There has been some swift and telling fallout to my report yesterday that West Virginia QB Pat White chose not to play baseball at the university in part because there aren’t any African-Americans on the team.
Ed Pastilong, WVU’s veteran athletic director, said in a statement issued Tuesday night:
“The university is committed to diversity as evidenced by the development of the OneWVU program. Our coaches and staff also are committed to an atmosphere of community for our student-athletes. I look forward to speaking with Pat more about his thoughts.”
During an interview at Big East Media Day in Newport, R.I., White told me (and several other reporters) that he did not play baseball because because of the lack of African-Americans on coach Greg Van Zant’s squad.
“In my knowledge of West Virginia baseball, there’s not been many players of my race on his team. [Van Zant’s] not too high on it,” White said. “Every player I’ve talked to doesn’t like him. He’s not a well-liked coach, but I guess he has tenure so they never got rid of him. They’re not successful at all.”
Two newspapers contacted me Tuesday night after Big East Media Day — The Dominion Post and the Charleston Gazette — to inquire about the comments. I played them the tape of the interview on the phone and they subsequently reported the comments in today’s editions.
The Gazette further reported that: “A check of the WVU baseball roster on the program’s Web page showed no African-Americans on the 2008 squad.”
Van Zant has not yet responded to a phone message I left, nor did he comment to the West Virginia papers.
On a personal note, I found White to be very sincere and thoughtful in his comments, and I’m sure it required great courage to make them.
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In other West Virginia news, two basketball players, Joe Mazzulla and Cameron Thoroughman were arrested Monday for underage drinking and resisting arrest outside a Pirates game.
Also, Pete Thamel of the New York Times has a good feature on West Virginia head football coach Bill Stewart, who is a great interview and apparently a big Yankees fan. He said he watched Mike Mussina pitch a gem at the Stadium recently and also took great pleasure in seeing Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez play.
s.martinup / July 30, 2008
White was only stating something that was probably already a well known fact at WVU. If you are a African American you will not get recruited to play Baseball.
What makes this worse it seems that the athletic director is fine with the history of racism in WVU Baseball. All you have to do is check the five year history of the baseball program to find out that they have not had a black player on the team.
This is disgraceful, hopefully the larger media will pick up on this and run with it!!!
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Alessandro / July 30, 2008
Is this significantly different than when John Thompson II didn’t heavily recruit white basketball players?
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s.martinup / July 31, 2008
John Thompson II did/does recruit white players . Get your facts straight
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lovethemeers / August 17, 2008
please don’t put words in or out of Pat White’s mouth. let him alone and let him do his thing. keep color out of sports of any kind. i am a loud and proud WVU fan and lets get on with the playing, not “bitching” about every little comment that is made. PLEASE!!!!
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