MLB, Twitter, and Baseball’s Looming Age Problem
If you’re like me, you use Twitter. Twitter’s awesome! It gives you breaking news, reports on the latest trades, and also whatever this is:
Time for The Rock to layeth the Smacketh Down on Mookie Betts' and Mike Trout's candy asses in this A.L. MVP Race!!!! pic.twitter.com/4X1voYVU1Y
— Shaquille Cole-Cephus (@radioshaqtive93) July 27, 2018
And without Twitter, we wouldn’t have unfettered access to Brandon McCarthy’s observations of the world, which are worthwhile…
as someone who travels a lot for work I feel comfortable saying this: your local grocery store has a stupid name
— Brandon McCarthy (@BMcCarthy32) July 23, 2016
does MetLife stadium double as a dog park?
— Brandon McCarthy (@BMcCarthy32) July 26, 2018
I consider the Kit Kit to be one of the healthier candies
— Brandon McCarthy (@BMcCarthy32) June 29, 2018
you hear Yanny? Well then your ears are like MLB's replay system. Trying their best, but just not good enough
— Brandon McCarthy (@BMcCarthy32) May 16, 2018
Banister will be nervous about Bartolo’s pitch count soon. Anything more than 300 and he’ll risk not pitching in his 50s.
— Brandon McCarthy (@BMcCarthy32) April 16, 2018
Twitter can be good, in other words.
As anyone familiar with that particular platform knows, however, it’s not always. As MLB learned this week, sometimes tweeting can become a pretty risky exercise. Not only have three young players been forced to contend with the ugly sentiments of their younger selves, but the league’s main account has also found itself in the middle of something, as well.
It started with this:
RT to trigger a Yankee fan. #PrevailingMoments pic.twitter.com/Hi3MRCiZPJ
— MLB (@MLB) July 25, 2018
The tweet prompted what might be termed as “mixed” reactions, varying from this…
Amazing tweet
— IsaiahFPS (@IsaiahFPS) July 25, 2018
… to this:
Know what's so much more triggering than this? Allowing domestic abusers and white supremacists to participate in your league.
— Mary Craig (@marymcraig) July 25, 2018
Ok that’s a little unprofessional. I come to this account to get quality MLB content. Never did I think @MLB would use the word “trigger”
— Drew Lally (@DrewLally22) July 25, 2018
Obviously, debate ensued.
The problem here was with the use of “triggered,” which has a number of different connotations depending on the context. It has a designated meaning in medical parlance. As Ali Vingiano wrote in an excellent piece for BuzzFeed News,
The clinical notion of triggering dates back far as 1918, when psychologists tried to make sense of “war neurosis” in World War I, and later World War II, veterans. The term “post-traumatic stress disorder” came into use after the Vietnam War, but was not recognized as a diagnosable affliction until 1980. Then, psychologists started to work with clients to identify possible PTSD “triggers,” or a sensory input that somehow resembles the original trauma. But anticipating them is notoriously difficult. They assume disparate and unpredictable forms. An essay, or film, or other piece of media might trigger a person, as could a sound or a smell, a physical space, a specific object, or a person.
***
Andi Zeisler, the co-founder and editorial/creative director of the feminist publication Bitch magazine, said the phrase often popped up on a community forum on Ms. Magazine’s website.
“The first time I saw trigger warnings used was on Ms. Magazine’s bulletin board in the late ’90s and early ’00s,” she said. “It might have been on other feminist sites, but I only remember seeing it on Ms.”
But that trigger warning actually had a use similar to the original psychological meaning — in the context of sexual assault, and, later, eating disorders. In other words, it was intended to provide a warning to previously traumatized people that content contained in a particular post might cause distress to a person recovering from a similar trauma. As one Twitter user explained,
Since then, trigger warnings have become more ubiquitous, to controversial effect. Part of that is unfortunately political, but part is also due to an evidently popular misunderstanding of what trigger warnings actually do. As Lindsay Holmes explained for the Huffington Post, “Trigger warnings are potentially lifesaving for people who have dealt with traumas like sexual assault, hate crimes or violence.”
And that’s significant, because some, including those in the self-identified “alt-right,” have taken the position that trigger warnings are an issue for the political left. The problem is that many who most support their usage are veterans, who, regardless of political affiliation, were their intended original users. And “safe spaces,” a term which today is tied together with “triggers,” were conceived, essentially, as a place where LGBTQ people could be themselves, away from political repression and arrest; later, they were used by the women’s rights movement to refer to a place free from sexual violence. So much of the current discourse on safe spaces, including free-speech arguments and collegiate debate, entirely ignores what trigger warnings were actually intended to do: protect people.
The problem with this use of the term “trigger” is that it conflates the disappointment of losing a baseball game with the legitimate pain of those who’ve endured trauma of some sort, characterizing those experiencing either as emotionally fragile or weak-minded. Of course, most reasonable people would not take the stance that a sexual assault survivor is weak.
There’s an analogous approach in law: the so-called “eggshell skull rule” is the legal principle that a tortfeasor cannot use a person’s preexisting condition as a defense in a legal action. In other words, if you punched Mr. Glass in the face, causing him massive injuries, you’re liable for those injuries whether or not you knew he had osteogenesis imperfecta.* Similarly, in many jurisdictions, if a person has an underlying emotional trauma, you’re liable for triggering that trauma, and thereby causing further emotional injury.
*Osteogenesis imperfecta is actually a very real, and very serious, medical condition.
Now, this is not to say that the person who manages MLB’s Twitter account knew any of this. And ordinarily, I’d be inclined to believe that this was an inadvertent oversight by someone who didn’t know any better. After all, we’ve all said stupid things on Twitter, your redheaded contributor most assuredly included.
And then this happened.
The backlash to this tweet from the MLB account was far more widespread, with NESN, Awful Announcing, and even the Daily Mail all chiming in to call the tweet “racist.” MLB deleted the tweet soon after.
(In case you’re wondering, the reference in the tweet refers to this image from a 1967 Spiderman cartoon.)
Suffice to say, the implication is that Shohei Ohtani and Ichiro Suzuki look identical because both are Japanese.
Usually the Spiderman Pointing meme is used to highlight "twinsies" when it comes to certain achievements.
In this case, it seemed to play to the awful stereotype that "all Asians from certain countries look alike", apparently.
— Dhruv Koul (@DhruvKoul) July 28, 2018
Despite the backlash to both tweets, MLB issued no comment with respect to either. There was no statement made, no apology, no explanation. I reached out to MLB PR about the tweets, and they didn’t respond to my request for comment either.
Travis Sawchik has written, a couple of times, about baseball’s missing fans. What also merits some attention, though — and is, perhaps, related — is baseball’s aging problem. MLB had the oldest fans in professional sports before the 2017 season, with half of all television viewers 55 or older. By one measure, it was up to 57 by June 2017. Of greater concern, that aging trend is accelerating; Statista data lists fully three quarters of all baseball fans at 49 or older. By comparison, just 7% of viewers were under 18. That’s a stark different — and not good news for the future of the sport. If MLB is going to survive past the next couple of decades, it has to attract younger fans. And it’s something MLB recognizes, making a deal to stream games on Facebook in an attempt to better reach millennials.
But while Ashley MacLennan, in a great piece last year for this site, argued that millennials’ lack of interest in baseball might be primarily financial, MLB’s tweets this week certainly don’t help. Consider: in the United States, the majority of Facebook users were 25-34 years old, far younger than the average television viewer. And Twitter users are younger still, 37% of them (a plurality) falling in the 18-29 range. When Pew Research did a survey on Facebook and Twitter users a few years ago, they found that Twitter’s users were predominantly people of color. As Shea Bennett of Adweek described it,
According to Pew’s findings, the typical Twitter user continues to be an 18-29 year-old educated minority with a well-paying job, and is slightly more likely to be male than female.
It’s not hard to consider how young, educated people of color would generally respond to MLB’s tweets this week. But the reality is that MLB doesn’t have many young fans — let alone young fans of color — to lose. Already, baseball is considered by some to be a white man’s sport, a perception that will only hasten its loss of younger fans. If MLB is to attract those people, it will learn that messaging matters — including on Twitter. Too many weeks like this one, and some young fans might be gone for good.
Sheryl Ring is a litigation attorney and General Counsel at Open Communities, a non-profit legal aid agency in the Chicago suburbs. You can reach her on twitter at @Ring_Sheryl. The opinions expressed here are solely the author's. This post is intended for informational purposes only and is not intended as legal advice.
the percent of millennials who use twitter is extremely low compared to other social media places. 3 people use twitter, reporters,adults who want to get the latest news, and high profile accounts to build there brand. Go to any random college and high school and take a poll of how many use twitter vs ig vs facebook vs snap chat. You’ll find the millenials do not use twitter as much as the others.
Correct. Among my students, they always talk about Snapchat and Instagram, while Twitter is a distant third and Facebook is almost unheard of for them.
I think you’re thinking of gen z, not millennials. Most millennials aren’t students, they’re like 22-37 and would be the next wave of big household consumers ad exec targets which is why capturing them would be important.
The distinction between “generations” are mostly made up anyway. With the exception of the Baby Boom, there’s no accepted cutoff for any of them.
