Race and sports

I used to play baseball and basketball.  I wasn't too bad in either sport.  Arguably, I could have been a pro in baseball with a lot of things breaking right for me, but high school politics got in the way.  In basketball, there was no way I was going to get a Division I scholarship, much less make the pros.  I didn't have the athletic body needed to compete at that level.

My high school days were the late 70's.  I played intramural ball in college in the early 80's.  I played mostly against white players but also more and more black players as opportunities opened up for blacks.  Some were very, very good, some just thought they were.  There was, however, one theme that persisted in blacks' play:  Most of them, if not all of them, were athletically better than ninety-percent of the white players out there.

This is not a complaint about blacks getting more playing time on college teams.  It isn't a complaint at all.  But for years, I've been fascinated by one issue related to blacks' athletic abilities.  I concede at the outset that many of them work harder at their chosen sport than do whites.  That may be the result of several different factors.  That they succeed to the point that eighty- to ninety-percent of the NBA is black is fine with me.

What I can't fathom, however, are the freaks of nature that come in black bodies.  I'm not referring to Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant, Michael Jordan, Earvin Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar or any of the genetically-gifted players who combine height and athletic ability.  I'm referring to people like Spud Webb and William Perry.

Spud Webb, for those who don't know or remember, maxed out at 5'7" tall.  That he made the NBA is of no consequence.  That he won the Slam Dunk competition at the All Star game festivities would be of no consequence either, except for his notorious lack of height.  How can someone so short dunk as well as he did?  How can someone so short jump that high?

He's not the only one at that height, either.  Nate Robinson measures 5'9" tall and did the same thing as Spud Webb did.  How many white or Latino guys could do this?  Did these guys just practice long enough to be able to do this, or is there some physical explanation for it?

Were it only guys on the shorter end of the scale, we might write it off as a genetic anomaly, but then there's William Perry.  Perry was taller than Webb and Robinson, coming out at 6'2".  But he weighed over three hundred pounds.  I saw video of him dunking a basketball.  I've seen video of him dunking a football over the goalpost wearing all his football gear.  How is it possible for someone that heavy to get up that high?  As with Webb and Robinson, the same questions nag:  How many white or Latino guys could do this? Did these guys just practice long enough to be able to do this, or is there some physical explanation for it?

I've heard that there is some physiognomic (if that's the right word) explanation for the difference between black bodies and white bodies, something to do with fast-twitch muscles and slow-twitch muscles.  There has long been talk about blacks' bones being heavier as explanation for why blacks don't succeed as swimmers.  I don't know if any of that is correct or not.  But I wonder how guys like Webb, Robinson and Perry are able to perform those feats with the physical limitations they possess.


(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles