Pundits say Hader should expect haters at road games
You’re Josh Hader. You have four games coming up in San Francisco against the Giants, beginning Thursday. And you just know you’re going to get booed like you play for the damn Dodgers.
You actually play for the Brewers, of course. Last week you gave up a three-run, game-losing homer in the All-Star Game — and it was not nearly the worst part of your night. That’s because racist and homophobic tweets, courtesy of your 17year-old self, surfaced online midgame.
So in the ensuing days you apologized tearfully to your teammates, and to the wider world, and MLB ordered
up some sensitivity training.
And then, when next you appeared in a game, you walked out to a warm ovation in Milwaukee, an honest-to-thunder, full-throated standing-O of the sort normally extended for a no-hitter, not hate on Twitter.
So now you are headed to the City by the Bay, where a warm ovation is, well, unlikely.
“This is a town of second chances,” political satirist Will Durst says by email. “We will tolerate anything, except intolerance.”
Giants fan Taylor Upchurch believes boos are what comes of making this brand of bad news — and of being on the other team.
“Both his reception in Milwaukee, and whatever he gets here, will have a lot to do with baseball fans being partisan,” Upchurch says. “The fans here read the headlines the same as the fans there do.”
Comedian Sean Keane is sorry he’ll be out of town. “I would definitely enjoy booing Josh Hader if I were there,” he says. “I feel like a good public shaming, a good public booing, I think that’s going to be good for America.”
Harry Edwards, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of California, does not agree. He allows that San Franciscans see themselves as citizens of one of the most cosmopolitan and progressive cities in the world. He expects Hader will hear boos from some fans but hopes others will refrain.
“You have a thriving gay community here, and a thriving black community that has been here almost as long as the city,” Edwards says. “They don’t take kindly to this kind of disposition. … (But) I think people out here are sophisticated enough to understand what he did seven years ago is most certainly germane, but it is more a resume statement and pathetic” than necessarily where Hader is as a person today.
“You’ll get people who will boo him, and I think you’ll get a lot of people who will take it for what it is,” Edwards says. “I think we’re getting a little bit smarter. I think you’re going to get mixed reactions, depending on where people are in terms of their evolution and maturity.”
Keane hopes fans will tackle Hader’s nadir with clever signs. “We’re the pun-and-costume capital of America,” he says. “If he’s ever going to get heckled by a mime who juggles, this is the place.”
A clip of the Milwaukee ovation made Comedy Central’s ”The Daily Show” this week. Roy Wood Jr. noted it was great to see forgiveness like that.
“I don’t know, man,” Ronny Chieng replied. “It kind of looks like some people are clapping for the racism.”
Keane seconds that emotion. “I get that they were supporting their guy,” he says, “but it feels like they were applauding the slurs. You know what I mean? Like it was a standing ovation for the N-word, basically.”
Edwards prefers to believe Milwaukee fans were cheering for Hader’s contrition, not his Twitter emissions.
Even so, Edwards wonders if some of the fans who applauded are some of the same ones who scorn NFL players for kneeling during the national anthem. That form of NFL protest began in San Francisco.
“When Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid and Michael Bennett and Marshawn Lynch and Malcolm Jenkins and these players began taking a knee and linking arms they were sending a message about justice and inequity in America,” Edwards says. “The overwhelming number of white Americans don’t want to hear that.
“They know it’s not about disrespect for the flag or the military or the anthem. Not one athlete has said, ‘I’m doing this to show disrespect.’ … The response is indicative that it is still the case in this society that African-Americans are seen as not creditable witnesses to our own experiences.”
The anthem controversy exposes a nation so riven that even our stadiums are places of division.
“It’s not going to be an easy thing in this climate, where some people are going to take it out on (Hader) for a lot of other things that are going on in this country, from Trump to the atrocities in Charlottesville and so on,” Edwards says. “I think we have a long way to go. As long as whoever the individual is says, ‘To whatever degree that was me in the past, it is not who I aspire to be,’ we have to learn to cut each other some slack.”