Yeah its pretty silly. Me and my youngest brother are both technically millennials (1981 and 1990) yet our childhood/teenage years could not possibly have been more different. I grew up having to dub cassettes and he grew up downloading MP3’s. Same generation, my ass! haha.
There is probably less difference between me and my dad then me and my brother.
There’s a lot of evidence that when you were born (birth cohort) matters a lot to your life. There is no agreement on what the right units are, or what historical points demarcate generations, etc. (With the exception of the Baby Boom, which was a spectacular demographic event that we can measure)
Funny, I was going to say the exact same thing to The Guru but decided against it.
Too many problems with this post to address, but the reason I clicked on the link was because I thought it was a serious look at MLB fan demographics and not a series of politically motivated one-liners. I am not interested in the latter, but it would be nice if Fangraphs, of all sites, would use a more rigorous standard when it comes to making claims like MLB doesn’t have many young fans or is a “white man’s sport”. I find myself visiting Fangraphs less and less and it transitions away from its founding, and that’s a shame.
In Fangraphs’ defense, it’s mostly the Sheryl Ring articles that poke this particular bear. If it bothers you that much, just don’t read them.
This is 100% on point – its not like they sneak in here. Its like a car wreck that I just occasionally have peek at though. The larger problem is what Fangraphs is willing to concede for clicks and to expand their demographic.
What, precisely, is it that you believe they are “conceding?”
Is this about baseball? You could replace MLB with any other entity lol
My criticism is not so much the politicization of posts (and it’s more pervasive than one author) as much as the loosening of critical rigor. No one would accept random anecdotes as the basis for making a bold claim like Bryce Harper is better than Mike Trout, for example, so why do so for claims like MLB has no young fans or is a white man’s game? The demographics of the player population refute the later, and there are some interesting surveys floating around that suggest MLB is doing OK with millennials (https://tinyurl.com/y7gcqsn3). Also, baseball/softball participation at youth levels are on the rise. Sure, MLB’s TV audience skews old, but national TV audiences are not a good way to judge MLB’s popularity, both overall and in terms of demographics. As much as I would prefer FG avoid the injection of politics into the site, what is increasingly keeping me away is the less analytical rigor being applied.
I’m failing to see what is political about the article. Care to illuminate?
Downvotes, but no one cares to explain? Since when is not being a racist/homophobic/misogynistic person a political issue? Or am I missing something?
The struggle for equal rights and status for women, racial minorities, and non-heterosexuals has always been political, and is so by definition. Or do you think that slavery, women’s suffrage, and LGBTQ rights are/were not political issues? On the contrary, they are perhaps the most political of issues, as they are all about who has power and control in society, and who doesn’t.
So yes, you are missing something. Like all of human history, and the definition of “political”.
Somehow I think I’ll take the attorney’s post over the comments of the internet politicization ombudsman.
Sheryl cited four different articles in making her claim about the age of baseball fans; you cited one. You then make an uncited claim about youth baseball participation that is actually refuted in one of the sources Sheryl linked to. So if there is a rigorousness issue here, it is not with Sheryl.
And given that TV revenues have been a decisive factor in MLB’s recent rise in revenues, TV audiences actually are a very important way to gauge MLB’s popularity.
I cited an article that detailed a study directly pertinent to the issue of MLB’s demographic, not an opinion piece from a source weaving a narrative around a political leaning. If you are interested in another similar source for youth participation, click here: https://tinyurl.com/y8h523a6. It wasn’t my intention to write a fully documented rebuttal in the comments section, but, if I was do so under a byline, I would certainly rely on more scientific sources than other like-minded opinions.
Finally, MLB’s revenue rise is NOT strongly related to national TV revenue. Local TV revenue has been a key driver. So, when people cite the national audience demo, they are completely misrepresenting MLB’s fanbase and failing to capture its popularity.
Your new youth participation citation isn’t actually about youth participation, it’s about sports participation among all age groups. It’s also from an industry association, and while industry groups can certainly provide reliable data, they’re not exactly an unbiased source, and a rigorous analyst would not cite them without alerting readers to said potential for bias.
And what political leaning are Marketwatch, Barrons, and USA Today weaving their narrative around?
https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-futures-game-was-black/
“The aforementioned USA Today article notes that African-American youth participation in baseball is up and has now passed football as the second-most played sport among that demographic.”
I don’t know what to believe!
Also, lesson learned. Just don’t bother reading these articles..
Oozy, I’d have to see it in raw stats to believe it but CTE is certainly driving parents away from football. At the same time my friends who are black baseball fans think MLB isn’t doing enough
if you click on her link about baseball having the oldest fans for example, you end up at a marketwatch article. that article makes the claim about 50% of baseball’s audience being 55 years or older, indicating it comes from Nielsen ratings. clicking on that link doesn’t take you to the ratings themselves, but to a washington post article about baseball struggling to hook kids that was written in 2015. partway down that article you find that same claim, again citing Nielsen data, but with no link in sight. in Sheryl’s article she states that claim as prior to 2017, which is technically true, but obviously not what she intended, as the data for that claim come from (at the latest) 2015.
now obviously, this is probably not a big deal. we get the point that baseball’s tv audience is old, and baseball’s demographics probably havent budged in those two years, and Nielsen data is probably fine. however, my point is that there is undeniably a lack of rigor when the list of links in Sheryl’s article is basically a collection of other pieces of media that she read and agreed with, instead of links to the original data or study where the claims came from. things inevitably get lost in the game of broken telephone, and furthermore, you kind of do the original authors of the study/data a bit of an injustice when you cite marketwatch instead of Nielsen.
It isn’t healthy to place yourself in a bubble. You might cite a garbage tier source like Buzzfeed and think it is a valid source.
It’s becoming infected by the outrage culture disease of THT. It will metastasize eventually, and at that point “If it bothers you that much, just don’t read them” won’t be an option.
good riddance
I think the direct quote was this?
“Already, baseball is considered by some to be a white man’s sport, a perception that will only hasten its loss of younger fans.”
There was a link to who “some” is and doesn’t seem to imply that baseball is, in fact, a “white man’s sport” — rather just alludes to the fact that *some* perceive it as such.
Where in there is the author making the claim that it *is* a white man’s sport, as I believe you are suggesting?
This is making me really glad I don’t follow MLB’s Twitter account. Both of those are horrible. If you can’t do social media right, you shouldn’t be doing it.
To the extent that “doing social media right” means anticipating every potential negative interpretation of a statement and sanitizing the statement accordingly, then sure. And big organizations like MLB should definitely steer away from potential controversies when they can, as much out of self-interest as anything else.
But–and I’m just test-driving this here–how much “outrage” is the product of all of us thinking something like, “Woof, that won’t go over well,” versus something like, “Ouch, that hurts me.” What I mean is, lately it seems we have conflated the mere potential to offend with actually being offensive. We’re all amateur PR experts vetting every public statement according to a very narrow, risk-averse rubric, so that when we say “This is offensive,” what we really mean is, “I anticipate that some will find this statement offensive,” or maybe more precisely, “This statement has not adequately foreclosed all of its potentially offensive interpretations; therefore, I am obligated to respond as though the statement is insensitive.”
Especially with Ohtani and Ichiro, Occam’s razor tells me the tweet was saying, “Look, the new Ichiro!” Which has everything to do with their shared country of origin and the unique cultural space they occupy as a result. Are other interpretations possible? Yes. But we are not obligated to foreground all of those as though we were the PR staffer actually writing it. We have the luxury of choosing the simplest and most generous interpretation. Let’s enjoy it.
this… in the age of ‘don’t judge me’ seems sensible.
You’d think, given how so many people still don’t understand that when you post something on the internet, that it’s immediately everywhere and forever, that the damn thing was invented yesterday.
Old people sure don’t understand, but in their defense they didn’t grow up with the internet. Proper adults sort of understand, but it isn’t instinctive yet. Kids do understand, I think, but they’re only just now starting to see the grown up consequences of their childish actions (Hader, et al…). Maybe their kids will learn it properly growing up.
Eh… its not about age. Its more about changing society. People did things before there was a precedent for holding it against them – that is one thing. I think there is 0% chance that kids learn to not be obnoxious and push boundaries growing up. If anything I would say young people now have the ability to embarrass themselves publicly at a younger age and that probably won’t change. Well… it might, but it will be societal, not something they learn. By the time their kids grow up they could very well be plugged into the matrix! Things are changing so fast that there really is no predictability. IMO I don’t think we are doing the Internet right… I think it all will be a lot different when their kids grow up. Probably a much more civil place – I don’t see how current trends can continue.
I’d agree with some of that. There does seem to be a more widespread demand for social accountability today than there was 20, 30 year ago.
But part of this problem is that things that were one private are now public. All the world’s a stage now, and people don’t well conceive of what that really means. Also, the democratization of communication means that all those squeaky wheels get heard. There will always be someone offended by a thing, any thing, and we’re not doing a great job of filtering through all of that as of yet.
I think a major change has to happen pretty soon. It all happened so fast and without regulation or even any long-term thoughts about how it would play out. I have solutions, but no interest in sharing them. Things don’t have to be the way they are. It would not be hard to argue that people don’t seem to be any happier or better off as a result of the way that social media has developed. At some point, we may want to address it. FWIW I think we are currently doing things close to backwards.
