2018 All Star Game (07-17-18): AL (Sale) at NL (Scherzer) 6:30 PM CDT [NL loses, 8-6 in 10 innings -- Josh Hader apologizes following game for old inflammatory tweets]

[Eye Black]

Here is the Journal Sentinel Article...

 

Inflammatory old tweets surface from Josh Hader’s Twitter account; pitcher apologizes after All-Star Game

[KeithStone53151]

Obviously these comments aren't something you'd like to see, but to damn a young player for things he said at age 17 is a bit surprising. I'm in my early 30s and I remember how kids were and the things kids said and did. Especially immature teenagers, can say and do things without truly understanding what they mean or the implications of their actions. I imagine it's only gotten worse with social media. With how much he's grown from age 17 until now and the relationships he has with the Brewers players, I believe him when he says it doesn't reflect his beliefs now. I think we'll learn an awful lot by the type of support Josh receives from the players and especially veterans/team leaders like Jeffress, Cain, Thames, Braun, etc.

 

For me, above all else, I hope it doesn't affect his pitching down the stretch.

 

Above all else? Good to know that you value baseball games more than human decency.

 

And of course his teammates will defend him and say that's not who he is, that's how it always works.

 

I was trying to figure out how to properly explain my thoughts on this, and then Heyman did it pretty much spot on for me. I firmly believe he's not as hateful as his tweets make him seem, and that he's grown significantly over the last 7 years and is a completely different person now with a completely different set of beliefs. I anticipate the fallout being pretty brutal for him, and he generally seems like a good dude that probably ran with the wrong crowd as a teenager.

 

[Fear The Chorizo]

What a craptastic week it's been to be a Brewer fan - watch the team you root for lose 6 straight games, watch your team's best reliever (Hader) giving up a bomb in the all star game to a former Brewer middle infielder they could really use (Segura) around the same time you find out he's posted things that would make a klansman blush, then watch another former Brewer MIF outcast (Gennett) tie the all star game with a bomb. As the all star game progresses, you find out Machado's not coming here and Hader's own family can't wear a replica jersey with his name on it...

 

Yeesh

[KeithStone53151]

DUmb kid? What's his excuse for this one?

 

https://twitter.com/BeanBooper/status/1019428543934140416

 

WOW

 

2 YEARS AGO. If that isn't a doctored screenshot, man...

 

Unacceptable. Just trash. Apologies are great and all, but they don't mean much when you spew this kind of bile for years. I don't want to root for this guy anymore.

 

Ok I believe the image in that tweet has been determined to be fake.

 

Has it been? I have a hard time believing a tweet at that point in time while he was an extremely successful minor leaguer wouldn't have immediately been scooped up by umpteen reporters following him on twitter.

[Jenkins5]

I get on my students & athletes all the time for the way they speak & use social media. They literally don’t think before they post or see how things are bad. A bunch of the tweets are rap lyrics which I see all the time & they try to justify it as it’s just a song. Just completely blind to how that language could negatively impact their self brand & perception. Now we have the “just send it” era which is the I don’t care going to send or post whatever mindset....

 

No excuse for the homophobic or racial tweets. I don’t think he is a racist or those are his views since he is on a very diverse team & appears to be really liked by his teammates. Him & Jeffress are very close and if he was as awful as his tweets, doubt that’d be the case. Be very interesting to see how this plays out. Not good for Hader or the Brewers.... that’s for sure

[Eye Black]

Video Link of comments from Lorenzo Cain following the game.

[Eye Black]

DUmb kid? What's his excuse for this one?

 

https://twitter.com/BeanBooper/status/1019428543934140416

 

Ok I believe the image in that tweet has been determined to be fake.

 

Has it been? I have a hard time believing a tweet at that point in time while he was an extremely successful minor leaguer wouldn't have immediately been scooped up by umpteen reporters following him on twitter.

Yes, it is a doctored tweet that was sent by someone else, not Josh Hader. Here is the LINK.

[BruisedCrew]

One thing we know for sure is that for the foreseeable future Hader is going to be booed and heckled wherever he goes (at least on the road) and he’s going to have to prepare for it and deal with it.

[fondybrewfan]

I always thought that when someone got drafted, traded, signed, etc that someone on the Brewers staff is checking for crap like this so it can be deleted before it sees the light of day.

 

 

Those are some really bad tweets, it is going to take some time for this to pass.

