Picayune Sentinel Extra: 'Jackie' sounded like trash talk, not a joke and not a racist comment

Letter writers weigh in on the antechamber issue & much more

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A May 6, 2019, Sports Illustrated article quoted White Sox shortstop Tim Anderson as saying “I kind of feel like today’s Jackie Robinson. That’s huge to say. But it’s cool, man, because he changed the game, and I feel like I’m getting to a point to where I need to change the game.”

Anderson is a bona fide superstar and a good bet to one day be in Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame, though seeming to compare himself to the trailblazing, sublimely talented Robinson was arguably a stretch.

New York Yankees third baseman/designated hitter Josh Donaldson twice called Anderson “Jackie” during Saturday’s game, leading several innings later to a bench-clearing fracas in which no punches were thrown but many allegations were hurled.

Donaldson, who is white, said “Jackie” was just an “inside joke” he has with Anderson, who is Black. But Sox manager Tony La Russa said Donaldson’s comments were “racist.”

“I thought that was a joke between him and I because we have talked about it before,” Donaldson said after the game. “He’s called himself Jackie Robinson. That’s why I thought it was funny between us.”

“It was disrespectful,” Anderson said. “And I don’t think it was called for. It was unnecessary.”

I don’t know what’s in anyone’s heart, of course, but what this looks like to me is garden-variety taunting — not the sharing of a friendly “joke,” not racism, but trash talking of the sort that athletes engage in all the time. Donaldson and Anderson were not friendly — they had a heated exchange earlier this month when Anderson took exception to an aggressive tag by Donaldson at third base — so there was little chance Anderson would find the needling funny, especially given Donaldson’s reputation as being a jerk.

MLB on Monday announced a one-game suspension for Donaldson and an undisclosed fine:

Regardless of Mr. Donaldson's intent, the comment he directed toward Mr. Anderson was disrespectful and in poor judgment, particularly when viewed in the context of their prior interactions. In addition, Mr. Donaldson’s remark was a contributing factor in a bench-clearing incident between the teams, and warrants discipline.”

And I suppose it is “disrespectful,” the word Anderson used in first describing Donaldson’s dig, for one athlete to tease or trash talk another. But come on. That’s big time sports — see for example “23 Awesome Stories About Michael Jordan’s Trash Talking,” “The 25 Biggest Trash-Talkers in Sports History,” “Baseball's Top 20 Biggest Trash-Talkers and Agitators” and on and on. MLB seems to have clutched its pearls here in response to a charge of racism for which I can see no evidence.

Anderson had the best and only necessary response, crushing a three-run homer Sunday in the second game of Sunday’s doubleheader sweep against the Yankees, silencing a crowd that had been chanting “Jackie!” at him.

Notes and comments from readers —lightly edited —- along with my responses

Some of these messages are in reference to items in last Thursday’s Picayune Sentinel. Regarding “Do Better!” — several readers called my attention to a quote from Maya Angelou, ““Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

C.P — In the suburbs, if alcohol or drugs were found on a minor, they would be arrested for under age possession and taken to the station, parents called, and subsequent court appearances. Knowing those consequences would prevent a gathering like this to begin with. The rise in crime and mayhem that is ruining our wonderful city and causing businesses and residents to leave is the direct result of offenders seeing a lack of swift consequences for their bad behavior. I realize that you are laughing at the notion that CPD has the manpower to arrest kids for under-age possession but......something has to be done to stop these "trends" and making it unpleasant for them have them to begin with is one idea

Steve R. — you are correct in saying we need short-term answers, but your Pollyannaish “arrest-but-don't-prosecute” idea won't cut it. There have to be consequences severe enough to prevent repeaters and deter observers from breaking laws.

David L. — The very large groups of "youths" acting belligerent and breaking laws is the result of Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s refusal to properly charge, prosecute and punish lawbreakers who are Black in a perverted attempt at what she terms social justice.