” It would not be hard to argue that people don’t seem to be any happier or better off as a result of the way that social media has developed. ”
In fact, its extremely easy to argue everyone is less happy as a result of so called social media. The people trying to gain information about you to sell ads are super happy though.
If you have 10 minutes and the freedom to do so, “We want your soul” by Adam Freeland is a pretty interesting little song/video that you can watch on YouTube. Not my preferred genre of music, but its interesting! Ahead of its time…
It appears that baseball has little incentive to cave to people that will become increasingly offended by anything that goes beyond making cute puppy jokes. These Twitter archaeologists are not interested in becoming fans. They are addicted to the feeling of power they receive from tearing down celebrities/athletes.
People are actually upset because an intern for MLB used the word ‘trigger’? I’m 31 years old, and if this is an age problem, as it’s being framed in the article, then the issue is with young people having skin that is too thin by orders of magnitude. Grow up.
Telling people to grow up is actually ageism. Try using a trigger warning before making those types of comments.
social media relations are full time paid positions. maybe dont use baseless assumptions when youre trying to make sweeping accusations and generalities.
So, you are writing about Twitter now on Fangraphs?
“the implication is that Shohei Ohtani and Ichiro Suzuki look identical because both are Japanese.”
When I saw the meme, I immediately thought ‘two great Japanese players.’ Is that racist? I don’t think so. The key word is GREAT. I believe using ethnicity as the dominant or sole commonality between parties is racist, but using it as one of the multiple commonalities isn’t. Was it racist when people used this meme for Stanton and Judge? Two big, white home run hitters. No, because big and home run hitters were primary commonalities.
I’m not looking for irrational, emotional firing. If you disagree, I would like a constructive discussion, so you or I can learn and potentially change our views.
Were people using the meme for Stanton and Judge? (Not saying they weren’t, just never saw it.) Also, Stanton is not white.
Thank you for the correction, I forgot he’s Puerto Rican (if I recall?), which changes my example’s impact.
I saw a few Spiderman pointing memes when the Yankees traded for Stanton. I think those were made because they are both large men who strike out a ton and hit for crazy power.
Comparing this to Judge and Stanton is a false equivalency. Judge and Stanton aren’t of the same racial background despite Stanton being lightskinned. More importantly, in their case they were slugging OFers for the same team while Ichiro and Ohtani never shared the field and couldn’t be more different.
I didn’t see it as racist immediately (in part because I didn’t recognize Ohtani from that angle). Then again the person calling it put appears to be Asian American and would have a better perspective than myself
Saying Ichiro and Ohtani couldn’t be more different is objectively false. They’re the two biggest superstars to ever make the transition from Japanese NPB to MLB. Ignoring the clear similarities is just plain silly. A photo of them embracing for the first time on a MLB field feels like a historical moment, and equating them with a superhero is only a compliment.
Assuming someone has “better” perspective about this because they have the same ethnicity as the subjects of the photo is flawed. Assuming that I can be a voice for all people who share my racial background is reductive of the people who comprise my racial background, and it’s complete narcissism.
If you think that being stars who transition from one league to another makes them similar/identical as the meme is about you are taking an ignorant stance.
Zimmer – Remember when Yan Gomes faced Andre Rienzo and it was a big deal because the first two Brazilian players in MLB were facing each other? Nothing alike, different positions, etc. What if they were in this meme then?
That’s the point. The meme for Stanton/Judge does not represent a physical mirror but one of their qualities. And the same could be said for Ohtani/Suzuki – they share the same quality of being star-level Japanese players.
Judge is bi-racial.
So, the context of the meme being specifically about aesthetic look-alikes is the problem. There’s nothing wrong with saying, geez isn’t it cool to see two great, Japanese players getting together and having a chat. But they’re 20 years apart in age, Ohtani is listed at 6’4″ 200lbs, while Ichiro is listed at 5’11” 175lbs. Ohtani obviously pitches and is a power hitter, while Ichiro is neither of those things. Objectively, they look nothing alike and their playing styles are very dissimilar. Judge and Stanton are at least of similar age, size, handedness, position and playing style, so there’s way more that makes them similar than just national origin.
‘ the context of the meme being specifically about aesthetic look-alikes’
The more I think about that statement, the more I agree. I hadn’t thought of the meme in that way, I always read it as similarities, not necessary physical ones… but then why would they use two spider mans if it wasn’t for physical looks.
I had first thought ‘two KBO greats coming to dominate the MLB’ when I saw the meme, so it hadn’t occurred to me the driver being it was their ethnicity.
Doesn’t your claim rest on the assumption that the intent of the post was to point out that they look alike?
The OP was saying that the intent of the tweet may have been to highlight two great Japanese players meeting. If that was the intent, the tweet seems far less malicious.
As you point out in your post, the two look nothing alike so the assumption that the tweet was making said claim seems far fetched to me…
No, I don’t think the intent of the person making the post takes away the problem. It’s certainly possible that was not their intent and I have no way of knowing what was in their head. The spiderman post isn’t on this level, but as a more problematic example, if someone dressed up in blackface but wasn’t familiar with it’s demeaning history, it wouldn’t make the blackface ok.
The point is that the meaning you cite (that two things look alike) isn’t the only usage of the meme. The article provides a link to a webpage regarding the usage of this meme, which provides various examples pulled from social media. Of those examples, most are referring to similarities that have nothing to do with physical characteristics.
Given that the meme has various meanings, I think intent is relevant. In the context of Ichiro and Ohtani, it seems highly unlikely that the meme was highlighting that the two looked alike because they are Japanese. As you mentioned they look nothing alike. They are, however, both Japanese players who have come to the MLB with a ton of fanfare.
Intent might be relevant to what, if any, punishment the employee who posted it should receive. It’s not relevant to whether or not the posting was problematic.
The tweet was taken down because some found it offensive. If that is what you mean by problematic, I agree.
The meme’s usage does not inherently refer to physical appearances, which was a claim in your initial response to the OP. Maybe I should use the word context, as you did in your post.
The context matters, as you said. The actual context of the meme is to point out similarities, similarities do not have to include physical appearance.
Oh, so intent doesn’t matter. So it wasn’t ok when, say Key and Peele did blackface. Got it.
“Ohtani obviously pitches and is a power hitter, while Ichiro is neither of those things.”
I’m still not ready to concede the second part of that will always be true.
So the meme doesn’t make any sense in this context at all. It’s pretty clear that Ichiro and Ohtani are not blaming each other for anything, or trying to distinguish themselves from each other, or anything like that. So that’s part of the confusion..
The only possible interpretation here (and one that still doesn’t make much sense) of the Spider-Man meme is that they are supposed to be identical. So it would be using ethnicity as the dominant or sole commonality between parties.
That’s true, I guess I thought of two great players from the KBO when I saw the meme, and then had to look on the response tweets to see people associate them being Japanese as the motivation of the meme.
KBO is Korean. You are thinking of NPB.
I need my coffee. Thanks for the correction.
I don’t think that is the only interpretation at all.
Look at the link in the article about the meme. It provides various examples provided by social media users. Most of these uses are pointing out similarities between two parties, however only a few of these examples are physical similarities.
It seems perfectly reasonable to assume that the tweet was highlighting the meeting of two great Japanese baseball players and not that the two look identical because they are Japanese.
Given the stereotype that Asian people look the same I can see why they took it down but it seems like a stretch to call it racist…
That doesn’t make any sense at all. The whole freaking point of the meme is that you can’t tell the difference between the Spider-Men. You can pretty clearly tell the difference between them. Unless…
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/spider-man-pointing-at-spider-man
The above link was provided by Sheryl in the article. It provides a history of the meme’s usage and various examples of usage on social media. Those examples show people using the meme to point out similarities that have nothing to do with physical characteristics.
From the link, “The image wouldn’t begin seeing widespread popularity until the mid-2010s, when people would make jokes describing situations in which two people who are very similar meet. It started growing popular on Black Twitter, particularly related to hip-hop. On May 6th, 2016, Reddit user Dualestl[5] used the image to describe a meeting between similar-style rappers Future and Desiigner, gaining over 1,300 points.”
This usage (two prominent Japanese players who became MLB stars meeting) seems much more likely than attempting to point out how similar they look. They look nothing alike!
But they’re not similar in any way other than that they’re Japanese. Future and Desiigner have similarities. They could be copying each other. Ohtani and Ichiro don’t have anything they could copy about each other. Unless…
This isn’t like Ohtani meeting Noah Syndergaard, or Babe Ruth, or anyone else who he has any similarities to.
I can’t comment on those two rappers. I’ve never heard of either. I understand that they do not have similar playing styles but they were both high profile Japanese baseball players who came to America with a ton of media attention. I would say that is likely what the tweet was suggesting.
Do you really think it is more likely that the tweet was talking about how similar they look?
EDIT: Just re-read your initial post. It seems we agree on the meaning intended. I was discussing the meaning with multiple people and got confused. Others (Sheryl included) are claiming that the tweet was insinuating that all Asians look the same.