 

 

Social Media is incredibly dangerous for teenagers, they are immature and tend to say stupid ****. I said stupid **** back then but it wasn't broadcast for the whole world to see. That being said it is horrible that at any point in someones life they actually felt those views were OK. Maybe you are uncomfortable around gay people or people of a different color, religion, whatever but to go that far in the hatred is really bad

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

I always thought that when someone got drafted, traded, signed, etc that someone on the Brewers staff is checking for crap like this so it can be deleted before it sees the light of day.

 

 

Those are some really bad tweets, it is going to take some time for this to pass.

 

 

Social Media is incredibly dangerous for teenagers, they are immature and tend to say stupid ****. I said stupid **** back then but it wasn't broadcast for the whole world to see. That being said it is horrible that at any point in someones life they actually felt those views were OK. Maybe you are uncomfortable around gay people or people of a different color, religion, whatever but to go that far in the hatred is really bad

 

The team's social media people are apparently too busy filming videos of Travis Shaw loading ding-dongs on a trailer to deal with this kind of thing.

[82brewcrew82]

Obviously these comments aren't something you'd like to see, but to damn a young player for things he said at age 17 is a bit surprising. I'm in my early 30s and I remember how kids were and the things kids said and did. Especially immature teenagers, can say and do things without truly understanding what they mean or the implications of their actions. I imagine it's only gotten worse with social media. With how much he's grown from age 17 until now and the relationships he has with the Brewers players, I believe him when he says it doesn't reflect his beliefs now. I think we'll learn an awful lot by the type of support Josh receives from the players and especially veterans/team leaders like Jeffress, Cain, Thames, Braun, etc.

 

For me, above all else, I hope it doesn't affect his pitching down the stretch.

 

Above all else? Good to know that you value baseball games more than human decency.

 

And of course his teammates will defend him and say that's not who he is, that's how it always works.

Because you know better? I know I did some things in my teenage years that I have a great amount of regret for today (and I ain't no spring chicken). Looking back, I was probably pretty racially ignorant because that's what I knew (or didn't know). Today, that isn't who I am because I've grown and become my own person. If the people that live and work with him every day vouch for him, who am I to say it isn't true. I know for darn sure it isn't for me to get on my pulpit and judge what a young man did at 17. Stones and glass houses.

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

Obviously these comments aren't something you'd like to see, but to damn a young player for things he said at age 17 is a bit surprising. I'm in my early 30s and I remember how kids were and the things kids said and did. Especially immature teenagers, can say and do things without truly understanding what they mean or the implications of their actions. I imagine it's only gotten worse with social media. With how much he's grown from age 17 until now and the relationships he has with the Brewers players, I believe him when he says it doesn't reflect his beliefs now. I think we'll learn an awful lot by the type of support Josh receives from the players and especially veterans/team leaders like Jeffress, Cain, Thames, Braun, etc.

 

For me, above all else, I hope it doesn't affect his pitching down the stretch.

 

Above all else? Good to know that you value baseball games more than human decency.

 

And of course his teammates will defend him and say that's not who he is, that's how it always works.

Because you know better? I know I did some things in my teenage years that I have a great amount of regret for today (and I ain't no spring chicken). Looking back, I was probably pretty racially ignorant because that's what I knew (or didn't know). Today, that isn't who I am because I've grown and become my own person. If the people that live and work with him every day vouch for him, who am I to say it isn't true. I know for darn sure it isn't for me to get on my pulpit and judge what a young man did at 17. Stones and glass houses.

 

I consider myself to be pretty responsible when I was a teenager. Still, I sure as heck am glad today that Twitter wasn't a thing when I was 17. Every teenager does and says stupid things. If you didn't, you are misremembering.

[Fear The Chorizo]

I know for darn sure it isn't for me to get on my pulpit and judge what a young man did at 17. Stones and glass houses.

 

Understandable - but Mr. Hader has had 7 years to clean up his Twitter feed. It probably took him 5 seconds to lock it out and delete those old tweets after he got into the clubhouse and saw his phone exploding, and it's not like those posts were grabbed from an account he hadn't used in years.

 

Posting that garbage at any age is awful - but IMO, leaving it up and available for public consumption if a person truly does evolve in their perspective/beliefs is a combination of ignorance and insincerity that makes it very difficult for me to get past.

[JimH5]

I was probably a dope at 17, too. But what Hader was at 24 is a guy who was too ignorant or lazy to clean up his past and who became an embarrassing sideshow during one of the biggest nights of the major league season.

 

He'll always be known as the guy who said hateful, ignorant things. And MLB is going to have to act. And it will be justified in striking down on a guy with that stuff available for the world to see.

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

Ugh, what a horrible thing to wake up to this morning. Why can't this team ever have nice things?

