Hammerin’ Hank Aaron protege Brian Snitker, Braves manager, gets caught looking past civil rights | Marcus Hayes
Braves manager Brian Snitker, a protege of the late Hank Aaron, cowed in the face of controversy when asked what the great slugger would have thought of the All-Star Game being pulled out of Atlanta.
Hank Aaron’s life is a portrait of American courage.
His protege, Brian Snitker, gave us a snapshot of Georgian cowardice.
Aaron gave Snitker his start off the field once Snitker’s brief and undistinguished career on the field ended. Snitker now is Atlanta’s manager. As such, he is in the crosshairs of an unlikely clash: Major League Baseball announced Friday it will move the All Star Game out of Atlanta in response to a voter suppression bill Georgia adapted last week. The Braves, unsolicited, repudiated MLB’s decision.
Asked Saturday before his game in Philadelphia what Aaron would gave thought of MLB’s bravery and his franchise’s knavery, Snitker replied:
“I can’t venture to say how he would react.”
Sure he could.
» READ MORE: MLB moving All-Star Game from Atlanta in response to Georgia voting restrictions
Snitker could say that Aaron would have abhorred the law. He could say Aaron would have been embarrassed of his Braves. He could say that Aaron -- who endured death threats and Jim Crow and had played 14 seasons before the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed -- would be enraged, since the basis of American racism has always been voter suppression.
Because those things would have been obvious, and true.
Aaron finished his 23-year career as baseball’s home run king, Mr. 755, Hammerin’ Hank, a man of legend. For that, this year’s All Star game will celebrate him despite being moved from Georgia; he died a little more than four months ago. But Aaron’s life greatest work was done as an activist. Snitker knows this.
In fact, if it wasn’t for the way baseball was integrated, Snitker, who is white, wouldn’t have his job.
MLB’s decision to move the midsummer classic was baseball’s bravest stance since integration in 1947, with Jackie Robinson. The next year, Robinson visited Mobile, Ala., where 14-year-old Henry Aaron skipped school to hear him speak about integration. The speech led Aaron to pursue baseball, which led him to the Braves, which led him to the top of the game. He joined the Braves’ front office after his career ended, and, in 1981, he hired a Braves minor-league catcher named Brian Snitker as a coach. Aaron became Snitker’s friend and mentor.
» READ MORE: Count the Phillies out as a host for this summer’s All Star Game
“I wouldn’t be sitting here on this call if it wasn’t for Hank Aaron, plain and simple,” Snitker said after Aaron died in January. " I’ve been blessed to be raised [by] and around Hall of Famers my entire career, none more important to my career, my family, my life than Hank Aaron ...”
How close were they?
You wonder if that would still be true today.
The Braves have aligned themselves so far on the wrong side of history that even Kelly Loeffler agrees with them. You remember Loeffler? Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp appointed her to the Senate in 2019, where she promptly who made millions of dollars by selling and buying stock after she learned in briefings about the coronavirus pandemic’s likely economic impact. She then denied the 2020 election’s veracity after she lost. Most recently, she was forced to sell her stake in the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream after she denounced the team’s Black Lives Matter platform and posed with a neo-Nazi who is a former member of the Ku Klux Klan. Her organization, Greater Georgia, promotes voter suppression and echoed the Braves’ hollow, misdirected protest.
Kemp vowed, vaguely, to fight MLB’s decision. Kemp also signed the voting bill into law under a painting of a slave plantation.
» READ MORE: Georgia governor signed a voter suppression law under a painting of a slave plantation | Will Bunch
Nice allies, Snit.
Snitker said Saturday that he was “disappointed” that the All Star Game would leave Georgia, echoing the Braves’ tone-deaf release. He then tried to head off further questions related to the issue. One oblique inquiry wondered if the controversy had upset his clubhouse. Snitker said it hadn’t.
But then, Snitker doesn’t have any African American players in his clubhouse.