As to whether or not the meaning we interpreted is problematic, I’d say that being Japanese players who come to America is a pretty strong commonality. They likely have had similar life experiences. Does that mean that they’re best friends (or are likely to be best friends)? No, but I can see why someone would think they are similar.
given that Judge and Stanton are certainly not white, some idiot might take a racist view of such a meme. Good for a laugh, though!
Whereas Judge is a 26 year old 6’7″ corner outfielder from California who hits right handed and, in 2017, led his league in home runs and finished top-2 in the MVP voting, Stanton is a 28 year old 6’6″ corner outfielder from California who hits right handed and, in 2017, led his league in home runs and finished top-2 in the MVP voting. They also now wear the same uniform.
However, there were zero “big, white home run hitters” being compared. Likely entirely incidental to the comparison being made, Judge is bi-racial and Stanton’s parents are Irish (mostly) and African-American / Puerto Rican. Both guy’s ethnicities are not easily determined at a glance, but they’re as material to the comparison as those of the “Bash Brothers'” were.
On the other hand, the only attribute unifying a 44 year old retired slappy leadoff hitter and a pitcher/power-hitting DH half a foot taller and two decades his junior is their country of origin.
This is something that contributes as well. I’m tired of broadcasters complaining that today’s game isn’t as good as it used to be. I imagine that if a casual fan or curious person tunes into a game and listens to someone lament that shifts and launch angles are taking over the game, they’re being told that the current era of baseball is subpar. There’s the commissioner who always says there’s something wrong on the field as well. More often than not, fans are being told that the game was better 10, 20, 30 years ago. Not exactly encouraging if you only watch a handful of games every year.
Related anecdote: A couple years ago, Bert Blyleven once gave the life story of Lance McCullers Sr. before acknowledging that Lance McCullers Jr. was on the mound. Jr. is one of the more electrifying pitchers in the league, and yet Blyleven made him second fiddle to his father because Blyleven was more familiar with his dad. For someone like me who was 3 years old when Sr. retired, I didn’t care at all about him. I’ll admit that I think Blyleven is worse with this than most older broadcasters, but reminiscing about lesser ballplayers that played when the younger generation wasn’t alive doesn’t help much either.
Finally, chastising people at the games that are there to hang out with friends/family while the game is secondary. This includes Matt Vasgersian’s comment about the bachelorette party, that’s complaining about people on their phones while they’re at the game, and that’s pointing out that ballparks are building more and more bars to create a better social environment for fans (also, to make more money for the team).
You nailed it- especially about the cell phones. Don’t they realize how ridiculous they sound? They are commentating a GAME and yet expect everyone else to take it as seriously as they do. This despite how the broadcasters are paid to watch the game and, like you said, many fans see a ballgame as a social outing.
I’ll take the bait. Isn’t there something at least a little bit ridiculous about spending the money and taking the time/effort to attend a live-action event (with real live friends!) and then spending that time with eyes glued to phone?
For most of us at FanGraphs, it seems absurd because we’re bigger baseball fans than the average person. However, there are a lot of casual fans that go to games just because it’s something to do with friends.
Is that any different than spending money to attend a live-action event and then having your eyes glued to the partner/friend you attended with? Or your food? Or your kids?
The idea of people at a baseball game focusing on something other than the baseball game isn’t new or unique. It has always happened, and it happens at other sports and events too…
There have always been distractions. Old people just like hating on cell phones.
Yes, it is different. You are correct that there is nothing new about people at a baseball game focusing on things other than baseball — as you say, kids, spouse, food, etc. What is new, and different, is that phone-gazers are focusing on something that is inherently elsewhere. Which is what seems to defeat the purpose of being there. To each his/her own though..
So you’re in favor of the thing where they’re turning every corner of Target Field into a bar while removing other types of amenities? I think we need to be able to speak up against fanservice decisions that are crap just as much as strategic ones.
No, I really dislike that bars are sprouting up all over the ballpark and that it’s $10 to get one of my favorite beers at the game. (If anything, I wish teams were doing more for the under 21 age group, but they’re not the main ones spending money at games.) However, I acknowledge that these bars are often populated by people where watching the game is probably not their primary concern.
Isn’t it racist for Sung Min Kim to assume white people are behind the twitter account?
I’m here for the non-saber articles, but this one feels forced.
Same. I was curious for a reasoned take on all this Twitter gravedigging on players but nothing
Arguing about the usage of the word “trigger” is silly. Whatever its original meaning was, the usage has clearly changed. No one owns the definition of a word, and if the world decides that it means something today that it did not in 1980 then guess what? It has a new meaning!
True. I have a few teenaged kids. Variations of the word “trigger” (as adjective, all manner of verb, etc.) make up nearly 40% of their vocabularies. The word carries ZERO baggage with them, and other younger people up to (guessing) the age of 30.
*lol* my son is the same way.
There is, of course, an alternate definitional change. Namely when terms like “trigger” and “safe space” are ridiculed and used in a demeaning fashion by those who object to the so-called wussification of America. In that case it is clearly misused with the deliberate intent to offend.
The case discussed in the article, however, is clearly the youth usage and not the troll usage.
Ok, so I too rolled my eyes at sensitivity to the casual use of the word trigger.
Then again, many of us used to happily throw around the word retarded and have mostly put an end to it after it became clear that “We’re not talking about disabled people, we’re just saying something is dumb” wasn’t going to fly. Same thing happened with ‘gay’ as a casual term for something stupid. For the sake of argument I’d ask just how different saying here that “lighten up, they are using the word in a way that doesn’t implicate what it means to you” really is, because even the humorous use of the word carries a derogatory sense that people are triggered due to hypersensitivity and not real experiences that, being revisiited, can cause serious/potentially dangerous reactions
Maybe baseball will serve as the catalyst for a social movement to shift the definition back! 😀
I agree that the use of the word “trigger” in this context is derogatory, but not toward people who have experienced actual trauma. Rather, it is derogatory toward fans who react to their team losing a game as though it were a traumatic event. Using “gay” as a casual term for something stupid, on the other hand, is clearly derogatory toward homosexuals. Not the same at all.
Mind you, it does baffle me why MLB would choose to insult the very people who are the most emotionally invested in their product. Seems like a counterproductive business strategy to me.
Hader’s tweets were horrible. Newcomb’s tweets were pretty bad. Turner’s tweets were pretty meh, yet he was the quickest to own up to them. He didn’t give any “I was young” he just simply took full responsibility.
I consider myself pretty progressive, and I’d never thought that I would be the one siding with the other side, but this is just stupid. Imagine you spent your whole life with a recording device in your pocket, was there never a time you said something dumb? Muttered something under your breath? Not excusing what they said, not even in the slightest. But why is it even news?
In regards to MLB’s tweets…where is the person who oversees these tweets? But I guess if the president of the USA doesn’t even have a spellchecker, who knows.
There needs to be a culture shift, clearly. I do think that most of these are not necessarily born out of racism, but more the youth baseball culture. Don’t like that it is okay, but as someone who played baseball in high school and college homophobic slang is very commonplace. And I played in Portland/San Francisco, probably the two most progressive cities in the USA. This is not an American white thing either, maybe the common spoken word on youth baseball fields in Latin America was alluded to in Yunel Escobars eye paint.
Saying and tweeting something are completely different actions with completely different consequences. A tweet is a public announcement meant to be heard by many people. Saying something dumb under your breath is completely different than making a dumb public announcements.
You are right. I imagine if someone logged on to my Myspace account (I’m sure someone somewhere could) and looked at some of my old statuses from when I was a teenager I said some bad stuff too. I’d venture it is most of us, not just some of us.
Carter, whenever facebook shares to me memories from 8-9 years ago I cringe. For reference I’m 27
I’m actually legit leftist, past being progressive lol. This sort of praxis and way of doing things is asinine and doesn’t attack dominant homophobic or racist/white supremacist culture
NO-ONE IS FORCING PEOPLE TO USE TWITTER
I sincerely wish that newspapers and other sources of otherwise interesting and valuable information would stop telling me about tweets. If I wanted to read twitter, I would read twitter.
LOL.. exactly
Yep –
Primary use cases for our current incarnation of social marketing seem to be:
– Trying to sell you stuff
– Harvesting your personal information
– Personal validation: attention seeking/virtue signalling
– Unaccountable dissemination of questionable info
– Forming digital lynch mobs
– Pictures of the food you are about to eat
Needless to say the actual social utility of these networks seems to be to be highly questionable.
If it were simply about ‘being connected’ there are dozens of models that would better serve that purpose. I suspect we’ll soon be discovering them because the other shoe appears to be dropping on this generation of networking tools.
Writing articles that are merely compilations of random twitter users’ pithy statements is this era’s version of the newsroom phoning it in.
I find it odd that Sheryl would imply that young people would have a problem with the “trigger” tweet when it’s far more likely to bother old people who aren’t familiar with the widespread use of “trigger” to mean provoking a negative response, similar to “trolling.” I clicked on this story expecting a thoughtful examination of the issue where current players are having old, potentially inflammatory tweets exhumed, as that’s actually an interesting topic and would have made a much, much better column than this one.
I think you’re getting crossed up there. Presumably, you would only be offended by the “trigger” post if you knew how the term is applied to be helpful to people with legitimate mental health issues often brought on by traumatic incidents and felt that it’s not appropriate to play it off like a joke. If you were an old fart who wasn’t up to speed on the term, you would have no background to be offended about.