[OldSchoolSnapper]

MLB has to act? I find that comical. That will set quite a precedent. Get ready for fans of opposing teams digging up 7-year-old Tweets.

 

I hate this crap. The words are ugly, but the digging up old Tweets is probably my least favorite thing of all that silly nonsense on the Internet and I felt this way long before this happened. I glanced at Hader's stuff and it is the product of a kid who is, let's be honest, not the brightest guy, spouting off to get a reaction/quoting pop culture. Stuff that lots of teenagers do. The other 50% of it was rap lyrics and meme references that most people don't get. Then there's the Trayvon Martin reference from 2016, which, while not a good look, doesn't really fall under the umbrella of the rest of the Tweets, and frankly reflects a sentiment that a lot of people share. I'm not agreeing with it, just saying, that opinion is one I've seen and heard about a thousand times.

 

Lorenzo Cain and Jeremy Jeffress, who've spent time with the guy daily for a year, come out and vouch for the 24-year-old version of Hader immediately, but the 20-year-old Twitter warriors know this guy better than they do. Up next will be hot take articles about how Cain and Jeffress let the black community down by not burning Hader at the stakes immediately.

 

This is such low-hanging fruit. I'm just exhausted of it. Harmful racism in today's society is thinly veiled, stuff like denied housing applications and employment discrimination. Not teenager Tweets that nobody reasonable takes seriously. This is today's culture; someone in a basement scrolling through Twitter for dirt to put a black mark on what's supposed to be a fun night for everybody.

[DuWayne Steurer]

"We've all done stupid things" and "He was a teenager" are as dumb and irrelevant arguments as the old adage "People are saying..."

 

He was 17. It was 2011. A 17 year old in 2011 knows (or should know) better than to be dropping hard '-er' racial slurs on Twitter, whether in the form of song lyrics or not. Yes, they ARE a reflection of who you are as a person. Yes, they are a reflection of what you think about people.

 

Leaving those posts up is also a reflection of who is and how he thinks. If he was a dumb ignorant kid in 2011, he's still one now to think that leaving that collection of hate-filled bile on the internet for people to find was ok....

 

All that said... I hope he's learning from this. I hope he CHOOSES not to be that person anymore. I hope he has people around him (Lorenzo Cain!) who help him understand how those actions (and inactions) present the perception that he's still "that guy". Nobody is a lost cause or irredeemable.

[buckybrewer232]

MLB has to act? I find that comical. That will set quite a precedent. Get ready for fans of opposing teams digging up 7-year-old Tweets.

 

I hate this crap. The words are ugly, but the digging up old Tweets is probably my least favorite thing of all that silly nonsense on the Internet and I felt this way long before this happened. I glanced at Hader's stuff and it is the product of a kid who is, let's be honest, not the brightest guy, spouting off to get a reaction/quoting pop culture. Stuff that lots of teenagers do. The other 50% of it was rap lyrics and meme references that most people don't get. Then there's the Trayvon Martin reference from 2016, which, while not a good look, doesn't really fall under the umbrella of the rest of the Tweets, and frankly reflects a sentiment that a lot of people share. I'm not agreeing with it, just saying, that opinion is one I've seen and heard about a thousand times.

 

Lorenzo Cain and Jeremy Jeffress, who've spent time with the guy daily for a year, come out and vouch for the 24-year-old version of Hader immediately, but the 20-year-old Twitter warriors know this guy better than they do. Up next will be hot take articles about how Cain and Jeffress let the black community down by not burning Hader at the stakes immediately.

 

This is such low-hanging fruit. I'm just exhausted of it. Harmful racism in today's society is thinly veiled, stuff like denied housing applications and employment discrimination. Not teenager Tweets that nobody reasonable takes seriously. This is today's culture; someone in a basement scrolling through Twitter for dirt to put a black mark on what's supposed to be a fun night for everybody.

 

+ A million to this.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

"We've all done stupid things" and "He was a teenager" are as dumb and irrelevant arguments as the old adage "People are saying..."

 

He was 17. It was 2011. A 17 year old in 2011 knows (or should know) better than to be dropping hard '-er' racial slurs on Twitter, whether in the form of song lyrics or not. Yes, they ARE a reflection of who you are as a person. Yes, they are a reflection of what you think about people.

 

Leaving those posts up is also a reflection of who is and how he thinks. If he was a dumb ignorant kid in 2011, he's still one now to think that leaving that collection of hate-filled bile on the internet for people to find was ok....

