the United States.

And that's another thing that brought home the insidiousness of racist words and ideas to me: it took me until well into my 20s before I completely eradicated the notion that Polish people are naturally intellectually inferior because they are Polish. I know, sounds dumb, right? And of course it is. But when you're a child growing up in a certain time and place, and you're constantly inundated with rhetoric disparaging the intellectual capacities of Polish people, even in mostly joke form, and nobody around you is even bothering to dispute it, that's how a child becomes acculturated to thinking about it. It took me a long time to get past that idea to the point where it doesn't even occur to me in that way anymore, not even as an historical artifact of my upbringing. I'm not proud of it, but I don't consider it my fault, either.

Words matter.

I almost mentioned that, too.  Not sure it was just a Warren thing, though.  Very prevalent throughout my youth. 

[slothfacekilla]

Gotta admit I didn't expect all of this in the game day thread 😂

[CMRivdogs]

Western Pa kid here. Heard a number of slurs against Hungarians as well in the 50s and 60s. Especially from Irish and Italian relatives

[chasfh]

43 minutes ago, Tenacious D said:

I almost mentioned that, too.  Not sure it was just a Warren thing, though.  Very prevalent throughout my youth. 

Yeah, "Polack" jokes were a thing around the country during the 70s for sure, and probably into the 80s.

[romad1]

Did you guys talk about McGonigle's massive payday already and are now talking racial slurs until they come back into common use? 

[NorthWoods]

Growing up in the Midthumb area Polish jokes were huge.   And the most prevelant tellers?   Poles.

Ubly area, northern Sanilac, southern Huron county was loaded with Poles and they loved Polish jokes.

[Sports_Freak]

So....the rain in Metro Detroit is supposed to move out by 5:30 or so. I wonder how much rain the field at Comerica got? I'm sure Heather will have it in top shape...

The driveway is very wet.

[oblong]

1 hour ago, romad1 said:

Branch Rickey was no racist. 

I’m not referring to specific individuals but the MLB hierarchy as a whole. One man doesn’t absolve an entire league.  If they want credit for doing the right thing then it wouldn’t matter who they selected. In fact they wouldn’t have had to “select” anyone. They would have just invited them to spring training and picked the best players. 

[romad1]

Just now, oblong said:

I’m not referring to specific individuals but the MLB hierarchy as a whole. One man doesn’t absolve an entire league.  If they want credit for doing the right thing then it wouldn’t matter who they selected. In fact they wouldn’t have had to “select” anyone. They would have just invited them to spring training and picked the best players. 

You do or do not believe in the great "man" or great person school of history? 

[Sports_Freak]

19 hours ago, casimir said:

I used to have that exact book. I see on ebay there's another version (edition?)?

 

[IdahoBert]

When I lived in Tucson 50 years ago I fell in with a group of former Detroiters and none of them used the N word. Over a period of 13 years until I moved - 1974 to 1987 - I don’t ever remember hearing it once.

We never talked about it, I never asked them about it, and didn’t even think about it until now, but either they knew better or it just wasn’t something that was natural to them to do.

[oblong]

1 hour ago, romad1 said:

You do or do not believe in the great "man" or great person school of history? 

It doesn’t apply to Jackie.  Branch Rickey wanted to improvise his baseball club. 

[IdahoBert]

Getting back to béisbol, which has incidentally been very, very good to me:

McGonigle SS

Torres 2B

Keith DH

Greene, R LF

Torkelson 1B

Carpenter RF

McKinstry 3B

Báez, J CF

Rogers C

[romad1]

2 minutes ago, oblong said:

It doesn’t apply to Jackie.  Branch Rickey wanted to improvise his baseball club. 

Strong take. Moving on.