Oy vey … has this incident that I am going to speak about today opened
up a Pandora’s box of problems!
This is a sports story, but it goes well beyond sports, so all of those readers who do not like sports and won’t progress with my daily Rant because of that, please, I implore you, read on …
It seems that in 2019, The Chicago White Sox’s Tim Anderson—who is black--said in a Sports Illustrated story about him that he wanted to be Major League Baseball’s current version of “Jackie Robinson,”—and yes, the quotes are mine and you will see why soon—because he wanted to inject fun and action back into a sport that some believe doesn’t have any of those two things in it.
As ill-guided as that comment was—would Anderson want to also endure all the other things that Jackie Robinson had to go through to succeed as baseball’s first black player?—what ensued was even worse.
Evidently, Josh Donaldson—now with the Yankees, but who has played for a couple of other teams since 2019—might have taken the term “Jackie Robinson” too lightly, as he evidently started to call Anderson “Jackie” when his team played the White Sox in the intermittent years.
According to Donaldson, it was sort of an inside joke between him and Anderson, but whether it still was or not—or ever was—is open to conjecture.
After the Yankees’ game on Saturday—in which there were two bench-clearing incidents involving Donaldson and other White Sox players—the Yankees’ third baseman explained the whole thing, said he would like ot talk to Anderson about it, and afterwards, he had to explain to his manager and teammates about this thing, saying there was no malice or racial thoughts behind it all.
The league and team are now investigating all of this, and no matter what Donaldson thinks, you just know that a fine and a suspension are upcoming.
Jackie Robinson is probably the only baseball player that cannot be spoken about in a negative tone by anyone, whether they are black or white.
He broke the long-time color barrier in Major League Baseball, he took a lot of flack for it, but he persevered, and the way he did it was with grace and humility ... and a fierceness on the field to do anything to put his team in a winning situation.
It helped that he was a terrific player, one of the best players of his era, and a Hall of Famer.
Sure, there have been greater players in baseball, but Robinson is the only one who gets his own day, and has had his number retired by all 30 Major League Baseball teams—nobody can ever wear that number ever again (the last one to wear it was Mariano Rivera, another Hall of Famer seemingly cut from the same cloth as Robinson with his humility and grace, but also for his fierceness on the mound to lead his team to a win).
Anyway, so if you kind of trash Robinson’s legacy by calling another player “Jackie,” even if in your mind it wasn’t racial, you know you are going to get the book thrown at you, and Donaldson will deal with that probably today, when the fine and suspension will be announced.
But there are two interesting things here that need to be spoken about.
Anderson, in his own way, is a culprit in this too, although like Donaldson, he doesn’t realize it.
We know what he meant by aligning himself as trying to be this generation's “Jackie Robinson,” but it came out all wrong.
Yes, Robinson helped changed the game with his exciting play, and nobody will dispute that.
But Robinson did it in a climate that because of the way he handled it, Anderson will never have to go through the same thing personally … a climate where there were death threats made on his life and his family’s lives, he was called some of the more vicious names possible even by fellow players, and he faced heightened cleats by some players every time he slid into second base ... mainly because of the color of his skin.
I don’t think Anderson wants all of that, nor should this be directed at him.
Rather than be “Jackie Robinson,” why not be just Tim Anderson … the guy is a great player, so just be himself and don’t try to be “Jackie Robinson,” because that simply isn’t happening.
And as for “Jackie” being a racial epithet … look, you and I will never know if this began as a playful taunt or whether its continual use has morphed it into something worse.
This is a sports story, but it goes well beyond sports, so all of those readers who do not like sports and won’t progress with my daily Rant because of that, please, I implore you, read on …
It seems that in 2019, The Chicago White Sox’s Tim Anderson—who is black--said in a Sports Illustrated story about him that he wanted to be Major League Baseball’s current version of “Jackie Robinson,”—and yes, the quotes are mine and you will see why soon—because he wanted to inject fun and action back into a sport that some believe doesn’t have any of those two things in it.
As ill-guided as that comment was—would Anderson want to also endure all the other things that Jackie Robinson had to go through to succeed as baseball’s first black player?—what ensued was even worse.
Evidently, Josh Donaldson—now with the Yankees, but who has played for a couple of other teams since 2019—might have taken the term “Jackie Robinson” too lightly, as he evidently started to call Anderson “Jackie” when his team played the White Sox in the intermittent years.
According to Donaldson, it was sort of an inside joke between him and Anderson, but whether it still was or not—or ever was—is open to conjecture.
After the Yankees’ game on Saturday—in which there were two bench-clearing incidents involving Donaldson and other White Sox players—the Yankees’ third baseman explained the whole thing, said he would like ot talk to Anderson about it, and afterwards, he had to explain to his manager and teammates about this thing, saying there was no malice or racial thoughts behind it all.
The league and team are now investigating all of this, and no matter what Donaldson thinks, you just know that a fine and a suspension are upcoming.
Jackie Robinson is probably the only baseball player that cannot be spoken about in a negative tone by anyone, whether they are black or white.
