Houston Astros: Death threats to Reddick and Fiers equal degeneracy
By Jeff Kallman
Astrogate’s bad enough. Sending death threats to Mike Fiers or Houston Astros OF Josh Reddick allows us to ask how far below the sewer we’ve devolved.
It’s bad enough that Mike Fiers has received threats of violence or even death threats for his trouble, from almost the moment he blew the whistle on Astrogate. Fiers may say bravely that he can take care of himself, rejecting commissioner Rob Manfred’s concern for his protection, but it doesn’t mean the jerk brigades have the call to threaten his life even rhetorically.
But whatever the Houston Astros did to stain baseball, even they don’t deserve death threats, either, such as outfielder Josh Reddick tells reporters he’s received. Not just against himself, but his children.
Reddick says one of the Twitterpated wished cancer upon his children, on a tweet in which Reddick posted a picture of his very young twins. And he adds that others among his fellow Astros have received death threats as well. The Houston Chronicle‘s Chandler Rome records that another note Reddick received said, “I will kill your entire family.”
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It was bad enough when Atlanta Braves outfielder Nick Markakis stepped out of his usually soft-spoken character to proclaim that “every single guy” on the Houston Astros needs a beating. Or, when new Astros manager Dusty Baker demanded MLB to take action against retaliation toward his new charges.
But death threats? You are now entitled to ask just how far below the sewer contemporary American society really has devolved.
When ESPN writer Jeff Passan tweeted Reddick’s comments Friday afternoon, enough of the Twitterpated ran the line from mere snark to downright disgust. One supposes that somewhere in the middle sits this tweet, replying to Passan but aimed at the Astros, “I mean, if you guys actually apologized for cheating and forfeited the title then that probably wouldn’t have happened. People can be really harsh but [sic] that’s also the Internet.”
I’m sure what I’m about to say won’t be the last word, but still—there’s no debate, really, about vacating the Astros’ 2017 World Series title. It won’t happen. Not unless Manfred is willing to dissipate an awful lot of baseball history by vacating a few pennants and a World Series or two.
We’re talking about you, 1911-14 Philadelphia Athletics. And, you, 1940 Detroit Tigers. And, you, 1948 Cleveland Indians. Not to mention you, too, 1951 New York Giants, 1961 Cincinnati Reds, and at least 2018 Boston Red Sox. It’s very fair to say that the Disastros can thank God and His servant Judge Roy Hofheinz that Manfred admits he’s a precedent guy and isn’t inclined to break one unless it involves silly rule changes.
But the way social media becomes a Killer Clowns from Cyberspace show that’s as funny as a trap door on a Boeing 737, you shudder to imagine things like the fabled Giants-Brooklyn Dodgers rivalry taking it from the ballparks and the taverns to the Twitterverse. That era’s controversies over the Communists-in-government question would have been social tea time debating compared to what Leo Durocher and his ’51 cheaters would have inspired.