Removing consequences for bad and criminal behavior guarantees more bad and criminal behavior. Charging a 15-year-old who carjacks at gunpoint with misdemeanor trespass to a vehicle in juvenile court sends a terrible message and is a prime factor in the many serial repeat carjacking offenders.

In a democratic society it is said that citizens get the governance they deserve (because they voted for it). So now the good citizens of Cook County are enjoying the fruits of harvest from electing Kim Foxx.

We can’t and we shouldn’t charge and put on trial kids who run through the streets obstructing traffic, who hop on top of buses and even who throw chairs at cars. The pipeline to prison created by the costs and disruptions of putting such offenders on trial, potentially locking them up and saddling them with criminal records is bad public policy.

But so is simply turning the other way, making excuses for them and shrugging off the very real negative impacts of the chaos and fear they sow when these “trend” exceed their boundaries. Arrests and temporary detention of lawbreakers might prove inconvenient enough to serve as a deterrent.

I’m not talking about carjacking, which I consider to be a very serious, very traumatic violent crime that, I agree, demands a more punitive response than Foxx’s office is providing.

Meanwhile, Ted B. sent along a link to a Violence Reduction Project report in which Peter Moskos, a law professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, posted 30 different expert opinions on this vital subject.

Jake H. — One of the main reasons these "trends" turn violent is youth disagreement over whether a room is a foyer or vestibule.

Truly, disputes over antechamber terminology are the worst! And I’m grateful for all the responses to my aside last week about how “That’s My Weakness Now” is one of the few songs I know to use “vestibule” in the lyrics and how there is a key and often underappreciated difference between a vestibule and a foyer.

Madeline M. complicated matters by bringing up the word “narthex,” which Wikipedia tells us is "an architectural element typical of early Christian and Byzantine basilicas and churches….In early Christian churches the narthex was often divided into two distinct parts: an esonarthex (inner narthex) between the west wall and the body of the church proper, separated from the nave and aisles by a wall, arcade, colonnade, screen, or rail, and an external closed space, the exonarthex (outer narthex).

Ed F. noted that Oscar Brand’s version of “Humoresque” also mentions vestibules

If you wish to pass some water,
kindly call the Pullman porter,
He'll place a vessel in the vestibule.
 

Dave B. helpfully explained that vestibule here would refer to the area on a passenger rail car “located between the entryway steps and the seating section.” For the record, it is the editorial position of the Picayune Sentinel that passing water in a vestibule, foyer, lobby, esonarthex or exonarthex is unrefined.

Steve R. — One of the biggest failings of the sanctimonious field of journalism is that the loudest voices get the most coverage, not necessarily because they have anything more valuable to say than, for example, petition signers, but merely because they created a spectacle for lazy journalists to cover. There really is a great, silent majority out here. Unfortunately, they (we?) are also lazy.

Marc M— TV news and the newspaper photographers take low angle and closer photos when they need to make a smallish protest group look big for a news story. When there is a genuinely large crowd the shots are always high angle.

It seems like it ought to be a journalistic convention to attempt as much as possible to convey or estimate the size of the gathering, and to be circumspect about covering gatherings of a dozen people on a street corner, especially in a metro area of more than 9 million. Protests do show a level of commitment and energy, but we always need to be wary of amplification by magnification.

This is also a problem with social media, where 100 random Twitter accounts can attack a person or a company and a freak out occurs.

Lynne T. —Tom Brady’s 10-year, $375 million contract with Fox to be the network’s lead NFL analyst after he retires is similarly outrageous to the amounts corporations pay for celebrity endorsements and naming rights at sports venues. Does anybody buy office supplies or choose an airline because their team plays at a certain stadium or arena? I can’t believe there is a decent, or any, return on investment. My theory is corporate executives just want to be thought of as cool and hang out with sports stars.

