The Social Science Journal 49 (2012) 214–218 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect The Social Science Journal j our na l ho me p age: www.elsevier.com/locate /soscij Differential customer racial attitudes toward scandal and patriotism: The Mitchell Report, the Olympics, race, and baseball memorabilia Timothy J. Stanton ∗ , Curtis D. Johnson Mount Saint Mary’s University, United States a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 26 August 2010 Received in revised form 29 August 2011 Accepted 19 September 2011 Available online 17 April 2012 Keywords: Customer discrimination Baseball memorabilia Baseball cards Differential treatment a b s t r a c t This paper investigates differential customer racial reaction to negative and positive pub- licity related to professional athletes. In terms of negative publicity, it analyzes the effect of mention in the Mitchell Report on the price of baseball cards. In regards to positive publicity, it considers the impact of having been identified as a member of the United States Olympic or national team. After controlling for player productivity with performance statistics, the effects of being mentioned in the Mitchell Report are isolated within regression analysis to draw conclusions concerning customer racial attitudes toward the steroids scandal. Sim- ilar analysis is conducted to see the impact of being seen as a baseball representative of the United States. Regression results are consistent with the conclusion that negative pub- licity devalues the cards of nonWhite players but not of White players. Positive publicity, however, increases the value of a player’s card regardless of ethnicity. © 2011 Western Social Science Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Sports markets have proven to be interesting and fruit- ful avenues for research into a variety of contemporary issues. The readily available data on market outcomes allows focus on specific topics of interest. One such line of research uses the market for baseball memorabilia to inves- tigate customer racial discrimination against players. In the first instance of this research, Nardinelli and Simon (1990) found that the prices of baseball cards of nonWhite players were less than those of White players of similar statisti- cal productivity, suggesting customer racial discrimination against nonWhite players. Since that groundbreaking arti- cle, several others have expanded on the investigation of race and baseball cards. Gabriel, Johnson, and Stanton (1995, 1999) emphasized customer expectations and found mixed results with regards to differential treatment of ∗ Corresponding author at: School of Business, Mount Saint Mary’s University, 16300 Old Emmitsburg Road, Emmitsburg, MD 21727, United States. Tel.: +1 301 447 8300; fax: +1 301 447 5335. E-mail address: stanton@msmary.edu (T.J. Stanton). baseball cards of nonWhites, while Scahill (2005) con- cluded that race was generally not a statistically significant variable in explaining card prices after 1992. Regoli, Primm, and Hewitt (2007) concluded that player performance and not race determined the ranking of cards within the entire card set. Stone and Warren (1999) and Primm, Regoli, and Hewitt (2006) have done similar studies with basketball and football cards, respectively. Less research has been done in regards to how off- the-field events can affect buyer preferences and, as a consequence, card prices. While Matheson and Baade (2004) examined the “death effect” on card prices, lit- tle other work has been done in regards to evaluating non-performance events on buyer choices. In this study, we examine two such off-the-field events: scandal (being listed as a user of performance enhancing drugs in the Mitchell Report) and patriotism (being listed as a player on the United States Olympic Team). 2. Scandal Ongoing concerns about differential treatment of play- ers based on ethnicity manifested themselves during the 0362-3319/$ – see front matter © 2011 Western Social Science Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.soscij.2011.09.003