People-to-people exchanges between the people of Cuba and the US are rare due to the over 50-year US blockade against the island. But this August, a group of Cuban youths traveled to Williamsport, Pennsylvania, to participate in the Little League World Series. Daniel Montero, a filmmaker with Belly of the Beast Cuba, released a special documentary on the stories of the Cuban Little League team and their families earlier this year. Montero joins Edge of Sports TV for a special look at the making of the film, and some updates on the Cuban team’s experience of the tournament, as well as their lives since.
Studio Production: David Hebden, Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Taylor Hebden
Audio Post-Production: David Hebden
Opening Sequence: Cameron Granadino
Music by: Eze Jackson & Carlos Guillen
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Dave Zirin:
The story of the first Cuban team of kids to be invited to the Little League World Series, what makes Dion Sanders so special, how sports helped smash Jim Crow, all of it today on Edge of Sports. (singing)
Welcome to Edge of Sports TV, only on The Real News Network. I’m Dave Zirin. This week, we talk to Daniel Montero, the director of the amazing short film Little League Dreams from Cuba to Williamsport. It’s all about the journey of the first Cuban team to be invited to the Little League World Series, and this is not a historical documentary. The invite did not come until 2023.
Then I have choice words about how Deion Sanders is upsetting the apple cart that is college football and, finally, in ASCA Sports Scholar, I’m talking to one of the most prominent influencers about how we understand race and sports, Professor Lou Moore, and we’re going to discuss his work covering how sports challenged Jim Crow and about the history of the Black quarterback, but, first, Cuba’s journey to the Little League World Series. Let’s talk about it with the director of Little League Dreams, Daniel Montero.
Daniel Montero, thank you so much for joining us here on the show.
Daniel Montero:
Oh, no, thanks to you for having me.
Dave Zirin:
Absolutely. First and foremost, what attracted you to this story, the story of Cuba, Little League Baseball and the first trip to Williamsport?
Daniel Montero:
Well, at the Belly of the Beast, we usually focus on Cuba-US relations and, honestly, in the last five, six, seven years, there hasn’t been much positive to talk about when it comes to it. When we heard that, for the first time ever, a Cuban team, a Little League team was going to the US, we thought how could we not do something about this? We were sure that whichever team ended up winning the series here in Cuba would have great stories to tell and would have just a positive thing in the midst of a lot of bad stuff going on between the two countries. That was the first thing that got us involved with the project, honestly.
Dave Zirin:
How were you able to get so close to the families of the Little Leaguers themselves?
Daniel Montero:
We went to the finals. It was Bayamo’s team that ended up winning and the team from East Savannah. We went there and just started talking to all of them, the coaches, the families, the kids just so that, whichever team ended up winning, we already had a relationship. Honestly, Cuban people tend to be very open once you get to know them. I think we just earned their trust by telling them what the project was, and they were just excited, especially the parents, of having their kids taking the center stage for something like this. It was also what we just witnessed throughout the championship and throughout all the process of training. It was just a process of mutual trust for which I’m eternally grateful, honestly.
Dave Zirin:
Yeah, a lot of trust clearly on display in the film, but among the families, among the coaches, among the players themselves, was this project welcomed by everybody?
Daniel Montero:
Honestly, yes. I mean, I think we expected a little bit of resistance maybe from some people in the German institutions or something like that, but, no, it was a great experience in that sense. Everyone understood that this was a positive thing and so everyone helped out especially the ones that had to, meaning, the entire success of that team is based on the coaches, the parents and the kids. The rest is hardly a secondary character to it all, and they welcomed it. If they welcomed it, it meant the project was going to work.
Dave Zirin:
Help us out a little bit, Daniel. What’s the same and what’s different in your mind about youth sports in Cuba compared to the United States?
Daniel Montero:
Well, first off is I think it’s what kids look up to do in the future. You got to understand that the way sports have happened in Cuba for a long time is it’s not a professional field. For a long time, the goal for any kid starting to play sports was to represent their province, the province team at the national series if it comes to baseball. That’s the way sports have worked for a long time, but, of course, in the last years, a lot more Cuban players have ended up playing in top baseball or other sports around the world. That has changed a little bit. It would start with aspirations, I think, also, obviously, the conditions. We are a poor country and we are in the midst of a crisis. A lot of the times, the kids don’t have all the implements and everything they need for the game, so it comes down to each of the parents really stepping up and making every sacrifice possible for their kids to fulfill their dreams. I think those might be the two main differences.
Dave Zirin:
Yeah. What about pressure? I’m again thinking in terms of comparing and contrasting with youth sports in the United States. What are the stakes for these kids to do well, and did you get a sense that they carried a heavy load going into the tournament?
