What to do With a Problem Like Yunel.
Stupid.
Stupid, stupid, stupid…
But, sadly, understandable. At least for me. I’ve spent time in locker rooms and I know that the kind of stuff that happens in there is not rated PG. It’s a crude environment where, “what’s up asshat” or “hey, *slur* hows your day going?” is par for the course. Crude, offensive humor is a part of the lexicon of the clubhouse. Always has been, probably always will be. I think most people who’ve been involved with teams or groups—specifically male, young adult, privileged, elitist groups—know that though this particular event is tragic, is not all that shocking considering the demographic that created it. Again, I’m not saying I condone it, I’m simply saying that (sadly) I understand how it happened.
The nature of immaturity is what it is. I’m not saying that “boys will be boys” and so we should all just let this slide. Not at all. I’m saying that because it happened in the situation it did, I think we have to approach it with a certain measure of understanding as far as intent. I do not see this as a malicious act on the part of Yunel. I don’t even see it as a malicious act on the part of the guys who wrote it on his eye black (which, honestly, was a very lazy and sad joke, even for inside the clubhouse). Understanding the clubhouse the way I do, I don’t think this was something meant to make it outside the clubhouse walls. That’s why I feel that any sanctimonious language about burning Yunel at the stake for what was probably a bad judgement call is over board.
If this was a pastor, or a politician, I would be furious. In that scenario, one could make a strong argument for malicious intent backed by some spiritual or political agenda. I don’t see that here. What I see is an error in judgment on Yunel’s part that will cost him far more than I think he thought it would (if he thought at all). But not his job. Yunel is a valuable and cost effective chip in the Blue Jays lineup considering the production to position role he plays. Unless he’s unhappy and/or the Jays were already thinking about dealing him, I don’t see this being the reason he leaves town. Not with the off season fast approaching.
The real sin here is that he didn’t have the wherewithal to consider how this his would offend people who don’t speak the juxtaposed, surly, jagged language of the ball team before he made the choice to wear it out into the public. If you want to punish him for anything, punish him for that. And, if you’re the Jays, do it swiftly and in a way that addresses other concerns the fan base has about Yunel. When he arrived there was rumor of him being a malcontent. His body language throughout the season has been poor. He doesn’t always hustle. He looks unhappy or disinterested. Yunel now stands at the precipice of complete reputation destruction and he can go two ways with it. He can own all of his shortcomings, make glowing and heartfelt apology, and move up. Or, he can take that same attitude that got him into this situation and become the pariah of a town that is one of the most accepting and tolerant in baseball.
I truly value a comment on a situaton like this when it is coming from someone who knows the game and understands the locker room culture and not just the average joe schmoe who goes off on a tirade on how proffesional athletes who are adults have to be treated like children, what he did wasnt right but its not a disgusting attack on the gay community, people blow use of “curse” words way out of proportion. He’s an adult and he said a bad word probably in a joking matter, a stupid decision but not a hate crime people please take it down a few levels.
Context, context, context. and don’t trust Google translation blindly. Ask your Latin American friends for their interpretation, not translation, and event between Spanish speaking people you will find different interpretation. Is not as bad as everybody is making it sound. It depends on the context but everybody chose the worst possible interpretation that could be. Depending on the context it could mean: cry baby, wuss, sissy and more, many more.
Man, it’s even in a song’s lyrics (that’s doesn’t make it right though)
This is just fed by people who don’t like Yunel for whatever reason.
With so many spanish speaking people in the club, would you think that if it was that offensive, they wouldn’t notice? or wouldn’t say something?
Better judgment for next time of course.
This brings to mind something I saw myself years ago at one of the Oakland A’s photo days. I was taking pictures, like you do at those things, and later on as I was going through the photos I saw one of the players in his warmup jacket had “Get a hit F**” written over the A’s logo. I’m not going to name the player, but he’s still active in the league. You can probably, reasonably narrow it down from there.
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Now, this was about a decade ago. There was no TMZ. Skip Bayless and his obnoxious brand of “commentary” wasn’t even with ESPN yet. I know who the player was and a specific Google search didn’t even turn up anything obvious.
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Things like this probably came and went with little fanfare, and the most I ever heard about it when he found out what had been written there was a reaction of “Oh, it was a clubhouse prank and he didn’t even realize it was there.” Obviously the guy had been in a slump and someone wrote it on the jacket. Clearly, no malice was intended by it but you can bet anyone who took a picture with him that day knew about it later on.