There is clearly some return on investment for celebrity endorsements and for slapping a company name on a stadium or arena. For the former, the idea that, say, Steph Curry would stake his reputation by appearing in a commercial for a cryptocurrency-trading platform is meant to cause the viewer to think, “Hey, I don’t understand crypto and it sure seems like a Ponzi scheme based on fantasy money, but Steph Curry wouldn’t risk his image and good name by roping me into a scam!”

For the latter, it’s all about branding. By buying naming rights for the stadium where the White Sox play their home games, Guaranteed Rate knows that at least some of you will think of Guaranteed Rate first when looking for a mortgage, and that the very fact that the company has the resources to throw at naming rights suggests stability, profitability, dependability. No fly-by-night mortgage lender would be able to buy a stadium name.

I admit to a poor understanding of how the advertising game works. Does a 30-second Super Bowl commercial for a soft drink really generate enough extra sales to generate not only the $6.5 million cost of airing the spot but millions spent on production? Maybe. Or maybe the calculation is that, over time, the cost of not keeping your brand in front of consumers is far greater.

One thing I have noticed is that you don’t see ads for gasoline very often anymore — probably because very few motorists would even cross the street to buy, say, Shell instead of, say, BP unless the pump price was lower at the Shell station. My interest, when filling up on the highway, is mostly price but also the quality of the attached convenience stores, and the lack of advertising about fuel quality tells me I’m far from the only one.

Dale W. — I mostly agree that good announcers won’t make me stick with a game and bad announcers won’t make me turn off a game. I do, however, tend to mute Tony Romo, who offers good insights but doesn't know when to stop talking. His incessant chatter grates on me. And I love Jason Benetti and Steve Stone. They made me want to watch the Sox.

I heard from a surprising number of readers who say they will turn the sound down to avoid certain announcers — Joe Buck seems to grate on a lot of nerves — but very few like Dale here who expressed an inclination to follow one team over another based on the announcer.

Peter F. — You recently featured Michael Peter Smith’s “Famous in France” as your Tune of the Day. But it was when I heard him sing “The Dutchman” that I was moved to tears — not because I am old and know many people/couples who live with dementia, but because the song was such an incredible gift of love with the understanding that. if it is real. it will last through all life's challenges — even the loss of self.

It's an amazingly touching song about love and aging, I agree. And it gets more and more meaningful to me the older I get.

The lyrics are here.

DeBoer says public apologies are worse than useless. I’m afraid he’s right.

In “Just stop apologizing,” Substacker Freddie DeBoer says:

It’s a bizarre little quirk of contemporary left politics — people simultaneously believe that many crimes shouldn’t be prosecuted and that we should always work to reintegrate even the worst offenders into society, but if you violate any of the arcane language norms of 21st-century liberalism, you can never be redeemed. Podcasters laugh at people concerned with a rash of carjackings but will then give the social death penalty to someone who says something in a clumsy way. …

All roads lead to condemnation and none to absolution. … However much you apologize, it’s never enough. …

Admitting fault only emboldens critics. The mechanisms of social media always reward escalation and never reward calm and restraint. Contemporary progressive politics excuse any amount of personal viciousness so long as the target is perceived to be guilty of committing some identity crime. The notion of proportionality is totally alien to these worlds, and when people ask for such proportionality they’re accused of supporting bigotry. … You can ask the mob for forgiveness, but they have no moral right to grant it, and anyway they never will. They’ll just keep you wriggling on the end of a pin forever. … Public apology is a useless and self-defeating ritual. … Such apologies just show that blood is in the water. They’re never going to let you off of the gallows anyway, and the people you really owe an apology to will value a private apology just as much, or more.

It’s important to stress that he’s not talking about private apologies, which are meaningful and often accepted when they’re perceived as sincere.

Ya gotta see these tweets!

I often run across tweets that are too visual in nature to include in the Tweet of the Week contest (the template for the poll does not allow the use of images). Here are a few good ones I’ve come across recently:

I can’t identify the source for this one:

There’s still time to vote in the conventional Tweet of the Week poll!

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