Daniel Montero:
Oh, yeah, I think, in that sense, it’s no different at all. The pressure is very high. You got to understand, in Cuba, baseball is just as big as in the United States, if not bigger I would dare say. For a long time, we’ve been used to Cuban teams being successful all around the world, even though the last decade has not been the same. For a long time, Cuba dominated international baseball amateur level, of course. That means that that’s still very much present for every baseball fan in Cuba. You expect your team to win, and that’s it. The kids very much feel that pressure, let me tell you, but I think they’ve handled it better than most adults. I would say that. They’re pros. I mean, those kids are really pros and excellent human beings.
Dave Zirin:
From my very outsider perspective just watching the film and not being very familiar with Cuban youth sports, but very familiar with US youth sports, I found the atmosphere in Cuba to be, I don’t know how else to put it, but more cooperative. It almost sounds like a cliche, but I felt like the families in terms of what they were sacrificing, how they were looking out for one another, the feel, I mean it did feel different to me than a lot of the high pressure, high level US sports where sometimes it feels like these kids are discarded if they’re not useful to the product.
Daniel Montero:
Yeah. I mean, honestly, I lack some of the references. I’m Cuban enough and, honestly, I haven’t been very familiarized with the way kid sports work in the US, but I do know that, here, what I witnessed was a big family. Every one of the parents realized that it wasn’t just about their kid, that if the other kids were not doing well and if they were not feeling well and happy, the team could not be successful. I think that was the essential moment for the team to get to where they ended up being.
Obviously, in a team of 14 kids, you have some that have a little more money than others and some have really vulnerable situations in their home lives and the rest carry the load, and the coaches, too. Those coaches are not just teaching them baseball. They’re teaching them about life and they never stop worrying about the kids. I was there with them, and the coach was at 10:00, 11:00 PM calling, “Hey, how is this kid doing? I knew he had a fever yesterday. Is he getting better?” I don’t know how it is in the US, but it really made me admire the work those coaches were doing and the sacrifice the parents were making for their kids.
Dave Zirin:
Yeah. My son plays a lot of youth sports and haven’t gotten a lot of late night phone calls. The film, I got to tell you, I’m telling everybody I know, I think it’s brilliant. I think it’s beautiful. It’s very moving. It also ends, of course, before the actual Little League World Series in Williamsport and the experience by the Cuba team in Williamsport. Was that by choice as a filmmaker or were there barriers in place that prevented you from doing a part two?
Daniel Montero:
Well, the original idea honestly was to do one film that would cover the finals in Cuba, the whole training process and then the actual tournament in Williamsport, but, of course, as you said, problems appeared along the way. One thing was funding. It was much more expensive to actually travel with the team to the US and be with them during that time. Also, the Little League tends to have a tight control over who films and who has access to the tournament. Honestly, we didn’t even get credentials for our team to go to Williamsport. That meant that, one hand, funding and, the other hand, access, so we couldn’t film in Williamsport. Once we knew that, we just said, “Okay, so we might not be able to do that, but we can still do something very special about how this got to that point.” Honestly, sometimes, what happens ends up making an even better film or even better idea, and I think I’m extremely happy with what we were able to show.
Dave Zirin:
I really want to underline that point you just made though. You are documenting the first Little League team from Cuba to ever have access to the Little League World Series, and yet the Little League World Series denied you the ability to document that journey. That’s, frankly, very disturbing. I’ll just say that.
Daniel Montero:
Well, it is what it is. I don’t know how it works, honestly. I just know we got the no, so I’ll leave it at that, too.
Dave Zirin:
Yeah. Now, I don’t think I’m spoiling anything by telling the world what took place at the Little League World Series. This team, this team of incredibly charismatic, incredibly charming kids, they lost a heartbreaker to Japan, one to nothing, that incredible young pitcher, Gurriel, throwing a one-hitter for goodness’ sakes. Were you able to follow up and find out how the near-victory was affecting the kids and their families? Have you been able to speak and reach out to anybody in the aftermath?
Daniel Montero:
Oh, yes. Actually, to most of the parents and particularly the coaches, we were in contact with the team and the coaches while they were playing which for me was special. To me, I did the film, but I consider mostly myself a fan. That’s the team in Cuba that I’ve ever felt more excited about because I got to know them all, and then afterwards, of course with the parents. When that game with Japan was taking place, I was calling Gurrielito’s father, Gurriel, and he was shaken and he couldn’t even speak and like, “We’ll talk later. I can’t talk right now.” It’s that kind of a parent. They’re proud. The aftermath for them is they’re proud of what their kids did. They couldn’t get far in the tournament, but the two games that they lost, they lost by one run and they got a no count out of Australia. I think they did great. I think it was a great beginning for Cuba in the Little League World Series and, hopefully, it’s the beginning of many other appearances by that team, other Cuban teams.