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But here’s the thing – it didn’t happen during a game. It didn’t happen in front of more than maybe a couple thousand people or so, and it didn’t happen with TV cameras catching it (not that many people probably saw the Escobar thing at the game itself).
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With Escobar, I don’t know what to think yet. Boys will be boys and the clubhouse most definitely has a number of things in it that would probably surprise some people, but it has to be kept in the clubhouse. In this day and age, there has to be more sensitivity to slurs like that.
Wow. I read and re-read this. Then I went back and re-read your blog about Marcus Stroman. Wow. The Stroman blog says ‘shame.’ The Stroman blog says ‘Ignorance is not a viable excuse.’ Yet here, for FAR MORE OFFENSIVE conduct, you invoke immaturity, you decry sanctimonious language for a ‘bad judgment call’ (wasn’t Stroman’s error a bad judgment call of far less consequence?) Wow. As a Jays fan, and a human, I consider Yunel’s act, deliberately displaying an offensive epithet far more offsneive then not being aware an over the counter supplement has a mild stimulant that has a debatable impact on performance. Dirk, given the way your outrage is skewed between these two incidents you may want to adjust your moral compass a bit.
Fascinating Steve. What you failed to bring up here is the word “cheating”. Marcus cheated, or got himself labeled as such by consuming a PED. He damaged the team through an action that was avoidable. To that end, yes, it was a shame, and he cannot use ignorance as an excuse because he was fully aware of the law before doing what he did. I can still understand how it happend to Marcus. He’s not the first and wont be the last, but that doesn’t mean he can play the ignorance card and get away with it. The MLB has taken steps to ensure that ignorance is not an excuse for cheating.
As for Yunel. I didn’t say ignorance was an excuse. I didn’t even say the word ignorance. I said stupid. What Yunel did was stupid. In fact, while I’m at it, I’ll say what Marcus did was stupid too. There, now do you feel like there is some consistency? What Yunel did was not cheating, however. It was morally wrong and offensive, yes, but within the bounds of baseball law, it was not a cheating act. I can judge Marcus’s mistake clearly and say it was avoidable and a shame because there is a law in place, but I can’t judge Yunel’s, at least not completely, since I don’t know if— considering the multiple interpretations the words written in his eye black could mean or were intended to mean—he was trying to be funny in bad taste, malicious, or just plain stupid.
The real sin is that this made it out onto the field unchecked, and it is sanctimonious for us to judge a person for things we don’t really know if he believes or not. It is sanctimonious to take the most outraged response possible and pronounce judgment without all the facts. It is sanctimonious to act like we are beyond reproach and competent judges of this issue. Furthermore, it’s obtuse to make Yunel the avatar of hate speech, slurs, bigotry. I cannot police a person’s private beliefs, but once they become public, I have no choice. So, concerning my moral compass, pardon me for wanting to see all angles of this and give Yunel a chance to clarify himself before I render judgment.
These things do take on a life of their own. What he did was wrong and he should apologize and it should be done with. And maybe Dirk you should apologize to the girl you disparaged in “The Bullpen Gospels” as a “future lesbian” when she was taking batting practice in the cage next to you at your training facility.
probably not, Paul. Probably not.
There are definite differences, Paul. First off, Major League League Baseball promotes its events as suitable for the entire family and anti-gay statements by players can be interpreted as the same opinion of all of the MLB. This would turn away potential fans as well as put a dent in their equal employment policy. Even if he was kidding, it still reflects badly on the MLB. Dirk, on the other hand, is not hiring anyone. Also, in a book, one can expect the author’s opinions because they buy the book precisely for their opinions. Dirk was obviously making a joke in the book that was meant to be taken as humor without any truth to one’s appearance predicts one’s future sexual orientation. Yunel may have been making a joke, but it nonetheless reflects poorly on the MLB and deserves punishment.
I suspect that Yunel is on his way out of town for the reasons you cited that have been apparent before this incident. He doesn’t hustle at times and seems to have a surly laissez faire aura about him. Its hard to like the guy, even if he plays a pretty good shortstop and hits .250/10/50 or thereabouts at a reletively cheap rate by MLB standards. Image is everything and I suspect the Jays have had enough of him, even if this is an innocent lack of judgement decision that all young men in the world seem to make one time or another.
What I find even stranger (and even a bit sadder) is that not a single teammate said to him “Hey, dude – maybe you should take that off during game-time with the TV cameras and all”.
I understand locker room humour…but I cannot fathom how not a single person thought this might be not a good idea. Surely to god, a coach must have looked at his face at some point in the game??
