Like Berkeley and most of today’s snowflake college campuses, we just learned that the concept of safe spaces has now been extended to the Major League Baseball playing field.
Merriam-Webster defines a safe space as, “a place intended to be free of bias, conflict, criticism, or potentially threatening actions, ideas, or conversations.” In laymen’s terms a safe space is a place for false outrage and hysteria when something politically incorrect happens.
Kevin Pillar, an outfielder for the Toronto Blue Jays, created an international firestorm when in the heat of the moment he called the opposing pitcher a “faggot” immediately after striking out. This was deemed so indecent by the press, most didn’t reprint what was said when reporting on the story, and the media pixilated the video of Pillar’s mouth after striking out to save our virtues if we happened to read lips.
For his part, Pillar was suspended for two games and shamed into giving the typical apology that one is expected to give in such circumstances saying, “It was immature. It was stupid. It was uncalled for. It’s part of the game. It’s… I’m a competitive guy. You know, heat of the moment. Obviously, I’m going to do whatever I need to do to reach out and apologize. He didn’t do anything wrong. It was on me.” This not being enough, Pillar had to officially tweet out another apology that in part read, “I’m completely and utterly embarrassed and feel horrible to have put the fans, my teammates and the Blue Jays organization in this position,” Pillar wrote in part on Twitter. “I have apologized personally to Jason Motte, but I also need to apologize to the Braves organization and their fans, and most importantly, to the LGBTQ community for the lack of respect I displayed last night.”
I have observed an odd trend in our modern time. As society becomes courser and courser with each passing year, we have inversely become more fragile and easily offended. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?
If you understand the history of sports, particularly baseball, you may understand what I’m getting at. Players like Ty Cobb, Leo Durocher, and countless others made bench jockeying part of their game. Bench jockeying was, in short, a player who would try to get the opposition off their game by yelling ugly things at other players. The bench jockey would be vulgar, personal, and persistent. Yet it never occurred to our ancestors in days of yore that a bench jockey needed to be suspended or stopped, and yet, somehow, I’ve never read a case of a player or fan of that era suffering from post-baseball stress syndrome from being exposed to such language and abuse.
In more modern times, not so many years ago (although time flies by quickly) I worked for a Major League team that dwelled in the bottom of the standings. We had a pitcher who was decent but had a tendency to give up the long ball. Every time he did, in the heat of the moment he would let out a string of obscenities that at times were more interesting than the game, and could clearly be heard even in the cheap seats. I don’t recall one fan or media complaint whenever this common place event happened. I guess we were living in ignorant times and were too barbaric to realize it.
The question is why in our country’s past, when we still lived by Victorian principles and women’s skirts went down past the ankles, did such behavior not faze us, but today when anything goes morally, do we get so upset?
The answer of course, is we, the people, aren’t really upset or fazed one bit by what Pillar did. But today, everything is now a political cause, including a ballgame. The left never miss an opportunity to fire up the base. By all means, react to a spontaneous remark in a baseball game, as if 100 years of homosexual civil rights advancements is about to be thrown out the window.
The media, of course, dutifully plays their part of false outrage, baying loudly that we must make an example of Kevin Pillar and anyone else who sins similarly. There used to be no crying in baseball, but now it is a nonstop weep fest.