Dave Zirin:
Yeah. Absolutely. There was a swirl of news when in Williamsport one of the Cuban coaches defected. Is that anything you can speak to either in terms of the defection, but also in terms of how it’s affected the team?
Daniel Montero:
Well, yes. One of the assistant coaches left the delegation while they were in the tournament after they lost that last game with Panama. The aftermath, I think it was a bit of a shock for the kids and the families and all. I can’t speak for the rest of the country and all. I think we have a history of defection when it comes to Cuban delegations going abroad, so in that sense, not much of a shock, but for the kids mostly. It’s a complicated subject obviously. I think mostly for them, it’s like they’re happy that the coach didn’t do it while they were still playing, which has happened before in other tournaments and, hopefully, it doesn’t affect the team moving forward.
Dave Zirin:
Wow. All right, so the film is Little League Dreams from Cuba to Williamsport. How can people best see it?
Daniel Montero:
Well, the documentary as well as every video we produce at Belly of the Beast is on YouTube. We go straight to social media with everything we do. It’s our concept that everything is free and accessible for the audience. That’s the way to see it. I mean, we were happy enough that other media have shared it. During ESPN’s coverage of the event, the documentary was showed, but yeah, to see the full film, it’s on Belly of the Beast Cuba. It’s our YouTube channel, and the name, as you said, is Little League Dreams.
Dave Zirin:
Wow. What’s the next project for Daniel Montero?
Daniel Montero:
Well, right now, we’re actually just getting started with a new documentary film about a cutting-edge medicine that’s being created in Cuba for Alzheimer’s disease. We’re following the scientist that leads the team, and she has a very personal story with the disease because her mother suffered from it, and that was her inspiration to start researching how to treat it. We’re just diving in completely to do this. I mean, as a media, as a film project, we want to show a different face of Cuba to the United States which is our audience. Most of what goes on mainstream media or most everybody that gets to an American audience to talk about Cuba talks about the bad and talks about cliches, and every video is showing 1950s Chevys. There’s so much more to Cuba than those few images and those few negative stories, so we’re just trying to show a different side to it.
Dave Zirin:
Well, you certainly accomplished that mission with Little League Dreams. Daniel Montero, thank you so much for joining us here on Edge of Sports.
Daniel Montero:
Oh, no, no, thanks a lot to you for having me for real. It’s an honor.
Dave Zirin:
Now, I’ve got some choice words about Deion Sanders and the joys of the Hype Machine. Okay, look, a couple Sundays back, 60 Minutes, the great-grandfather of television news whose slogan might as well be “get off of my lawn”, was hyping two exclusive interviews. The first was a conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The second announced just as breathlessly was another exclusive conversation. This one with the head football coach in a Colorado college town, a town perhaps best known for snowboarding and hacky sack and whose team last year went one in 11. That coach is, of course NFL Hall-of-Famer Deion “Primetime” Sanders.
The publicity and water-cooler curiosity that Sanders has generated after just a few games leading the University of Colorado at Boulder speaks to the team’s turnaround. A year ago, this squad was ranked 128th out of 131 teams and had been an afterthought for years. Then, from historically Black University Jackson State came Coach Prime, bringing with him his two incredible football playing sons, Shedeur and Shilo.
He ruthlessly remade the operation, engineering a massive roster turnover with little regard for anything beyond reimagining a lost program. While so many other coaches have whined tiresomely about the new rules that govern college football like players having access to name, image and likeness, money or being able to rapidly transfer from one school to another, Sanders has taken advantage of them. While others pine for the past, Coach Prime has decided that the present is a fine and even fun place to be. Instead of sneering at the game and begging their old buddy, the openly racist Auburn-coach-turned Senator Tommy Tuberville, to step in legislatively and turn back the clock.
Sanders has brought something absent from college football. The joy of hype and the hype that comes with joy. Sanders haters are legion, yet the hate is not solely because of his sunglasses or his hat or his attitude or whatever other racist dog whistles various coaches and commentators are throwing in his direction. The root cause of the hate is that he has stepped into this world and is doing it not just differently, but better, and that drives the minders of the game into fits.
For decades, college football coaching has been a mausoleum of elderly, square, overwhelmingly White coaches working out their issues on teenagers by barking at them as if they’re about to storm Normandy. The only requirement for this job has seemed to be the ability to pair ulcers with high blood pressure. Sanders has smashed the stain glass windows of this mausoleum and led in some damn oxygen. It’s a culture shift that will eventually drag the sport into the present and out of its revanchist past.
As longtime Colorado hip-hop community radio host Dave Ashton said to me, it’s 2023 and 50 years after hip-hop’s birth, hip-hop attitude, culture and unapologetic Blackness are finally part of the world of college coaching. Yes, it’s true, and it’s wildly ironic, the presence of hip-hop as a cultural force in college football has at last found a home in, of all places, Boulder, Colorado, and it’s playing out in front of a crowd of mostly White students gawking at the spectacle that’s been laid at their feet. The crowd is like the 1950s kids in Back to the Future when they hear Marty McFly play rock and roll. It’s a brand new scene that few saw coming.
