MLB Player Suspended Over Gay Slur

19 Sep, 2012

Yunel Escobar said he was just joking. The Toronto Blue Jays and Major League Baseball fail to see the humor.

The Blue Jays on Tuesday suspended the veteran shortstop three games for wearing eye black with a gay slur written in Spanish during Saturday’s game. Escobar will also have to undergo sensitivity training and participate in a public outreach program that promotes tolerance.

Escobar, a Cuban native who reached the USA as a teenager, said the eye-black message was “just a joke.” He apologized at a gathering with news reporters before serving the first game of his suspension.

“It’s not something I intended to be offensive,” Escobar, 29, said through an interpreter. “It was nothing intentional or directed at anyone in particular. I have nothing against homosexuals.”

The eye-black message came to light Monday when a Blue Jays fan posted a picture of Escobar’s face on his online photo-sharing account.

Commissioner Bud Selig lauded the Blue Jays’ action and noted in a statement that Escobar agreed to a public outreach initiative “aimed toward promoting sensitivity and tolerance.”

MLB and the union in 2011 amended an anti-discrimination provision in the collective bargaining agreement to include sexual orientation.

Miami Marlins manager Ozzie Guillen, who in 2006 was reprimanded for calling a Chicago columnist an anti-gay slur, said the term Escobar used is often heard jokingly in Latino countries and his own household.

“But that’s our country,” the Venezuelan-born Guillen said. “We have to respect this country.”

The baseball culture, while evolving, can be at odds with society.

“Something we could say jokingly in here can definitely be taken extremely wrong and way out of context somewhere else,” said San Francisco Giants pitcher Matt Cain, who lent his image to a campaign for gay rights.

“Of course you have to be more careful,” Arizona Diamondbacks catcher Miguel Montero said. “Everybody knows that.”

USA Today

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