That’s how it was used in the past, hence old people. Currently on social media, “trigger” is used to mean provoking a negative emotional response. I have no idea how old Sheryl is, but I’m very surprised that she didn’t know trigger’s predominant usage today. The only thing controversial about that MLB tweet was the league’s social media vehicle intentionally antagonizing one of the fanbases.
I see, you’re jumping even further ahead on the timeline of “trigger” to the more troll-y version of the word. I was thinking trigger warnings were a fairly recent phenomenon, so thinking that the clinical usage would be the one that young people are familiar with.
In the context of social media, the usage described by Jdbolick is by far the most common. I would expect most social media users to be more familiar with that usage than the helpful usage highlighted by Sheryl and yourself. I’d imagine most social media users (including the author of the MLB tweet in question) aren’t even aware of these other uses.
You’d think people on Twitter, of all places, would have gotten used to the common use of the word “triggered” by now…. (Though I would completely agree that usage is tired and trite and needs to die). This feels like people searching for something to get upset about to me. Same with spiderman meme. No one thinks Ichiro and Ohtani look the same because they are both Japanese.
This whole post is pretty damned dumb. The central argument appears to be “MLB isn’t doing well with young people and look how their tweets make young people on twitter angry, that doesn’t help”. Honestly, people, its twitter. We’re worried about young people angry on twitter? This is sad. Twitter is sad. MLB’s attempt to appeal to young people are sad. This article is sad. I’m sad for letting this issue occupy too much of my time.
“I don’t wanna read about politics derrp”
-Way too many commenters here.
Read the other articles, you will be okay. You truly will be okay.
There has been a very noticeable shift in tone at FanGraphs over the past six months, and it’s natural for people to express how they feel about that shift. Some people will like it and some people won’t, but expecting everyone who doesn’t like it to just keep their mouths shut and only read things they like is rather unrealistic.
What is the purpose of comments if not to provide feedback and discussion? Would it be appropriate to say I enjoyed the article and wanted more? Oh yeah, and derrp
Made an account just to chime in here. I liked this post. For all the people who say “Oh are people really so upset by the word triggered?” Yes, now shut up. I was abused as child and do have very real triggers. The Luke Heimlich story triggered me enormously; I could not focus, I was deeply depressed, angry and having panic attacks all while trying to go through finals in graduate school. Seeing the MLB twitter making fun of triggers, making fun of my and others very real pain and parroting 4chan/white supremacist meme language was infuriating. If you do not have triggers, if you’re not someone who has experienced the kind of deep and destructive trauma that leaves you with them, maybe this isn’t your place to be the arbiter of the conversation. Listen to the people who actually deal with this shit. And the other tweet mentioned in this story was obviously racist! Even if it was not meant in a malicious way, or wasn’t even on purpose, it was still racist! Racism can be on accident, that’s a major part of it. White people, in our privilege, do not think about this stuff in our day to day life. We commit racist acts all the time without thinking about it. There were so any other captions they could have used that were fine but they chose that one (the pic was later put on the MLB Instagram with a different, not racist caption. Amazing! It can be done!) This is not about being overly sensitive. Our society has been built for hundreds of years as being extremely cruel and disrespectful towards women, ethnic/racial minorities, LGBTQ+, disabled individuals and those who have suffered deep trauma. These criticisms stem from the need to treat people with proper respect that they’ve been denied for centuries.
I’m sorry that you experienced abuse, but please stop and take a moment to reflect on what you just posted. You demanded that everyone who doesn’t agree with you should “shut up” and that only “someone who has experienced the kind of deep and destructive trauma” has the right to comment on whether or not the casual use of “trigger” is appropriate. The reality is that the use of “trigger” in this context is common parlance among people under 35.
I’m in my early 20s. You’re making a very broad and incorrect statement. Maybe you run in the circles that think triggers are funny, but many people under the age of 35 do not use triggers in the sense you do. And I stand by telling people who are talking out of their ass to shut up. If you have not gone through a trauma that would leave you with triggers or you dont study this stuff as a counselor, physciatrist or other mental health professional/advocate would, then its not your place to decide using triggers to mock people is fine. The people who do have triggers do not like the comparison of your favorite baseball team losing and an event that can set off a mental health crisis.
You must be fun at parties
Thanks for sharing. I’m sure that wasn’t easy, but it was helpful and important.
Please use paragraphs in the future.
White people are not the only racists out there, stop generalizing with all this ridiculous privilege talk.
Imagine thinking white privilege is not real…
– a white, hetero, cis, man
Isn’t blanket statements what people are fighting against?
It isn’t one, or the other. White privilege can be real, and at the same time white people aren’t the only racists.
I’ve benefited from being a white male. But whose to say who has, and has not experienced trauma? You don’t know me, and we don’t know you.
You’re just engaging in whataboutism. It’s a logical fallacy and it’s not helpful to say “other people are racist, so let’s not talk about this particular instance of racism or white privilege”
This should help you:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Whataboutism
The same edgelord that are trying to ratio your horrible experiences to he’ll with their insensitivity of internet anonymity come from the Trevor Bauer school of thought. Ignore them and other opportunist haters
There’s a couple problems that I see here. The first of which is that the term trigger, as a verb, is defined as (from Google, which I assume uses a respectable defining entity – Webster’s, etc) “cause (an event or situation) to happen or exist.” While we can refer to the application in a medical sense, the general usage in these contexts is to “trigger a response”, with the latter half of that being implicitly implied. While I don’t doubt the usage may elicit a feeling for you, I’m not sure changing general parlance of a word over a small-sample problem with it’s usage is the way to go. And even if it is, it should be understood that these types of changes generally take time.
The second problem is the all-too-often immediate jump to assumptions of mal-intent. While the racist interpretations are without a doubt a possible interpretation, there is in no way “obviously racist”. I first interpreted it similarly to someone who posted above – as arguably the greatest Japanese player to transfer to the MLB forcing a massive industry change with regard to that pointing to a player of the next generation in a similar spot. That said, I totally understand the racist interpretation of this tweet. And in that lies the problem with reading too much into these things – offensiveness is in the eye of the beholder, and is incredibly open to interpretation. I do think this nation as a whole would be well served from shifting to an approach that assumes no malintent first. We don’t even need to force ourselves to assume good-intent, but when we open ourselves to accepting that maybe that person didn’t mean anything bad by it, we open ourselves to a more fruitful conversation about how that may have hurt someone else.
Since the majority of upvoted comments are generally anti-Sheryl I wanted to voice my general support for her work and my appreciation for FanGraphs content expanding beyond articles that simply look at the numbers. I go to FanGraphs daily and I think it is great that the site now has so much different content for me to choose from. Sometimes I want to engage with a long read on The Hardball Times, maybe check out some fantasy advice from Rotographs, catch up on a chat held by a favorite writer, or engage with a political article involving the sport that will spawn a ton of comments and debate that I really enjoy.
Of course the one thing I will never accept as a reader is the continued employment of one Carson Cistulli but I guess you can’t get everything you want at FanGraphs.
That article of her’s was a shit show. The percentage of white players in MLB continues to decline. But before showing that, she has to talk about the starting line up of just one team, the most diverse one from a long time ago to I’m guessing one of the least diverse today? But hey, I guess it works because both teams are the Dodgers?
Owners and managers are largely white (almost all for owners). And fans on TV are generally white. But, ya’ know what, that’s true for basically all sports expect the NBA. There are historical and institutional reasons owners tend to be white. This really isn’t the fault of a league. Its just America. Really, truly, rich people are almost always old and white. We know that. There is no reason to drag MLB through the mud over it. Also, if you look at Sheryl’s source on the fans, MLB’s fan viewership is basically the same (skin color wise, well and others, but she’s concentrated on skin color) as every non-NBA sport. Its almost like, I don’t know, people that watch sports on cable TV are just on average 80-85% white or something. Could it be its just that’s damned simple, that there is a boarder demographic issue at work here beyond baseball?
She is stirring the pot simply to stir the pot. I get why Fangraphs wants it, views. Look how many comments this article has? This article, and the resulting comments are entertaining. Anything political always brings out the comments, here, twitter, facebook, etc.
That doesn’t mean there is any substance.
I guess it plays, so it’s here. Its short sighted though. If I want to go blab about politics on a regular basis, I’d find the comments section on Politico or something. Alas, I don’t go there. I go to baseball sites because I want to read about baseball. This passes, for now, because its baseball related and to an extent novel for this site. I suspect if articles like this were to become more common, we wouldn’t see 300 comment threads anymore.
I don’t know what the deal is with this site, but around the time they started asking for memberships to maintain themselves was the time the quality of the writing started taking a dive. Its still a good place to come for leaderboards, standings, and stats in general, but articles with novel statistical insights are few and far between these days. Here, I thought this article might have some useful statistics on this narrative that MLB is hurting with young people, but it was just a lazy finger pointing article.
It’s hard to stay afloat these days because ad revenue isn’t what it used to be. The exodus of writers and editors presumably has something to do with financial stress, and this shift to more commentary-based and less analytical pieces is probably intended to broaden the audience. It’s definitely not my thing, so I let my membership expire and I come here a lot less often than I used to, but I still hope that FanGraphs is successful.