The hip-hop component is not just the presence at games of people like Lil Wayne and Offset. It’s not just his son, the quarterback, Shedeur, wearing a gold chain thick enough to use on your tires during a snowstorm. It’s making these games feel young and alive instead of stultifying and grim. The Colorado Colorado State game a couple of weeks back was emblematic of the colliding of these worlds. Colorado State Coach Jay Norvell attempted to the thrill of the sports right-wing commentariat to turn it into the State Farm Tostito’s respectability politics bowl.
Norvell, who’s one of the few Black coaches in college football, said to Sports Illustrated the Wednesday before the game, and I quote, “I don’t care if they hear it in Boulder. I said when I talk to grownups, I take my hat off and my glasses off. That’s what my mother taught me.'” It was a statement that juiced up every old-school commentator on the right-wing toilet that is now Twitter. Then Norvell showed us what old school looks like on the football field, targeting opponents playing ugly and committing 17 penalties for 187 yards. Yes, they kept it close and should have had the upset victory especially after violently knocking Colorado’s best player, Travis Hunter, out of the game. Look, if this is what old school looks like, please, bring on the new.
This is also not to say that there are no critiques to be made of how Sanders has operated since becoming a college coach. His early statements that he went to Jackson State because “God called collect and told him to go to a historically Black college” only to leave Jackson State as soon as the Colorado job became open is not exactly a feel-good story. The way he badmouthed the former Colorado players that he showed the door as part of his roster torn over is really messed up, but that being said, it is college football that’s dirty, not Sanders. It’s an amoral game whose immorality has been called out since the days of W. E. B. Du Bois. Look, sometimes, cliched advice is right. Don’t hate the player. Hate the game. Don’t hate Deion just because he understands the landscape and, like in his playing days, has left his competition eating the dust.
Now, on ASCA Sports Scholar, we talk to Professor Louis Moore about his groundbreaking work on sports and the smashing of Jim Crow as well as his forthcoming book on the history of the Black quarterback.
Professor Lou Moore, thank you so much for joining us on the show.
Louis Moore:
Yeah. Thank you for having me.
Dave Zirin:
Okay. I’ve always wanted to ask you this because I’ve read your book, We Will Win the Day, on more than one occasion, and you show how sports was integral to ending Jim Crow’s segregation and that many cities and small towns were first integrated through sporting events, and so many stories in your book were new to me. I wanted to ask you, in your research, were you surprised to find so many examples of sports being this kind of vehicle for change?
Louis Moore:
Yes. I would say yes and no. Yes, because, as you say, those stories don’t get told off. It’s always the big stories, it’s always Jackie Robinson, and so all those small stories at those small towns get missed. If we understand the history sport in America, we understand how important it is. Once you see how important it is to society, to raising your children, and so even today people freak out when something is going wrong, oh, my gosh, everybody’s sitting down, they’re not playing sport, then you realize how big sport can be to the impact of ending Jim Crow just because sport was essential to the US society.
Dave Zirin:
Does it blow the minds of students or people you’ve spoken to that sports was able to succeed as this tool of desegregation sometimes with comparatively little conflict when other kinds of boycotts were either lost, other kinds of demonstrations were preyed upon by violence? You see less of that, at least that’s what I get from your book, than when sports was the central entry point to fight for desegregation. Am I even reading this right? I feel like the stories that we hear are so often about stories where people are preyed upon by violence and by White supremacist violence. The sports stories you tell, I mean, oftentimes, it doesn’t quite play out in the same kind of way.
Louis Moore:
Yeah, and I think it’s because sports makes us feel good. A lot of the stories that we tell in sports are feel-good stories. I don’t know if I’m guilty of that or not, but I think it’s also regional, too. If you’re in the south, it’s a lot different. It is clear that by the ’50s, especially after Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, it was clear that they saw sport as the enemy because of how quickly it was integrating things. The Sugar Bowl had one Black player and so people in Louisiana had to freak out. What is this going to mean for the schools?
I think the other part about it is we get back to that first part of making us feel good. People tell these stories so they don’t really have to talk about all the racism beforehand. One of the things, like Penn State, that whole “We Are Penn State”, that comes from integrating the Cotton Bowl in the late 1940s, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that they have to talk about racism on campus or what other folks had to face. They get to feel good about that one Cotton Bowl experience.
Dave Zirin:
Wow. Yeah. Similarly, you can integrate a sporting event. People feel great for three hours, and you don’t have to deal with the realities in the small town Dixie South in terms of voting rights, economic oppression and the rest of it. This is what I’m getting from what you’re saying. It’s progress, and it’s important to recognize it can also act as an almost what we now call a sportswashing effect on the reality of the situation.
