WASHINGTON — If you think the rise in strikeouts in Major League Baseball is the game’s most alarming trend, then you haven’t been paying attention the last two weeks.
Late Sunday night, Nationals shortstop Trea Turner became the third MLB player in less than two weeks — and second on Sunday alone — to have old, offensive tweets resurface. Turner’s tweets from 2011 and 2012 are chock full of racist and homophobic terms that some would say is just jock speak or “boys being boys.”
It’s not. In a league that’s famously struggled to entice black Americans to play their sport, this is especially troubling and problematic.
But when the Nationals open their 10-game homestand against the New York Mets Tuesday night and Turner steps up to the plate for his first at-bat, Nats fans shouldn’t boo. Nor should they cheer for him as the abhorrent fans in Milwaukee did for Josh Hader.
The only appropriate response is silence.
Cheering for Turner would be a repeat of the disheartening scene in Milwaukee. Of the three players embroiled in controversy, Hader’s tweets were the worst of the bunch — and he doesn’t deserve an ounce of credit for casually moonwalking off what, at times, came off as hate-fueled rhetoric.
Nobody deserves a standing ovation for taking responsibility for something they never should have done in the first place.
And though it would make him feel the consequences of his stupidity, Turner taking the field amid a cascade of boos would unnecessarily chastise him for the foolishness he displayed as a young man (he was 18-19 years old when the tweets were sent) and drag the story along further. If fans want to make him pay for his words, they should simply refrain from buying his jersey, or merchandise bearing his name or likeness.
That said, I don’t believe Turner needs to be harshly disciplined by a league he wasn’t a member of when he composed his tweets. His apology seemed appropriately contrite (especially when held up against Sean Newcomb’s flimsy and unacceptable one) and I have yet to hear any accounts that imply he’s a bigot who said what he did from a hateful place.
While one can chalk up the controversial tweets to being young and ignorant, the fact that they were still public raises an even more troubling question. Considering the fallout from the Hader controversy during the All-Star Game, how is it that neither Turner nor Holcomb thought enough of their own awful tweets to go back and delete them?
It never crossed their minds that their own “jock speak,” quotes of rap lyrics, or whatever justification was given for the idiotic tweets were distasteful enough to spark a similar PR firestorm that would reflect poorly on themselves and the teams that employ them?
Assuming he’s grown and is as enlightened as his statement of apology implies, Turner should have known that the context of his words in the tweets is no longer acceptable — even if he wrongheadedly thought they ever were.
And I seriously doubt Turner could have ever thought the use of racist language is OK. There was a time not that long ago when homophobic slurs were far more permissible than they ever deserved to be, but that’s more of a blemish on our society than an excuse for him using those words the way he did.
Consider the evolution of the word “retarded.” Once upon a time, it was the clinical and appropriate reference to those with special needs. Now it’s an outdated, unacceptable term, in large part because small-minded teens like Turner, Holcomb and Hader used it as a way to demean others. Anyone with an ounce of self-awareness should be recognize that evolution and not only scrub the word from their vernacular, but from their digital footprint.
A lot of the tweets that have surfaced are from several years ago – from a time in their lives when they may not have realized the impact those words have. But as you learn from and grow out of that youthful indescretion, delete those posts to reflect that growth.
— Obi-Sean Kenobi Doolittle (@whatwouldDOOdo) July 30, 2018
Which calls to mind a social media practice we all could stand to remember: If you wouldn’t stand at a podium and say something in front of hundreds of people, you shouldn’t post it. That number is limitless when it comes to Twitter since you don’t necessarily have to follow someone to see their tweets, and screenshots can still capture the stuff we delete.
But forget the social and professional ramifications. People are hurt by these words. And for a time, Turner implicitly stood by those words by not thinking enough of them to purge them.
So Nationals fans should no longer stand by — or for — him.
Note: This column has been corrected to say Turner used racist language rather than the N-word specifically.