The financial issue is understood. But one way or another, plenty of sites make it work when their content is in demand. One issue that really shouldn’t go ignored is the design quality of the site itself, which is frankly god awful. In general, I don’t spend much time here anymore not because the page is constantly hogging up the CPU and RAM, making my web browser slow and unresponsive at times even in other tabs. And if that’s the case, the content better be damned good if it comes at such a computational cost.
I have a 2017 MBP and haven’t been able to participate in the Chats for more than a year. I e-mailed FanGraphs 3 or 4 times and never once got a response. Why would I pay for that?
I’m with ya though I’m ambivalent on Sheryls articles. Love the topic but hit or miss on the actual writing. No question these issues should be approached imo
Honest question, why is the Ichiro/Ohtani tweet racist (negative) and not “celebrating diversity” (positive)? It feels like the tweet was in poor taste, but I’m not sure why.
Maybe MLB twitter just doesn’t understand memes.
Ichiro and Ohtani are essentially nothing alike as baseball players, so implying that they’re identical is dependent entirely on their ethnicity.
If the text had been “hey look two great Japanese players meeting up” no one would have objected.
Well, they are alike in that they are both great baseball players, and they both come from the same country, so they aren’t completely dissimilar. I think what I am trying to say (and other commenters have discussed this) is that your interpretation of this tweet depends on your interpretation of this ambiguous and probably misused meme. I also was trying to point out that it if we are to celebrate that baseball has legendary players coming from all parts of the globe, we are kind of forced to acknowledge race as a defining feature.
The “eggshell skull rule” is regarding actual physical harm. If you get severely upset merely by another person’s existence or that they made a joke, there are no amount of laws and/or rules that can be enacted to protect you. Of course, reasonable people should take care not to crack the emotional eggshell skulls of other people just because they’re decent human beings, rather than under threat of some retribution either legally or in the court of public opinion. Reasonable people also understand that nobody actually suffers trauma from somebody making a corny trigger-warning joke. People who virtue signal over the these trivial comments/jokes probably cause more harm to come to those who have real issues with emotional eggshell skulls, because it delegitimizes the whole idea of people suffering emotional harm from the speech of others.
Good attempt, but actually, the “eggshell skull” rule or “eggshell plaintiff” rule can apply to mental health conditions, as well as physical conditions.
Man, Fangraphs has really jumped the shark. We’re just inserting misleading political quips now?
Someone above mentioned a shift in FanGraph’s tone over the last 6 months. I couldn’t agree more. I wonder if this shift correlates with many of this site’s defections and turnover of talent during that time.
A lot of folks are arguing here with whether or not people should be upset with the tweets in the article. The fact is, though, that’s totally immaterial – people ARE. And the very people who are, are the very people MLB is not doing a good job at marketing to. That’s the point – not whether one social sensibility or the other is ‘correct,’ but that MLB is failing at recognizing that the demographic they need to reach out to in order to survive sees the world very differently than the demographic they currently make money from.
This is a massive issue for anyone who cares about baseball in the future. I’m 34; anecdotally, I don’t know a single person younger than me in my extremely large social circle that cares about baseball, at all. I know a ton who are older! And none of them would care much about these tweets. But the younger ones do. And will. And MLB has to recognize that, and adapt.
That is Sheryl’s contention, yet I believe that you and she are completely wrong about that, as the use of “trigger” in the tweet is consistent with how it is used in that younger demographic. Ironically, while you and Sheryl are arguing that the tweet would offend young people, I think it was made precisely with the intention of appealing to them by using their slang.
I mean the tweet has clearly offended some young people. The fact that they try to get in touch with a youth audience and offend speaks to the problem. Trying to market to them using their So many doesn’t detract from the poor job they are doing at marketing baseball in a new image away from how people currently see it: old and put of touch, slow to change, backwards
Potential baseball fans would probably be turned off by this kind of outrage culture infecting the game. As we can see in the comments here, people that want to read about baseball on a baseball site, have zero interest in this kind of virtue signalling articles.
As I said up top, none of these twitter archaeologists or their fellow gang members have any interest in becoming MLB fans. They despise almost everybody in major league baseball. Their goal is to tear down people it sees as their enemy. It’s a game to them. They wait until the most opportune time to attempt to destroy their reputations.
I’m a baseball fan and I also would prefer players not to use the n-word on twitter. I believe I can have both of these things at the same time. Am I in the gang? When do I get my tattoo?
I also would prefer they didn’t use the n-word on Twitter. So, we have some common ground here I guess.
A distinction must be made between three groups in your case,
ashlandateam:
1) People who indeed are offended at this usage
2) People who are NOT offended, and since they are not have not spoken up
3) People who are not actually offended at the usage, but who too easily generalize from “a few people are offended” to “people [i.e. most people] ARE offended”, and further to “This thing is objectively offensive”
The distinction matters, and is nearly always utterly lost in this sort of social media tiff
I find it very ironic that an article that implies that MLB is losing young fans also doesn’t understand how young people currently use the word “trigger”. The MLB Twitter’s account used of “trigger” is very consistent with how the word is used with young people today. Go to YouTube and see how many videos by Millennials and Gen Zers have the word “triggered” in the title. If you want to have a debate about whether the evolution of the word is appropriate, that’s fair, but don’t deny it has happened.
I’m not sure whether or not MLB has a problem with younger demographics, though the evidence certainly seems to lean that way. MLB definitely has a problem (to the extent that “problem” is even the right word) with the whole “old man yelling at cloud” thing. It’s a very old sport that has – for the most part- been played the same way for a long period of time. Technological advancements hit the strategy of the sport quickly and in a big way. The resistance to this change is a bit off putting from many of those associated with the game.
That said, it can also be true that – assuming things like what are referenced in this article – if these things are affecting the younger demographic, then a portion of that blame lies on them themselves. One doesn’t have to be a hard-headed pusher of the anti-PC culture to see that society is getting in a culture war that has a lot more to do with shutting down opposing viewpoints than it does to actually broadcast meaningful change. I don’t usually like these hypotheticals, as they’re unprovable statements, but let’s say the situation where someone referenced a “beat down” in a game. Maybe I’m short sighted, but I don’t understand how that wouldn’t equally offended someone who was offended by the referenced use of the word “trigger” for similar reasons. Words have meaning, and much of that meaning is derived from context. Too many people are trying to solidify meaning into the words themselves, and then jump on those who use it in any other way.
“Stanton murdered that baseball” … “Hey, my cousin was murdered so I don’t find this funny at all. I demand an apology and sensitivity training!!”
Also it is kind of ironic that Sheryl linked to one of her own tweet threads that shows her jokingly calling herself an idiot. Would this be a harmful term to use that refers to people that go through life facing real mental anguish due to their diminished mental capacity? Do the fragile eggshell skulls of those people not matter to her?
“One doesn’t have to be a hard-headed pusher of the anti-PC culture to see that society is getting in a culture war that has a lot more to do with shutting down opposing viewpoints than it does to actually broadcast meaningful change.”
Well said.
Eh, Twitter =/= society. There’s a lot of social benefit to outrage on Twitter that doesn’t accrue anywhere people aren’t purely wasting their time.
I mean….. they are triggered.
“Suffice to say, the implication is that Shohei Ohtani and Ichiro Suzuki look identical because both are Japanese.”
If you make the assumption that this was the implication of the tweet then yes, the tweet is certainly racist. The link provided in your own article about the Spiderman meme has various examples of the meme’s usage. Most of those are used to highlight similarities between two parties, however, most weren’t highlighting physical characteristics.
It seems pretty reasonable that the author of the tweet was attempting to highlight the meeting of two great Japanese baseball players; not that they looked alike.
As was pointed out by other commenters, they look nothing alike.
Good on the MLB for taking it down when it fell flat but it seems ridiculous to call the tweet racist.
In order to get younger viewers two things need to happen:
1. Alternative announcer streaming options (game commentary is entirely geared towards old men and is otherworldly boring).
2. Access to affordable tickets. (High ticket prices will definitely make more money but also cut off future profits by discouraging poorer groups/private citizens from coming to the games)
Definitely good points.
1) I think the A’s have done a good job of addressing this by brining in Dallas Braden to the commentator group. He’s down on the field level giving a younger and different perspective on the game. He’s also the one that injects the more advanced analytics.
2) Lower prices, especially at place somewhat close to the field, really help get families in the door. At $50 a seat, I wouldn’t see that as expensive for just me, but its harder to bring a few kids that might only have the attention span to stay engaged for a handful of innings. And keeping them engaged from the top deck is pretty hard.
As an old and otherworldly boring man, I can assure you that the commentary is not geared toward me. I would be surprised if it were intentionally geared toward anybody, because that would imply somebody thought about it.
IMO, and it is an opinion for sure……there are just as many baseball articles as ever…..so I’m not sure how adding some business articles (and, they are business articles first and foremost, since politics and business do intersect) hurts the site if you are able to ignore them.
As for this article, I didn’t like it as much as some of Sheryl’s other work. Something wasn’t quite as effective for me, in terms of informing me, as most others have been.