Louis Moore:
Yeah. No. You’re exactly right. The more sportswashing comes into our lexicon, the more you realize that’s what’s happening. We had Willie Mays here, but what about the school integration? What about integrating the restaurants? It’s okay. Willie Mays played here, and so you can move beyond all that.
Real quick, I don’t want to ruin your show, but I did get asked a question today about sportswashing in Saudi Arabia in class. That conversation is happening real time. It just thrilled me, and I thought about you in real time during that class.
Dave Zirin:
Amazing, and that doesn’t surprise me because, as we’re having this conversation, Mohammed bin Salman, MBS, said in an interview that he quite proudly is a sportswasher and he does sportswashing, and he was basically like, “What of it?” and that really took a lot of people back
Louis Moore:
That’s the exact quote my student read to the class, and he wanted to know more about it, and then so I just stole from you and all your beautiful work and act like I do everything.
Dave Zirin:
Good gracious. Speaking of beautiful work, I’ve always admired your ability, and I’ve learned a lot from your ability, to research the Black press and pull out the historical common threads that often come through publications like the Chicago Defender, the Amsterdam News, among many, many other papers. For young researchers out there, what do you find when you look in the Black press? Why is it such an important source of information for you in your research?
Louis Moore:
You get the sense that they have the pulse of their community a lot better now. To be clear, it’s very middle class for most of them unlike the people’s voice. Now, the people’s voice, the Black newspaper is very Black labor heavy, but a lot of them are Black middle class, but you do get the voice of the Black newspaper or the Black community to understand what they think about sports, what they think about integration, but also what’s going on locally.
You miss so much of that if you look at the Detroit News instead of the Michigan Chronicle. The Michigan Chronicle lets you know what’s going on with softball or local high school at these Black schools where the Detroit News or the Free Press will completely miss over it. You get a very good localized view of what’s going on, and then my favorite part is when they go to the barbershop and they ask that person, “Hey, what do you think about Jackie Robinson? What do you think about this?” and then you get even a more localized working class view of what’s going on in the realm of sports.
Dave Zirin:
We’ve established that you know how to research. You’re an ace researcher of the first order, and that’s why I’m so interested that you’ve now turned your eye to the history of the Black quarterback. Why is that your newest target of research and writing?
Louis Moore:
Because I think, when you look at it, especially in the terms of modern professional football, it’s really telling a story not only of the sport of football, but it’s still the story about race in America. So much of these conversations that we have about Black quarterbacks are also conversations that are being had every day as Black people try to push through Jim Crow as the civil rights movement is going on. They’re looking at the Black quarterback as a barometer. If they’re not going to give this guy a shot at leadership, how am I going to get a shot at leadership? You even have this term called the Black quarterback syndrome, which is really not necessarily about the quarterback, but everyday Black folks who continuously get passed over for opportunities simply because of all these racial stereotypes.
Dave Zirin:
There have been other books, other writings about the history of the Black quarterback. Clearly, you think something has been missing in those volumes or you wouldn’t be doing all this research. What’s been missing in the scholarship, in the analysis of how we understand this history of the Black quarterback?
Louis Moore:
Yeah. I think there’s a couple of things. One, it’s understanding the history of the sport of football in general and how it shifts, how it moves from a predominantly heavy single wing office, and I’ll try to get into it, but a modern T formation and where the quarterback becomes everything. That happens right at World War II, right at the beginning of integration. If you think about it, to be brief, as football is reintegrating, the position of quarterback is changing.
Before that, you had single wing quarterbacks like Kenny Washington. Those guys aren’t going to get a shot to play the position because now, as the position switches, as integration comes, the position is all about leadership. It’s all about intelligence, and these are things that we’re hearing in real time about Black folks, not just athletes, but black folks in the military that they lack. Again, it gives us this mirror into society, and I’m able to touch on that.
The other thing, as you mentioned about research, my advantage of being a professor is access to newspapers not only just online, which we all have access to, but being able to have time to sit through microfilm. I’m what I call a two-newspaper guy. Look, if I’m going to study Marlin Briscoe with the Denver Broncos, I’m getting both the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post, and I’m looking at every single sports section from the moment that football season started until it ended, and then I’m able to use my historical skills of just analysis and understanding and then being able to talk about that via sports and football.
Dave Zirin:
One quarterback of African descent who I feel is not discussed nearly enough is Randall Cunningham. Randall Cunningham comes into the National Football League I believe in 1984 as a second round draft pick. He gets in the games pretty soon in place of the old warhorse Ron Jaworski. I just learned yesterday that his big brother was Sam “Bam” Cunningham. I couldn’t believe I didn’t know that. The runner who, of course, played a very direct role in how the Southeastern Conference was integrated when he went there, and correct me if I’m wrong with the story, he goes in with USC and embarrasses the Dixie South and, all of a sudden, coaches like Bear Bryant are like, “Yeah, we might have to take integration more seriously if we ever want to have a decent football team again.”