I know in my heart that Yunel probably meant no harm by this…no personal slight to anyone..but it’s a different time out there these days. Kudos to the Jays for handling this quickly and quietly – and without wielding an overly heavy hammer.
You got it wrong Dirk. You made some good points but your comment: “Crude, offensive humor is a part of the lexicon of the clubhouse. Always has been, probably always will be.” does condone this action. As a former pro-athlete and a commentator in the public figure you have the ability to hold people on, or let them off the hook.
I agree that Yunel possibly did not realize the severity of his action and that this is an issue that involves the entire team, but saying “The real sin here is that he didn’t have the wherewithal to consider how this his would offend people who don’t speak the juxtaposed, surly, jagged language of the ball team before he made the choice to wear it out into the public,” again suggest that people in a sports team think differently than those outside the team.
Language like this is about a lack of inclusion. You and I and most other people will probably never know who inside the organization (including players, trainers, coaches, and staff) were offended. Werner thought it was strange that no one spoke up, but unfortunately that is a standard that needs to change. More than likely the teammates offended were to scarred to speak up for fear of being ostracized – a problem with the exact group mentality you do condone. Saying “that’s the way it has always been,” ignores people’s ability to change.
Dirk, i don’t think i need to remind you that once there was a time when black people and women couldn’t vote, and people fought against that change. There was a time when visible minorities were excluded from schools, and said that wouldn’t change. There are still many places where gay marriage is illegal, with people fighting against change, and yet, we’re are proving that can change.
With all due respect Brian, I think you have it wrong. This post of yours operates under the assumption that there is bigotry, homophobia, racism, and religious intolerance inside locker rooms and there isn’t. Crude humor is, and like all humor it is contextual. Extremely contextual. To take it outside of it’s context is to force it into the sphere of righteous indignations for indignation’s sake. That’s why I say the real sin was to let this go outside the locker room where people do no get the context or intent behind it. You say that there is no place in the world for a locker room that harbors homophobia and malicious ignorance of this magnitude and you are right. But locker rooms are not homophobic, racist, intolerant places. In fact, they are some of the most tolerant places —tolerant to the point that they are full of people comfortable enough to make jokes about such things because those within are not offended by said comments. It’s only when it escapes this group that it becomes offensive. To that end, I say that people must make a choice. Either hear and understand the intended context, as you would with many other mediums were the line of good and bad taste is toed, or be labeled as a reactionist waiving the flag of morality, willfully offended for offended’s sake. And, Brian, to say this is some how on the scale of racial inequality or scholastic segregation is preposterous. It’s stretching this incident far beyond it’s scope. Mind you, We still live in a world where people make racist, religious, and sexual jokes– some of these people are very well paid to make them! Where people find humor and what they believe to be right and wrong are highly differing in their context. Should they align more often than not, sure. Do they always? No. And that doesn’t mean they reflect on the person as a bigot who condones the world as it was 100 years ago. People can change Brian, that’s true, at the same time groups of grown men finding crude and insensitive things as funny hasn’t changed even though freedoms, politics, and nations have.
I have to ask then if Context and meaning are nothing? The words must ALWAYS be thought of in the worst possible interpretations available? We must always judge anyone who uses potentially offensive language as a horrible person… because that’s fair? Because we hold everyone in the world who says offensive words to these kind of standards? We never pay comedians for crude humor? We never pay rappers for crude language? We never watch movies depicting shameful acts? We never make inappropriate comments amongst our closed groups? You would have me believe that we do not exist in a world that sees many shades of grey but black and white? A world where all errors and flaws can be traced back to malicious intent to wound whomever is most vulnerable? …. Pardon me, but this is preposterous. Communication is part speaker, part receiver. The receiver makes a choice to hear a message in a certain way. There is room for interpretation in this though I know you choose not to see it. You choose to see the most offensive thing possible. That’s your right, but it’s also your responsibility in this world that cries for tolerance to be understanding of human error and circumstances that can contribute to it. Tragedy happens not because of words. It happens because of the intent, or the perceived intent behind words. They are but a means to meaning, and that meaning is parts sender and receiver.
After watching the press conference and seeing Yunel’s body language and taking into consideration the very words he wrote I have to ask if anyone from the Blue Jays has sat down with Yunel and asked him how he is doing. Who’s to say he isn’t suffering from a depression right now? He’s had an off year, there have been constant reports of the Jays souring on him that I’m sure he’s aware of and he just looked off. Is it so crazy to think he was directing the writing at himself? From his tone he very clearly had no ill-will towards any individual or group so I am genuinely curious to see if there is something deeply internal that is bothering him. Just a thought but I’m especially curious to hear what Dirk would have to say about that.
