In the landscape of US sports, Major League Baseball should be owning this time of the year when NBA free agency is essentially wrapped up and the NFL’s preseason slate has yet to get under way.
MLB is owning headlines. But unless they subscribe to the theory that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, it’s in the worst possible way.
Not once, not twice, but three times over the past two weeks have offensive and racist tweets by current players resurfaced on social media.
Milwaukee Brewers reliever Josh Hader was the first to come under the microscope after his ugly tweets were brought to light during the All-Star Game.
Then, on Sunday, Atlanta Braves pitcher Sean Newcomb and Washington Nationals shortstop Trea Turner saw old tweets of theirs get the same treatment.
In all three cases, there were slurs and racist undertones. You didn’t have to try to find offence in them – they were clear as day.
Trea Turner issued a statement. pic.twitter.com/5ZFbn2AH5E
— Chelsea Janes (@chelsea_janes) July 30, 2018
Do those tweets necessarily mean Hader, Newcomb and Turner are racist? No. The tweets are from years ago and all three players are currently in their mid-20s. It’s entirely possible they’ve grown as people since then.
But the evolution of their social consciousness isn’t going to make the negative impact on the league any softer. MLB can’t put the toothpaste back into the tube – their image has been tarnished and for many, reinforced.
The timing couldn’t be worse. Not just for the aforementioned reason that MLB are unrivalled during this stretch of the summer, but, at least in the case of Hader and Newcomb, it’s come at the exact moment when they should be getting attention for their play on the field.
Hader’s tweets came up during the All-Star Game, his first in a season in which he’s boasting an earned run average of 1.39 and has 96 strikeouts in 51.2 innings, while Newcomb’s were dug out on the night he was one out away from a no-hitter.
There’s plenty of conversation around baseball that focuses on how to fix the game and appeal to people of colour, especially African-Americans. But if fans can’t even fully celebrate the current players and get behind what they do, how is the league going to tackle those bigger issues?
If the transgressions were contained to Hader, Newcomb and Turner, that would be one thing. You can explain away past actions, especially during adolescent years.
But what’s the excuse for current behaviour, like the appalling reaction Brewers fans at Miller Park had for Hader in his first appearance since the offensive tweets snafu?
They not only embraced Hader, they gave him a standing ovation. He was promptly booed in his first road-game appearance, but the actions of Milwaukee’s fans on that day spoke volumes.
Baseball player Josh Hader was exposed for making a series of racist, anti-Black tweets, and when he stepped on the field today, he received a standing ovation from thousands of suspected white supremacists in the audience.
— Tariq Nasheed (@tariqnasheed) July 22, 2018
Anti-Black hatred is a completely normalized culture pic.twitter.com/plYAFyQfB5
At a time when United States President Donald Trump is calling NFL players who kneel during the national anthem in protest of police brutality “sons of b******”, fans at a baseball game are giving a white player who once tweeted the n-word and other slurs a standing ovation.
Just when MLB seemingly couldn’t look worse, they shot themselves in the foot by tweeting out a racist joke featuring Shohei Ohtani and Ichiro Suzuki greeting each other, in the form of the “*Spider-Man pointing meme*” – which, if you don’t know, insinuates that two things are the same.
Get it? Because Ohtani and Ichiro are both Japanese. Let’s ignore everything else about them and how they couldn’t be more different in terms of physical build and playing style, and instead laugh at how they’re both Asian.
Seems a bit racist , @mlb pic.twitter.com/3DLdv2aJZE
— H🇻🇪 (@El__Tipo) July 28, 2018
The Tweet was deleted almost immediately. But once again, the damage was done.
If the NBA is the most socially conscious league and the NFL is split in that regard with its players on one side of the line and its owners on the other, MLB is nowhere to be found on the map.
Instead of that gap narrowing, it appears to be only getting bigger.