There has *certainly* been a drop-off in the both the quality and quantity of articles on this site this year. Articles are riddled with typos (that editing was cut as a cost-saving measure has been acknowledged and cannot be debated).
I generally like Sheryl’s stuff, and I generally like Meg’s stuff, and I generally like Jay Jaffe’s stuff, but to be completely honest, Sheryl and Meg don’t write the type of analytically rigorous baseball performance related pieces for which this site is known, and Jay Jaffe’s stuff tends to skew towards baseball history (which is understandable, given his expertise).
None of these writers are bad, but this site is struggling to replace the writers that left last offseason, and wasting a quality analyst like Al Melchior on bullpen reports isn’t helping.
If you have time, can you provide more details on the acknowledgement of cutting editing as a cost-saving measure? I’m on the site every day and somehow missed it. Thanks!
I tend to agree. My general philosophy in life is to worry about yourself and the way you handle yourself, and not to focus on others so much. It leads me to a general position on what is probably considered the “right” side of these cultural issues. Without a doubt, Sheryl’s perspective is on the “left” side of these issues. I generally like to read into these articles, where I usually disagree with the final philosophical or policy outcome, because I look to a well informed, good-faith explanation of the point of view I don’t generally subscribe to. Generally, Sheryl does a pretty good job.
On this particular topic (the specific one, not the broad based one), I’m not sure the nail was so accurately hit. Everyone is going to have a few flops though. Personally, I think Ummagumma is an objectively bad album.
What do you have against Picts? 🙂
I wonder how many young fans are actually upset about the context in which the word ‘trigger’ was used. I suspect it’s quite a small minority. I’m only one person, but the reaction of what I’m assuming is a vocal minority is a lot more bothersome to me than the benign tweet they’re upset about.
I’ve also found that many of the people commenting on this (Sheryl Ring and Mary Craig, for example) seem to quite publicly abide Jen Mac Ramos, who continues to make bigoted comments very similar in content to those made by some players that have recently come under scrutiny.
My personal preference would be that nobody catches much fire over any of these – let’s leave Jen Mac Ramos to post what they want, and let’s leave Josh Hader’s 7-year old tweets in the past, and let’s certainly leave the MLB intern who posted the word ‘trigger’ alone. Given, however, that I’m not going to get that, I have to hope for consistency. If you’re going to hold Josh Hader’s feet to the fire (and I completely understand why his comments bothered people), and if you’re going to hold MLB’s feet to the fire, then hold Jen Mac Ramos’ feet to the fire too. Don’t give them a pass for posting hateful, bigoted things because you happen to be aligned with them politically and you roll in similar circles. If you’re going to peddle this brand of outrage, at least apply your outrage consistently and avoid being a hypocrite. Or don’t, but if you choose not to, don’t expect more than a bunch of eyerolls and downvotes when you hit the submit button on your next social justice article.
Why don’t you give some examples or the allegedly hateful and bigoted comments…
Happy to. All of these in the last year, and I’m sure there’s plenty more if someone were inclined to take more than 40 seconds to search.
“So of course it turns out he’s an IRL creep, because men are bad”
“Actually, all men are bad until proven otherwise, so. yeah.”
“Sexism towards men is not a thing, fyi”
” Yes because white women are just as bad as white men as a whole”
Again, these are statements made by Jen Mac Ramos in the last year, and many of the same people who write these articles, Sheryl Ring included, absolutely refuse to call out this bigotry from one of their own. This is an employee of HBT, which publishes regular content calling for social justice in baseball. The hypocrisy is astonishing.
Ha, I get it. A men’s rights activist. Ok, cool, man, we’re not persecuted. Get over it.
I think everyone should have equal rights and be treated with equal respect. Comments like that, directed at any group of people, are unproductive, and yes, bigoted. I think you do future discourse a disservice by giving comments like that a free pass when they’d be called out for what they are if the subject of the bigotry were literally any other group.
So your point of view is that hate speech (if I can use that term) doesn’t need to be called out if its happening against a so called privileged group? Least of all by people that regularly call out hate speech….
I thought this whole thing was about treating people equally.
Yes. Speech is clearly different depending on who it is directed at, who is speaking it, the context in which it is said and the power dynamics that come along with those three things. Black people, hispanic people, native americans and lgbtq people (among others) are subject to marginalization and violence on a regular basis in the US due to their status. Men are not.
I just can’t get over this fascination of some dudes and white people to try to assume the mantle of groups that are actually discriminated against.
– a dude
You don’t have to keep signing your messages with your gender/ethnicity/sexual orientation, we get it.
I am having a hard time taking your posts, but let me try:
While your first point has merit in isolation, it is completely out of place in this context. The white, male boss making racist/sexists comments is a bigger deal than the _insert_minority_here_ employee doing the same due to the power imbalance. True. But that’s simply a red herring in this particular case.
On your second paragraph, its as if you completely forgot the literal definition of discrimination as it relates to this context, which put one way is: “Discrimination is treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person based on the group, class, or category to which the person is perceived to belong.”
When Jan Mac Ramos, or anyone, says “All men are bad” it is an act of discrimination. That’s a fact. Full stop. You seem to want to think that’s not really discrimination, and even that white men can’t experience discrimination in general, because white men don’t face institutional racism/discrimination (or at least they very rarely do), but well, you’re just plain wrong.
I think what Don Zimmer is trying to say is that he knows who the objectively bad people are, and he will fight fire with fire against them. If you’d like to fight fire with fire along with him, you should first verify that the “bad people” who deserve to be castigated are on his list of acceptable populations to condemn.
If you think some internet baseball writer saying “all men are bad,” which I would bet my last dollar wasn’t meant literally or could reasonably be read to be literal, is remotely equivalent to real discrimination, you have lost all perspective. Right now, not in some forgotten time, African-Americans are arrested and imprisoned at far greater rates than white Americans – they don’t use drugs more often but they are arrested for it far more often. Women right now are earning 80% of what their male peers earn. Transgender people are getting barred from the military and having to fight legislation that would dictate where they can go to the bathroom.
Those are acts of discrimination. Having your precious fee fees hurt is not an act of discrimination.
Oh, we’re talking about real discrimination? I thought this was about people getting triggered over twitter memes. Never mind Don, the rest of us can’t keep up with your goal posts.
And I want to point out that it is all too funny that you mention those comments weren’t meant literally….
Actually, we were talking about your claim that THT sanctions discrimination.
Holy crap, I claimed that?
While technically true, almost all of that gap is due to differences in types of employment. When comparing men and women holding the same position with the same level of education, men make 2% to 4% more: https://www.payscale.com/gender-lifetime-earnings-gap
So it’s racist to say two men of Asian descent look alike? Is it racist to say two Caucasian men look alike?
Part of the problem is a person’s intent isn’t being taken into consideration anymore. Are these tweets so egregious that the person’s intent shouldn’t matter? Absolutely not
You can’t expect someone to have a working knowledge of literally everything that might be considered offensive. Not to mention someone could choose to be offended by literally anything. Stop discounting a person’s intent when deciding if a post is racist or not.
Wiry, black-haired, left-handed hitting Japanese superstars with 70-grade speed admired for their professionalism and dedication. Anyone upset about a meme drawing attention to their similarities needs to get off the internet immediately.
That’s not even the simplest interpretation, IMO. The tweet isn’t saying “These guys look alike,” they’re saying “These guys ARE alike.” Which they manifestly are, being the respective faces of Japanese-born superstars yesterday and today. The interpretation that takes offense is the one that strains credulity.
Also Gillian Welch and Buddy Holly are alike because they’re both great songwriters who are white and American.
Yes, but what you failed to consider is that All Tweets are Bad.
Vaguely related to the post: I would actually super love if Fangraphs had a stronger Instagram presence. Just gonna throw that out there as a 26 year old avid MLB supporter (last post was January 3rd).
More on topic, many of the millennials I know are increasingly becoming fans of hockey and soccer. This has been a common trend in both Phoenix, AZ and St. Louis, MO. I think the slow pace of baseball bores my generation (and even more so, Gen Z) too much, and the continual movement sports keep them better engaged.
Fangraphs is a site that relies (on the most part) on statistical analysis.
Statistics show that MLB has the highest rate of participation from players of Latino and Asian descent of all the major US sports leagues. The links that Sheryl provides mainly focus on the low rate of African-American players (which is an issue) but Sheryl seems to imply that all non-white people are disinterested in baseball. I’m curious on why I can’t find stories about the lack of diversity in the NFL and NBA given their abysmal Latino and Asian percentages.
Also the link Sheryl provides shows that whites make up 59% of MLB players in a country where whites make up 64% of labor force. So whites cannot be described as over-represented in any way when it comes to the player pool.
Is Fangraphs abandoning its belief in statistics?
The term “trigger” has become slang for eliciting a negative response from someone. It’s similar to the term “troll”. “RT to troll a Yankee fan” would basically mean the same thing.
Sheryl can ascribe all the various meanings to that word that she wants, but the fact remains that she glossed over the most applicable definition of that word in how it was used. It simply meant “troll” a baseball fan.
If MLB tweeted out, “Mike Trout KILLED this baseball last night” would it warrant an article condemning MLB for it’s lack of sensitivity toward murder victims? Of course not, because that wouldn’t serve whatever ridiculous agenda that Sheryl is trying to push.