Now if I’m completely wrong about that, I do think it’s getting a little blown out of proportion. Was it stupid? Absolutely. Was it hateful? I really doubt that. The cultural context is so hard to understand here. You have some people who just google translate the phrase and they immediately assume it’s hate speech. Then you have seemingly a large portion of Latin individuals who seem to understand it as more horseplay than hateful. I’m just saying, you could walk down a street in London and have a random Brit ask you if he can “bum a fag” when all he really wants is to borrow a cigarette from you. In the same way, on the same London street you could tell someone you “like their fannypack” and a woman could terribly offended at how forwardly and grotesquely you commented on her vagina. I’m just saying, between Yunel and the translator and every amateur translator I’ve heard from, there is no clear English equivalent to what he wrote. It varies drastically from person to person. The last guy I showed giggled but wasn’t outraged.
All that said I like how the Jays handled it. The told him why they disproved of it and are now going to show him why this culture deems that kind of talk to be bad and not just suspend him. The education side of it is so important. He clearly didn’t understand why it was wrong and they aren’t just leaving him wondering. He seemed to show remorse in his comments so I think he is going to be just fine and this will ultimately lead to more education and good discussions. And this got way longer than I expected. Sorry for kind of ranting.
You bring up the point that this form of behavior is endemic in clubhouses. I would go even further and assert that it is found throughout male society. Words and language such as this can and is used whenever and wherever a group of young males are put together, be it a clubhouse, a playground, or a classroom. The issue should be Yunel’s lack of sensitivity, and on a macro level, the system that takes boys as young as 12 or 13 and annoints them as ‘the golden child’. Even in some of the poorest nations in the Americas, a preteen boy who shows an aptitude for playing a game really well is given a sheltered and priveleged existence, often being made a millionaire before they’re old enough to shave.
To the holier-than-thou crowd, be careful how you judge, lest you be held accountable to the same standards. I would be willing to bet that all but the tiniest fraction of men has used words or phrases similar to this, quite likely on a regular basis. One argument I’ve seen is using the Hispanic professor’s comments in the Star, stating that if you yelled these words to a latino on the street it would be very derogatory. Yeah, sure. But context is needed. If I walked up to a guy in a bar or on the street and called him a pussy or a fag, he’d be insulted, and likely would start swinging. Yet, any playground or lockerroom is filled with these phrases on a regular basis, with no affrontery intended. Wrong, yes. Common, yes.
I think the most interesting thing about this whole incident is what it tells us about the people involved. Alex Anthopoulis, in my opinion, could not have handled this difficult situation much better. In damage control, he acted quickly and decisively. John Farrell does not come off nearly as well, though admittedly he is in a much more difficult position, being a representative of both management and the players. Yunel Escobar seems to me to be a sheltered and perhaps not very smart person in serious need of sensitivity training, and maybe a stint living as a normal person.
Omar Vizqel, surprisingly to me, did not respond very well; I expected a better and more reasoned response from him. Most of the rest of the players gave the requisite safe response, showing a modicum of cultural sensitivity, but not saying enough to either get themselves in trouble or alienate their teammates.
In my opinion, the best teammate response came from Carlos Villanueva. I have to say, I cannot be more impressed with how he has handled various and often difficult questions from the media. Perhaps Dirk, this is something that should be expanded upon. I’ve grown to believe that the Jays SHOULD make every effort to resign Mr. Villanueva. I suspect that most times the ‘positive clubhouse influence’ angle is way overblown by the media. First of all, having never been in the clubhouse (at least not when it’s in it’s natural, symbiotic state- outsiders present naturally preclude that), we have no clue if someone is liked or respected in the clubhouse. Secondly, it’s debatable whether being a good guy makes a difference to the other players and their performance.
Carlos however, may be the exception to this rule. His response to this issue, as well as several other difficult media questions ( such as AA’s somewhat disparaging comments), leave me thinking that this is a guy I want representing my ball club. Sure, you may be able to find a better, or at least a safer pitcher as your 5th starter, but I doubt you can find somebody as smart and as honest as Carlos. Rare is the athlete that can field a media question, give an honest and reasoned reply, and not resort to cliches and euphemisms. To me, Carlos Villanueva is a guy you sign, and say to him ‘ we would love to see you as a career Jay, and if it’s what you desire, our Manager in 2025.’