It’s been a bumpy few days in Boston thanks to one idiot Red Sox fan. The fan responsible for hurling a bag of peanuts at Adam Jones of the Baltimore Orioles has now been banned from attending games at Fenway Park in the future.
“I’m here to send a message loud and clear that the treatment of others that you’ve been reading about here lately is unacceptable,” Red Sox president Sam Kennedy said prior to Wednesday night’s game against the Orioles. “We have to recognize that this exists in our culture.”
It didn’t take long for the Red Sox to have to issue another ban from Fenway Park. Later that same evening, the team had another fan escorted out of Fenway Park after throwing a racial slur at another fan in the stands.
“During Tuesday night’s Red Sox-Orioles game, it was reported to Red Sox security that a racial slur was used in a comment from one fan to another fan,” the Red Sox noted in a statement issued to the media. “The offending individual was promptly ejected from the ballpark, and has since been notified they are no longer welcome at Fenway Park.”
The identity of the fan was not released to the public, but team officials confirmed the case had been turned over to police. A civil rights unit will determine if further action will be taken.
That’s two Red Sox fans being banned from Fenway Park in the past week as a result of exchanging racial slurs. We can give credit to Red Sox fans for responding to the Adam Jones incident with a standing ovation for the visiting player, but this series with Baltimore has painted an ugly picture of the Boston sports fan. It is now an issue the Red Sox are forced to deal with, and Major League Baseball should not hesitate to weigh in on the situation as well.
How should MLB respond? A simple statement admonishing racial insults would be the easy way to go, but should the league go any further to make it clear that actions like this are not welcome in an MLB stadium? Playing a game in front of an empty stadium as we have seen in soccer may not be likely, but has been tossed around by some as a suggestion. If nothing else, this sequence of events presents the Red Sox and MLB an opportunity to promote awareness to prevent incidents like these.
Nobody deserves to be exposed to a racist jerk a few seats away.