Fangraphs should stop running word police articles like this and get back to objective statistical analysis. If its writers really do get triggered by the word trigger they would probably be better off writing for Mother Jones. Fangraphs just shouldn’t be the place for articles like this.
Does anyone else see the irony of MLB’s Twitter (!) account using not one, but two different millennial phrases/memes and then being told baseball is too old?
Clearly they need to stick to the dad jokes.
“Trigger warnings are potentially lifesaving for people who have dealt with traumas like sexual assault, hate crimes or violence.” – Potentially, I suppose, but the evidence is pretty mixed. Mixed enough that some studies show mildly significant harms and increase in trauma from using them, and it’s certainly reasonable to think that they have zero effect. Nearly anything is “potentially lifesaving” – that’s what flight attendants who report mixed-race couples and families for “suspected human trafficking” always say when it turns out that nothing bad was happening.
Reading the comments, I’m happy I’m not the only one who as noticed the change in atmosphere at FG. I’ve kinda gone from religiously checking the site and reading virtually everything every day (and being a paying member) to really only being here for Jeff, Dan, and Travis posts/chats and cancelling membership. Still love the site, but I’ve increasingly had to be careful what I click on when I want to read about baseball.
Not for nothing but those Brandon McCarthy tweets are bland, commonplace, and roughly containing the insight of a first-time open-mic comedian reading off index cards. Their inclusion as countervailing evidence as to why “Twitter can be good,” may be the most succinct argument possible for why Twitter is a chintzy and inhumane form of communication.
I think the tragedy of Twitter is less the crass comments of strangers or the influence of professional liars or even how through the often mistaken perception of interaction people get excited about even the most vapid, vacuous and false-valorous comments written by celebrities, and more that hundreds of millions of people are spending months worth of hours of their respective lives at something which is, frankly, as cheap and impersonal interaction as is almost imaginable. It is a downgrade in communication: a billion pronged telegraph wire.
People squabble on Twitter because it is a squabbling engine. Context, nuance, subtlety, all those things which effortlessly remind us that we’re of a kind and in this together, the quake in a voice, the captivating power of eye-contact, the ability to tell in a thousand words what is needed to be told in a thousand words, or ten thousand or a hundred thousand, are lost, and instead we become the Shecky Green of our joy, the Juvenal of our judgment, and the Hallmark card of our love.
People get off on the self-importance I guess: Crafting a bon mot and sharing it with tens or hundreds or thousands or millions of people, and competing with millions of other people to write it just right at just the right time, and ultimately through the homogenizing force of peer pressure of the innumerable public and forward-facing yet essentially anonymous users, writing the same skeletal, pithy and sweeping comment as everyone else. Which is why, of course, famous people thrive. It is a universe of writing hostile to content and greatly deferential to source.
Don’t wait for someone to number your days, I guess is what I’m saying. If Mr McCarthy’s wry observations really bowl you over, ha! The Rock / Bartolo Colon is old for a professional athlete!, who am I to dissuade you? But if you like me took from your brief time on Twitter that it was essentially the Candy Crush of human interaction, cheapening, a slow leak of your very life, well …
Use is not compulsory. Journalism loves a fad. Fads end abruptly. Don’t let the satrapies of the Twitterverse convince you to be their serfs, their sales-associates. The structure by which one achieves influence is essentially a pyramid scheme. Soon, for all you’ve kicked up to more highly followed accounts, you will likely be left with nothing, no followers, no influence, no society. Disney dollars of social influence. And, really, a tree is known by its fruit. Ask yourself and answer with absolute frankness: What and whither are the fruits of Twitter?
Okay–off to load the dishwasher.
Yikes. where has our collective sense of humor gone? Are we so thin skinned that some idiots’ tweets would spoil our love of a game we learned to play and follow from our earliest days?
Yet… many of the tweets from DT seem to get a pass from our collective “social media police”!
give it a rest… or get it on with the ones that really hurt.
“Dog bites man” isn’t news. “Man bites dog” is.
By the same token, “DT tweets something offensive” isn’t news. “MLB tweets something offensive” is.
The “story” is always what violates our expectations. We expect offensive tweets from DT; we expect better from Major League Baseball.
I’m reminded of a recent Posnanski article about Buck O’ Neil. In particular, the conscious choice to think only the best about people. Doing so makes the world a better place.
That article was written in response to the storm about a fan. Similar thoughts could be done about tweet backlashes. People are generally good people, even the ones who you disagree with, and choosing to believe in such can make your life, and the lives of everyone around you, better.
Another GREAT Sheryl Ring article on Politicalgraphs…Oh wait, this is a statistical based baseball website. Please Fangraphs, can we stick to baseball and not have some random writer be the moral guide of the world today? As many people have commented already, the direction that this website is going (the political way) is not what just about any of us come here for.
Her articles focusing on legal and baseball rules are really good. When she strays from her specialty they are closer to opinion pieces without much analysis.
This article has a lot of problems:
1. This author once again continuously quotes her friends on twitter as a source of “what people are upset about” Newflash: Mary M Craig would be triggered by the sentence “a cat ate green eggs and ham” she would find some way to say that the cat centered his needs to eat over the marginalized green eggs and by not focusing on the green eggs we were not caring about the victims. Between her and the other THT outrage peddlers that is what they do. Their daily outrage is a mad lib where they just insert whatever group of the day to have a woke off and virtue signal. If you scroll her timeline at all you can clearly see she hates men. It is her brand like Jen Ramos. They peddle in outrage.
2. Trigger warnings are real for things like fireworks for war veterans. Putting trigger warnings in front of everything that is talked about is not real. The MLB account was clearly making a joke and it was not shocking that the same ten people that complain about everything (Mary, Sheryl, Gianella, Jen, Baer etc) immediately complained. That is their brand.
3. The ohtani meme was equally not a problem. It was a look two amazing Japanese players are spectacular. Pretty cool to put ohtani in that company.
4. We need to stop pretending that what some people say on twitter is news. The stupidest articles ever are “watch twitter react to x event” it’s lazy and shows that the author can’t write an article with their own words.
5. Once again I am disappointed with what fangraphs is becoming. There is room obviously to discuss social issues. Jeff I think wrote a marginally unfair hit piece on the Astros today. But that was done with his words and not crowdsourcing his fellow commie friends. The article focused on baseball and the acquisition. This article had nothing to do with that and instead was just another piece yelling about white men from an author that clearly has some serious bias in the matter. I cancelled my fangraphs subscription because I can’t justify giving a penny to a site that would give any type of support to people like Ramos and Craig via THT. I now include Sheryl in that as well. This article was a lazy hit piece that seemed only to be published for clicks and comments. I would really love to know the editorial standard that goes into allowing her to quote her friends as experts.
In the end most of us are here for baseball analysis. Not this type of stuff.
Wow, these comments are some miserable business. I think, if you wanted proof that baseball’s fandom skews older, whiter and more conservative, reading the replies to this post would be all the evidence you’d need.
By the way, those people who are saying, apparently seriously, that the “Spiderman meme” is just people looking for something to be offended by, congratulations on never being offended by something in your whole lives. Try empathy, try putting yourself in the position of a person of color, or a woman, who wants to enjoy baseball but sees garbage like this put out by the official Twitter account of the organisation. I presume they’re not deliberately and openly racist, but to not even consider what this might look like to a decent-sized portion of your fanbase?
Agreed. It’s a bummer that at this moment in our culture asking for people to think (read: not be ignorant) before they speak is considered a greater injustice than lacking empathy.
Re. your first paragraph: I’m not sure what specific comments you’re referring to, or how you came to that conclusion. While a few individual commenters do mention their age, racial background, or political leanings, I see no way of determining the overall age/racial/political composition of the group of people commenting here. To me it seems the comments are about equally divided among three groups: those who feel the tweets on the MLB account were offensive, and that Sheryl is right to call them out for it; those who feel the tweets were inoffensive and/or inconsequential, and the whole article (and controversy) is a big hullabaloo over nothing; and those lamenting the lack of statistical analysis in the article and/or Fangraphs’ general drift away from fact-based, quantitative baseball analysis toward more opinion-based, socially/politically influenced commentary. I see nothing that would indicate to me that the commenters are predominantly older, white, or conservative.
On your second paragraph, however, I completely agree. What makes it racist is not the picture, but the (mis)use of the “Spiderman pointing” meme. The meme is meant to suggest a high degree of similarity between the two people; but the only ways in which Ichiro and Shohei are similar are that they are enormously talented baseball players, and that they are Japanese. In almost every other respect, they are so dramatically different as to be near opposites. The idea that all people of a given racial background are the same is the fundamental definition of racism – and that’s what the use of the Spiderman meme here appears to imply. It may not have been intended that way, but that doesn’t really matter; something can be racist (or otherwise offensive) without it being intended to be.
Excellent article, Sheryl. Thought provoking as always. Keep up the good work!
please please don’t bring all this political bs and racism stuff from the NFL to MLB. NFLs ratings went to trash because of it. Same with hollywood movies. Lowest ratings ever. I really hope they don’t ruin mlb’s. just keep that costas away from the game.