Tweet
about Delmon Young in the Tampa Bay Times, during Spring Training.
I know one person here dismisses the parallel out of hand, IMO because it doesn't fit an agenda of zero tolerance for who he thinks is a non-star player, but it's actually right on point.
Read this.
Replace "Cooper" with "Young" and replace anti-semitism with race-based bias and then tell me why Young got nothing near the publicity and outcry and is given a second chance in Philadelphia.
I'm not talking about whether you think Cooper is a douchebag, or has a dark place in his soul ... I'm talking about whether, in spite of this, he gets a second chance ... like another who'd have to be equally viewed as a douchebag with a dark place in his did.
Here:
But Young doesn't want to be defined by the much-publicized event, or any other such as the 2006 minor-league incident when he threw his bat and hit an umpire. He says he's not a bigot or a bad guy; he just put himself in a bad situation and made a mistake.
"Just because a 16-year-old kid drank for the first time and started to drive and made a bad decision, doesn't mean he's a drunk," Young said. "Stuff happens, but it's what you do after."
"He's very remorseful, very apologetic for what happened," said Rabbi Joshua Bennett of Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Mich. "The first thing he said to me is he grew up in a mixed community, many of his best friends and agent and owners of teams are Jewish people. He said, 'I'd have to be an idiot if I was going to play the role of an anti-Semite,' and he's not.
"One thing he shared is, you can make your opinion about him as a baseball player, call him a 'hothead' or a guy who has screwed up a couple times. But one thing he's so concerned about is he doesn't want anyone to say he's a bad human being, because he's really not."
Now tell me ... why does the "some of my best friends are _________" work for him and so few want to let Cooper have a second chance?
It's a rhetorical question ... I know why actually.
I know one person here dismisses the parallel out of hand, IMO because it doesn't fit an agenda of zero tolerance for who he thinks is a non-star player, but it's actually right on point.
Read this.
Replace "Cooper" with "Young" and replace anti-semitism with race-based bias and then tell me why Young got nothing near the publicity and outcry and is given a second chance in Philadelphia.
I'm not talking about whether you think Cooper is a douchebag, or has a dark place in his soul ... I'm talking about whether, in spite of this, he gets a second chance ... like another who'd have to be equally viewed as a douchebag with a dark place in his did.
Here:
But Young doesn't want to be defined by the much-publicized event, or any other such as the 2006 minor-league incident when he threw his bat and hit an umpire. He says he's not a bigot or a bad guy; he just put himself in a bad situation and made a mistake.
"Just because a 16-year-old kid drank for the first time and started to drive and made a bad decision, doesn't mean he's a drunk," Young said. "Stuff happens, but it's what you do after."
"He's very remorseful, very apologetic for what happened," said Rabbi Joshua Bennett of Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Mich. "The first thing he said to me is he grew up in a mixed community, many of his best friends and agent and owners of teams are Jewish people. He said, 'I'd have to be an idiot if I was going to play the role of an anti-Semite,' and he's not.
"One thing he shared is, you can make your opinion about him as a baseball player, call him a 'hothead' or a guy who has screwed up a couple times. But one thing he's so concerned about is he doesn't want anyone to say he's a bad human being, because he's really not."
Now tell me ... why does the "some of my best friends are _________" work for him and so few want to let Cooper have a second chance?
It's a rhetorical question ... I know why actually.
Comment