 

All that said... I hope he's learning from this. I hope he CHOOSES not to be that person anymore. I hope he has people around him (Lorenzo Cain!) who help him understand how those actions (and inactions) present the perception that he's still "that guy". Nobody is a lost cause or irredeemable.

 

Leaving the posts up is not a reflection of who he is or how he thinks. That's laughable. I'm sure there's something on my Facebook from 2007 that I have no recollection of posting and would make me cringe.

[JimH5]

MLB has taken great effort to reach out to all people with events like Pride Nights, the RBI program that tries to attract minority kids into the game, etc.

 

They can't just shrug this hateful stuff off as the ignorance of youth. It was still up for everyone to see as recently as yesterday.

 

How can MLB stand before the gay community and say this is a game that is open to all, and at the same time not take action against a player whose name was attached to hateful, bigoted things? It happened during what was supposed to be a high point of the season.

 

They have to issue a penalty to him.

[Patrick425]

I'm thinking this topic should be split out as a separate thread. Before I went to bed last night, it was about an inning after Hader gave up the HR and my son said something about people bringing up old tweets from Hader. I didn't think much of it and didn't know anything about the nature of the tweets. Assumed it was one or two stupid tweets from long ago. Wake up to see it was much more than that.

 

Some good posts here. I too am glad that social media was not around when I was younger, but also have to agree with JimH. Really? You have to know those posts are out there, why not clean things up a long time ago? I remember when Jarred Kelenic from Waukesha was drafted last month, his twitter was shut down for a brief time shorty after he was drafted. My guess was that he was advised to go through old posts and delete anything thing that could be construed as controversial. I guess I assumed this was standard protocol for all young athletes as they transition into the professional realm.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

His name was attached to it in 2011. There's no way they can do anything beyond saying he's taking sensitivity training or some race course. Suspending or anything like that isn't reasonable. He said stuff when he was 17. The precedent that sets will never get beyond the players union.

 

Next week a Cubs fan will find out Travis Shaw got an underage drinking ticket when he was 19 and push for a suspension. There is no discernible line one can draw once you start going 7 years back on someone's social media page. Who's deciding what past offenses are punishable? And how far back are we allowed to dig? It's a whole can of worms and I just can't see how they can go down that road.

[JimH5]

It wasn't only that he said ignorant, hateful things at 17. It was that he was too dumb or lazy to clean them up in all the years afterward.

 

MLB is a business that can't let its public-facing employees do shameful things without punishment. This isn't about Hader. It's about what Manfred's obligation is to society and to the game's efforts to attract gay and African American fans.

[stoutdude04]

Someone summed up my thoughts on it pretty well this morning. At 17 or 18 he probably did mean or think those things, but he probably wasnt exposed to 'different' people. Now as an adult he has more life experience and isn't that kind of person.

 

Or maybe he still is. I dont know. I dont know him personally. Bummer he said those things and a bummer he didnt clean it up.

[KeithStone53151]

MLB has to act? I find that comical. That will set quite a precedent. Get ready for fans of opposing teams digging up 7-year-old Tweets.

 

I hate this crap. The words are ugly, but the digging up old Tweets is probably my least favorite thing of all that silly nonsense on the Internet and I felt this way long before this happened. I glanced at Hader's stuff and it is the product of a kid who is, let's be honest, not the brightest guy, spouting off to get a reaction/quoting pop culture. Stuff that lots of teenagers do. The other 50% of it was rap lyrics and meme references that most people don't get. Then there's the Trayvon Martin reference from 2016, which, while not a good look, doesn't really fall under the umbrella of the rest of the Tweets, and frankly reflects a sentiment that a lot of people share. I'm not agreeing with it, just saying, that opinion is one I've seen and heard about a thousand times.

 

Lorenzo Cain and Jeremy Jeffress, who've spent time with the guy daily for a year, come out and vouch for the 24-year-old version of Hader immediately, but the 20-year-old Twitter warriors know this guy better than they do. Up next will be hot take articles about how Cain and Jeffress let the black community down by not burning Hader at the stakes immediately.

 

This is such low-hanging fruit. I'm just exhausted of it. Harmful racism in today's society is thinly veiled, stuff like denied housing applications and employment discrimination. Not teenager Tweets that nobody reasonable takes seriously. This is today's culture; someone in a basement scrolling through Twitter for dirt to put a black mark on what's supposed to be a fun night for everybody.

 

I generally am on your side, but MLB without question has to say or do something about it. Condemn the words publicly, sit down with Josh, etc. I would find it wildly ridiculous if he was suspended or fined for tweets he made as a legal minor.