This baseball player called Charlotte protesters 'animals' in a racist Twitter tirade

By Fusion Staff  |  September 23, 2016 | 3:44pm
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Apparently, it wasn’t enough for Steve Clevenger, Seattle Mariners’ catcher, to simply suck at baseball. No, the backup with the .221/.303/.309 slash line needed to double down on his crapfest of a season by capping it off with some super racist tweets. At least his career will have this one notable moment.

A little after 1 p.m. Seattle time yesterday, Clevenger wrote on Twitter, “BLM is pathetic one again! Obama you are pathetic once again! Everyone involved should be locked behind bars like animals!”

Sensing he hadn’t quite made his point about the Keith Scott protests in Charlotte clear enough, he sent out another tweet two minutes later: “Black people beating whites when a thug got shot holding a gun by a black officer haha shit cracks me up! Keep kneeling for the Anthem!”

To recap: our man hit on Black Lives Matter, Obama, reverse racism, and Colin Kaepernick in just two (now deleted) tweets. That’s the alt-right bingo!

Clevenger promptly made his account private, and later Thursday night, the Mariners’ general manager, Jerry Dipoto, released a statement expressing his profound disappointment in a guy he’ll probably get rid of in two weeks when the season’s over.

“While he is certainly free to express himself, his tweets do not in any way represent the opinions of the Seattle Mariners,” DiPoto wrote. “We strongly disagree with the language and tone of his comments. We are currently examining all internal options that are available to us as we determine appropriate next steps.”

And late last night, Clevenger issued an official “apology” to Fox Sports’ Ken Rosenthal on Facebook, where Clevenger didn’t really apologize for much, just for the “distraction” his tweets caused when they were made public. (Whatever “public” means, considering his Twitter account was about as public a place as one can be.)


“I am sickened by the idea that anyone would think of me in racist terms,” Clevenger wrote. “My tweets were reactionary to the events I saw on the news and were worded beyond poorly at best and I can see how and why someone could read into my tweets far more deeply than how I actually feel.”

Saying his tweets were “worded beyond poorly at best” is the closest he gets to actually saying sorry, but please note that this comes in no way close to acknowledging what he actually said.

Though Steve Clevenger showed his ass, he is likely far from the only demon in the MLB. As ace reporter Jeff Passan noted early Friday morning, “If teams released players who thought like Steve Clevenger, hundreds of players would be released today.”

Update: Clevenger is suspended without pay the rest of the season.

Michael Rosen is a reporter for Fusion based out of Oakland.

 
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