Steve Clevenger: How a catcher tweeted his way out of a major league career
Bob Nightengale, USA TODAY Sports 9:37 p.m. EDT September 23, 2016
The Seattle catcher is being criticized for a controversial tweet he made about the protesters in Charlotte. USA TODAY
The Seattle Mariners, absolutely livid over catcher Steve Clevenger’s racist and hurtful remarks spewed on Twitter, officially suspended him without pay Friday for the remainder of the season.
Unofficially, he will never again wear the Mariners’ uniform.
The only question now is whether he will ever play again in Major League Baseball. Would any team offer him a contract this winter and dare bring him to their spring-training camp?
Clevenger may indeed play again, but it’s not going to be in this country.
This isn’t a star player who committed an act of domestic violence. This isn’t a player who was busted for performance-enhancing drugs. This is a 30-year-old backup catcher, with a career .227 batting average, hanging on for dear life to his fading baseball career.
It’s over….
He actually sent out eight tweets on his private Twitter account — which has always required his permission for others to access — but only the two most offensive, blatantly racist ones, were picked up and widely disseminated.
“Black people beating whites when a thug got shot holding a gun by a black officer haha (expletive) cracks me up! Keep kneeling for the anthem!
“BLM (Black Lives Matter) is pathetic again! Obama you are pathetic once again! Everyone should be locked behind bars like animals!”
And now his employers want nothing to do with him again.
When the season ends, and it’s time for teams to offer contracts in November, he simply will be non-tendered, like hundreds of other players. …
Sure, we have freedom of speech in this country.
We also have freedom to keep the Clevengers of the world out of the work place.
Meanwhile, Isaiah Crowell of the Cleveland Browns posted a rather disturbing image on Instagram just before all those cops were murdered in Dallas. From CBS in New York last June:
NFL Player Posts Instagram Photo Showing Police Officer’s Throat Getting Slit July 11, 2016 6:30 PM
CLEVELAND (CBSNewYork) — An NFL player is apologizing for posting a graphic image on Instagram showing a man dressed in all black slitting the throat of a police officer.
Cleveland Browns running back Isaiah Crowell, 23, deleted the image he posted on Instagram showing blood gushing out of the officer’s neck. The image conjures up videos posted by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria showing the terrorist known as “Jihadi John” beheading American and British victims.
“Mood: They give polices all types of weapons and they continuously choose to kill us…(hashtag)Weak,” the caption read.
Crowell apologized and donated one week’s salary to a Dallas cop charity. He was not suspended by his team or the league. He has
Crowell is somewhat better at his job than Clevenger is, although being good enough to start for Cleveland, which went 3-13 in 2015 and is 0-2 this year, isn’t the toughest hurdle to surmount in the NFL.
Strikingly, nobody in the press seems to remember the Isaiah Crowell example in regard to the current Steve Clevenger brouhaha:
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