I’m so surprised I did not know that Randall Cunningham’s big brother was Sam “Bam” Cunningham. I can’t believe I didn’t know that. Your thoughts, sir?
Louis Moore:
That you didn’t know that.
Dave Zirin:
I want to know the whole thing. I mean, who was Randall, Sam Bam’s connection?
Louis Moore:
Right. Randall, Sam Bam, the USC team.
Dave Zirin:
It’s just wild to me. Yeah.
Louis Moore:
Right. One thing we forget about that USC team in 1970 is that they had a Black quarterback, Jamie Jones, and in fact, he’s the first Black quarterback on the cover of Sports Illustrated the previous year. USC’s coach, John McKay, who’s famous for the I formation because he has someone like Jimmy Jones and his team is half Black. I mean, think about it, when he starts a decade earlier, that’s stuff I talk about in my book, there’s four Black guys. By the end of the decade, it’s half Black, and he has a Black quarterback. He’s also going to be the coach of Vince Evans. He’s going to be the coach of Doug Williams and the pros. He gets put in this mold of a branch Rickey of football because of his relationships with Black quarterbacks. It’s not just Sam Bam going to Alabama. It’s also Jimmy Jones who’s a really good I formation rollout quarterback who winds up having to go to Canada.
On that note, on the relationship to Randall, he’s from the Santa Barbara area, has an opportunity to go to USC, but between talking to his brother and other folks, he doesn’t go there because he doesn’t think a Black quarterback is going to get a chance. That’s why he goes to UNLV, one, for the chance, but, two, because he realizes early on that if a Black quarterback is going to make it in the league, he has to play in this right pass heavy system.
USC is still running a variation of the I formation, and then other Black quarterbacks, too, you’ll see a lot of in the mid to late ’70s, in the early ’80s. They’re running systems that the NFL is not taking, the fear, the wishbone, all these other things that rely on the running quarterback, but Randall realizes that you have to be able to pass. Those ULB teams are very pass heavy. Now, Randall is a four four guy at six four so he has incredible speed, but he’s still in an offense that allows the NFL teams to being able to imagine him as a quarterback.
Dave Zirin:
Amazing. We talk about understanding the United States by looking through the lens of the position of the Black quarterback in society. What does it say that today there’s a record number of starting Black quarterbacks in the NFL, that you could have Black quarterbacks picked one and two in the NFL draft and it doesn’t really make that much of a ripple, that Patrick Mahomes could square off against Jalen Hurts in the Super Bowl, first time two Black quarterbacks have ever squared off in the big game and it didn’t dominate the coverage when I remember it was a huge story 15 years ago when Michael Vick squared off against Donovan McNabb in the NFC championship game? What does that tell us that you have this number of Black quarterbacks that just, frankly, dwarf the number of even a decade ago?
Louis Moore:
Yeah. It lets me know a couple of things. One, we’re moving in a direction where we’re more acceptable of that, where I think a lot of franchises, almost half of the franchises, are okay with having that Black face in charge. There are many variations. There’s the classic drop back quarterback. There’s the gun slinger. Your Baltimore Ravens has Lamar Jackson who’s young. He’s a runner. He could throw. He’s an amazing thrower, right? Off the field, he’s not classic. He comes as he is, and that’s very rare for a lot of young people who probably at a young age like, “No. You have to speak like this. You have to be like this.” Lamar brings his full self.
On the one hand, you can see the league opening up. It’s also opening up because that’s what they’re getting at the college ranks and just the way contracts operate in the NFL. They want to get these guys early on an early contract while is pretty cheap before they have to pay a lot of money. That’s what the colleges are bringing them. I think, at the same time, we’re still stuck. I think, if we really look at, say, the Justin Fields narrative, I’m in the Midwest, and so we get Justin Fields, Justin Fields, Justin Fields, it’s dominating this whole week of football and it’s about his thinking. It’s about does he have what it takes upstairs to be a quarterback?
I get it. He’s a little bit slower on some of these reads, but when we look at it, that’s what all the Black quarterbacks have to face. Do they have it upstairs? I don’t know that we could separate the fact that Justin Fields is Black from that constant conversation about him more so than, say, somebody like Zach Wilson. Zach Wilson always can’t cut it. I don’t think anybody is questioning his intelligence. There’s not people sitting there going on all 22 or whatever every second and just showing frame by frame of, “Oh, I can’t believe he missed this. How did he miss that?”
I think what’s happening here, too, with Justin Fields is part of it is I think he understands that he’s a Black quarterback and, as a Black quarterback, he’s not going to get as many chances. I think that might be playing on him a little bit. If I throw this pick, what’s going to happen to me now? You see he came out recently and just said, “I’m just going to go out and ball,” and I hope he can do that. I hope he can just put everything aside.
