Major League Baseball is apparently run by spineless morons.
Don't believe me? Try this. According to a piece from ESPN, the leftist "sports" network, which surely is happy about it, the All-Star pitcher Josh Hader of the Milwaukee Brewers will have to attend "sensitivity training" and participate in "diversity and inclusion initiatives" because of tweets he sent.
Hader is 24 years old, in his second year in the majors. You would have assumed that he was punished for tweets he sent last week, or maybe a month ago. Nope.
First, let's go ahead and read Baseball's insipid statement in total. Here goes:
"During last night's [All-Star] game we became aware of Mr. Hader's unacceptable social media comments in years past and have since been in communication with the Brewers regarding our shared concerns," Major League Baseball said in a statement Wednesday. "After the game, Mr. Hader took the necessary step of expressing remorse for his highly offensive and hurtful language, which fails to represent the values of our game and our expectations for all those who are a part of it. The Office of the Commissioner will require sensitivity training [sic] for Mr. Hader and participation in MLB's diversity and inclusion initiatives [sic]."
Now, I've read the tweets, and let's just say that if I had a granddaughter, the 17-year-old version of Josh Hader would not be the guy I'd want her to be anywhere near. They were racially offensive and not exactly kind to gay people either. They're the kind of sub-sophomoric crap you would expect from a 17-year-old.
Which, if you haven't already figured out, is how old Hader was when he wrote them!
I am serious as a heart attack. Major League Baseball is ordering sensitivity training, and participation in their other virtue-signaling garbage, as punishment for something that Hader did when he was 17 years old -- before he was drafted by the Baltimore Orioles, before he played in the Houston Astros organization, and then before going to Milwaukee, where he made his major-league debut last year.
Those tweets were from 2011.
Now, Hader is not accused of having ever, you know, actually done anything, physically. He wrote a bunch of offensive tweets in 2011, as a 17-year-old, while the property, not of Major League Baseball, but of Old Mill High School in Millersville, Maryland. And, I suppose, his parents.
It is unknown whether his school, or his parents or anyone else took him to task or punished him back then, but I can tell you that it was their jurisdiction to do so, certainly not Major League Baseball, with which Hader had zero connection then.
So I am telling you this, Josh Hader. You need to refuse to attend any such training, any such punishment, and if Baseball tries to punish you for that refusal, you need to take them to court, where you will surely win. You need to insist that, however ugly, the offensive tweets of a 17-year-old are for parents and schools to punish at that time, not for an employer seven years later, and particularly when we're talking about protected speech, as in "protected by the Constitution."
Josh Hader, according to his teammates, is not the same person he was as an immature teenager, and I assume, at least based on my own example, that is true. If Baseball can punish him as an employer for something he did not do while in their employ, and which was Constitutionally protected, then other employers can assert some right to go back to employees they want to lay off, find tweets from when they were 17 and fire them, instead of laying them off.
Or find tweets from when they were 16. Or 12. Or in nursery school.
And for how long are subject to that? If they found the tweets only when he was 58 would they try to suspend his pension until he went to "training"?
Please, Josh. Do not go to that training. Refuse! The nation needs you to take a stand.
Copyright 2018 by Robert Sutton