He broke the long-time color barrier in Major League Baseball, he took a lot of flack for it, but he persevered, and the way he did it was with grace and humility ... and a fierceness on the field to do anything to put his team in a winning situation.
It helped that he was a terrific player, one of the best players of his era, and a Hall of Famer.
Sure, there have been greater players in baseball, but Robinson is the only one who gets his own day, and has had his number retired by all 30 Major League Baseball teams—nobody can ever wear that number ever again (the last one to wear it was Mariano Rivera, another Hall of Famer seemingly cut from the same cloth as Robinson with his humility and grace, but also for his fierceness on the mound to lead his team to a win).
Anyway, so if you kind of trash Robinson’s legacy by calling another player “Jackie,” even if in your mind it wasn’t racial, you know you are going to get the book thrown at you, and Donaldson will deal with that probably today, when the fine and suspension will be announced.
But there are two interesting things here that need to be spoken about.
Anderson, in his own way, is a culprit in this too, although like Donaldson, he doesn’t realize it.
We know what he meant by aligning himself as trying to be this generation's “Jackie Robinson,” but it came out all wrong.
Yes, Robinson helped changed the game with his exciting play, and nobody will dispute that.
But Robinson did it in a climate that because of the way he handled it, Anderson will never have to go through the same thing personally … a climate where there were death threats made on his life and his family’s lives, he was called some of the more vicious names possible even by fellow players, and he faced heightened cleats by some players every time he slid into second base ... mainly because of the color of his skin.
I don’t think Anderson wants all of that, nor should this be directed at him.
Rather than be “Jackie Robinson,” why not be just Tim Anderson … the guy is a great player, so just be himself and don’t try to be “Jackie Robinson,” because that simply isn’t happening.
And as for “Jackie” being a racial epithet … look, you and I will never know if this began as a playful taunt or whether its continual use has morphed it into something worse.
Did Anderson have an epiphany one day that the word's use was a slur after it was used as a term of endearment and a few giggles before? Who knows?
But funny, the name “Karen” has also morphed into something racial too, which is used by both whites and non-whites to describe someone who doesn’t have a clue in actions revolving around race.
That “Karen” has become an accepted term and “Jackie” somehow is not demonstrates that once again, there is a double standard in our society, where while the implications might be the same for both names, the acceptance of one over the other is kind of unfair.
At this point, Donaldson is going to get his head chopped off for this new epithet, but those who use the other new epithet, “Karen,” well, that is all fine and dandy.
I have been on this earth for 65 years, and I have to say that I have never seen people get so up tight about things like they do now, ultra-sensitive to everything and anything said to them.
Some comedians have even said that this atmosphere has killed comedy, and they are right, because as a society, we have forgotten how to laugh at ourselves and our human foibles.
But more importantly, we have forgotten the axiom that our moms taught us, probably the first “Golden Rule” that we ever learned as kids, and it bears worth repeating here:
“Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me.”
So simple, but so true.
Let’s stop being so ultra-sensitive to everything said or hurled our way.
We will all be better off by just walking away from such nonsense, and moving on from it.
Can you still slip on a banana peel and fall right on your rump and have people laugh at you, or is that now something that we simply can’t laugh at anymore in the current environment where we have to worry about the condition of the person who slipped on that banana peel?
The bottom line is this: let’s stop worrying about “Jackie” and “Karen” and all these new “hate” words and move on with our lives like adults …
Because if we don’t, we are going to forever more be caught up in words that really don’t mean much of anything, and that is just a total waste of time and energy and is wrong, period.
But funny, the name “Karen” has also morphed into something racial too, which is used by both whites and non-whites to describe someone who doesn’t have a clue in actions revolving around race.
That “Karen” has become an accepted term and “Jackie” somehow is not demonstrates that once again, there is a double standard in our society, where while the implications might be the same for both names, the acceptance of one over the other is kind of unfair.
At this point, Donaldson is going to get his head chopped off for this new epithet, but those who use the other new epithet, “Karen,” well, that is all fine and dandy.
I have been on this earth for 65 years, and I have to say that I have never seen people get so up tight about things like they do now, ultra-sensitive to everything and anything said to them.
Some comedians have even said that this atmosphere has killed comedy, and they are right, because as a society, we have forgotten how to laugh at ourselves and our human foibles.
But more importantly, we have forgotten the axiom that our moms taught us, probably the first “Golden Rule” that we ever learned as kids, and it bears worth repeating here:
“Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me.”
So simple, but so true.
Let’s stop being so ultra-sensitive to everything said or hurled our way.
We will all be better off by just walking away from such nonsense, and moving on from it.
Can you still slip on a banana peel and fall right on your rump and have people laugh at you, or is that now something that we simply can’t laugh at anymore in the current environment where we have to worry about the condition of the person who slipped on that banana peel?
The bottom line is this: let’s stop worrying about “Jackie” and “Karen” and all these new “hate” words and move on with our lives like adults …
Because if we don’t, we are going to forever more be caught up in words that really don’t mean much of anything, and that is just a total waste of time and energy and is wrong, period.
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