Before Justin Fields, it was Dak, right? We spent like three weeks before the NFL, “Dak, Dak, Dak,” right? Now, part of that, he’s on Dallas, but the other part about it is people I don’t think are necessarily giving him the benefit of the doubt that he’s a really good quarterback, and I think it partly is because Dak is positioned as a Black quarterback.
Dave Zirin:
I remember when I first started sports writing lo the many decades ago that it was a live discussion, “Why aren’t there more Black coaches in the NBA?” That was a hot topic of conversation. Now, it’s not. It’s never news when a Black coach is hired to head an NBA team, and yet it is so clearly in my mind, and you just made the case, still an issue when it comes to a team with a Black, particularly a young Black quarterback. Could you ever see us getting to a space where it becomes like the equivalent of NBA coaching, or is there something specific about being a quarterback in US culture that will mean this is just something eternal that we’re going to have to keep an eye on?
Louis Moore:
I would say yes and no. Yes in the sense that I think the NFL is not really going to have a choice. There’s going to be so many Black quarterbacks that it’s just going to be normal. If you look at this draft, three of the top four are Black, right? Next draft, you’re going to have Caleb, maybe Shedeur the kid from Washington. We’re going to get into this pattern where, for the next few years, probably these top 10 quarterbacks, a number of them are going to be Black, and it’s just going to kind of go away. I think the idea about the quarterback not being that guy is false. I think he’ll always be that guy just because the quarterback is the position, and it’s been that way since post World War II. Since the position changed, he is supposed to be the smartest person on the field. He has to know all his plays, what other 10 guys are doing, what the defense is doing. He has to be the face of the franchise.
I think, because of that, just the way we see Black folks compared to White men in society, I think that standard quarterback will always be this kind of Tom Brady, Peyton Manning. At the same time, as these young guys are just going to be pushing the narrative and pushing for change, whether it’s Lamar, whether it’s Caleb Williams, whether it’s Shedeur, there’s going to be, “Here’s the set standard quarterback,” but also you have these young guys, and I think within a couple of years, we might be at 18, and then 20 starters.
Dave Zirin:
You just said it, the face of the franchise, and that’s what makes this still something that we need to discuss since the NFL is the closest thing we do have in this country to a national religion or a national language. Who is going to be the face of your franchise and who will White people accept as the face of their franchise is something that I think is going to be a discussion as long as we’re talking about racism frankly. Can you name a single person in your QB research that you would love to see one full length biography about either for you to write or for someone else to write?
Louis Moore:
Me selfish only, so the plan of the book, the book is about Doug Williams and Vince Evans, right? Doug makes sense because everybody knows Doug, and so partly what I’m doing is writing this football biography of Vince Evans, too, from Greensboro all the way to Chicago and the LA Raiders and his struggle at USC, too. I think beyond that, James Harris, James Harris, who went to Grambling and then is an eighth-round draft pick in 1969 and starts the first game of the season for Buffalo Bills that only starts three more over the next three years might be one of the most important quarterbacks in the history of the game. We rarely talk about him just because of the position he was put in. He was early on picked as that guy like Eddie Robinson mid-1960s said, “I’m going to get me a professional quarterback, a Black professional quarterback,” and the reason why he’s doing that is because he believed the quarterback was the most important position, and that would really fuel integration in America, not just civil rights, but Black folks having an opportunity if they can see someone like a James Harris succeed.
James Harris continued to struggle throughout his career, whether he’s in Buffalo or Los Angeles and then, later on, with the Chargers, but really in those first two places. At the same time, he spent so much time mentoring everybody. All those Black quarterbacks got mentorship from James Harris, whether it’s Warren Moon who was there when he was in Los Angeles because Moon was a local guy, Vince Evans, Doug Williams. These people who, when we think about pioneers, they’re all touched by this guy, and then after his career he continues to do that work. There’s not a Black quarterback today who hasn’t been touched by James Harris.
Dave Zirin:
Some of the stories that I’ve heard you speak about in terms of Black quarterbacks, Professor Moore, have been these stories of triumph, but far too many of them are stories of heartbreak. Can you tell us one example of a story that frankly just breaks your heart in terms of what was imposed upon these athletes?
Louis Moore:
Yeah. The one I go to is Joe Gilliam, Jr. Joe Gilliam, Jr. was probably the best Black quarterback until Doug Williams that a HBCU produced. He goes to Tennessee State. He plays for head coach John Merritt, and John Merritt when he retires in, what, 1983, he’s the third all-time winningest coach. John Merritt, as I said on Twitter last week or whatever it’s called now, was Deion before Deion. It’s sunglasses. It’s cowboy hats. It’s cigars on the sidelines, right? It’s Cadillacs. It’s bragging, and it’s past heavy outfits. When Joe Gilliam gets selected by the Steelers in 1972 in the 11th round, he’s that guy. For a while, in 1974, he started over Terry Bradshaw. He beats him out for that position, starts six games. I believe he goes, I want to say, he’s like four, one and one as a starter, undefeated in the preseason. In the preseason, he has one of the highest pass rater ever and then he loses his job. Part of the reason why he loses his job is because that racism in Pittsburgh is so intense, right?
Dave Zirin:
The face of the franchise.
Louis Moore:
Not only do they have a Black quarterback, right, face of the franchise, he gets over a hundred pieces of hate mail. His wife, his daughter, young baby, which wound up being a, I want to say, joy. If you remember that Goodie Mob days, I believe she was married to Big Gipp or whatever his name is. They’re hearing all this stuff and, to cope, he turns to drugs, from heroin to cocaine, and pretty quickly he becomes an addict.
Now, the narrative about him is always about drugs destroyed his career, but I argue that it’s the racism. In order to cope with the racism, he turns to drugs and, unfortunately, he can never really get clean. When he does get clean, it’s too late. It’s up and down, and he winds up dying, I want to say, in 2000, Christmas day. They find him under a bridge in Nashville, Tennessee.
It’s just one of these sad stories because he could have been the greatest. I mean, if you ever look at these highlights, he’s a classic drop back quarterback. I mean, he’s a four seven guy, so he’s pretty fast for his time, but when it’s time for training, he runs like a five one, he says, “So that teams don’t switch them to another position.” He stands in there to the last minute to deliver his pass. He has a faster release than Terry Bradshaw that’s measured by the coaches. He’s cool. He is like, the way I explained it, a Superfly played quarterback. That would be Joe Gilliam. He could just revolutionize the position, what we thought about Black quarterbacks, but unfortunately he doesn’t get his shot, a legitimate shot, and he turns to drugs. To me, that’s one of those sad stories.
Dave Zirin:
Terry Bradshaw is still making millions doing that Southern corn-pone routine as the face of the network for Fox football. It’s unbelievable.
Louis Moore:
Right. Right. Yeah, the Black quarterbacks don’t. The other point about it’s that Black quarterbacks aren’t allowed to be dumb, right? It’s no knock to Terry Bradshaw, but the knock about him was that he wasn’t that smart even though he wins four Super Bowls. If Black quarterbacks aren’t allowed to kind of be stereotyped that way, they’ll never get that opportunity.
Dave Zirin:
Exactly. Exactly. The last question for you is titles are so important to books. When I told my mom I was interviewing somebody who wrote We Will Win the Day, the first thing she said was, “Ooh, great title.” What’s your title for your book about the history of the Black quarterback?
Louis Moore:
All right, so I’m going with the Battle of the Black Bombers, Doug Williams, Vince Evans, and the Making of the Black Quarterback. The reason why I call it the Battle of the Black Bombers is because, when they faced each other for the first time, so it’s September 30th, 1979, the first time two Black quarterbacks in modern-day football star against each other, CBS labeled it the Battle of the Bombers. Here they have two Black guys. I’m like, “Well, they’re Black here.”
The reason why, at that time, they had the best arms. They’re the fastest quarterbacks. Even though Vince is more of a runner, Doug is classic kind of pocket quarterback even though he’s still a powerful runner. That’s the title. That’s the working title. If anyone wants to give a deal and change it, money talks.
Dave Zirin:
That’s awesome.
Louis Moore:
I’ve loved every minute of research you get and really digging down into who these guys were, where they’re really from and just how hard it is to get there, so the making part is that this idea that Black quarterbacks had to be made. They had to be produced to be professional quarterbacks. They’re two different types, and they go two different places. One’s from the south goes to USC. One’s from the South stays home, HBCU, one place for a White coach, one place for the Black coach and just what that means and everything?
Dave Zirin:
Wow. Well, pardon the mix sports metaphor, but this book sounds like an absolute slam dunk. Professor Moore, thanks so much.
Louis Moore:
A Dominique Wilkins.
Dave Zirin:
Yeah, Dominique Wilkins, the, oh, my God… I want to do this alternative history with you sometime of what if the Lakers had drafted Dominique, what would the NBA world look like? Maybe that’s for another conversation, but, Professor Moore, thanks so much for joining us here on Edge of Sports.
Louis Moore:
All right. Thank you for having me.
Dave Zirin:
Thank you so much to everybody who’s on the show today. Thank you so much, Daniel Montero. Thank you, Professor Louis Moore. Thank you to the entire team here at The Real News Network doing the best work on news and media in the country particularly on issues that matter to you. For everybody out there listening, please stay frosty. I’m Dave Zirin. We are out of here. Peace.
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