Back in 2010, just after Yunel Escobar was traded from the Atlanta Braves to the Toronto Blue Jays, Atlanta Journal-Constitution journalist Mark Bradley wrote
, "It wasn’t just that Yunel Escobar was slow to learn a second language. He was slow to learn to be a professional."
That sentiment is everywhere this morning, a day after Escobar held a press conference to explain and apologize for the offensive message he had written on his eye-black during last Saturday’s game against the Boston Red Sox.
Escobar’s attitude has been called into question before and now many are calling for the Blue Jays to cut ties with him while one writer is calling for him to be "fired" from professional baseball.
On Wednesday, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/ryan-doyle/escobar-_b_1895159.html?utm_hp_ref=twRyan Doyle from the Huffington Post
suggested that if the Escobar incident had occurred in any other workplace environment, the employee would have been released immediately and that Escobar’s actions resonate much deeper than baseball.
"Three games? For offending every homosexual watching at home, for making the young person in the stands that is struggling with his or her sexuality sink deeper in their seat with shame? For telling every athlete out there that even in 2012 you shouldn’t feel comfortable coming out of the closet?" Doyle wrote.
"With a slap on the wrist punishment like this, the four major sports leagues will continue to look like an old boys club, pushing homosexuality as far away from their teams as possible instead of understanding that many of their players are gay and want nothing more than to come out," he added.
Cathal Kelly from The Toronto Star
shares the opinion that Tuesday’s press conference was about much more than baseball. Kelly wrote about the bigger problem surrounding professional sports and discrimination and the mountain of progress that still needs to be made to address it.
"What’s been learned here? Nothing. What good will come of it? None. What does it signify? That we have moved far enough in this debate that it can’t just be brushed aside," Kelly wrote. "It must be brushed aside with a press conference. A thousand teachable moments don’t equal one lesson learned."
Toronto Sun scribe Joe Warmington
has a different opinion. He wrote Tuesday night following the press conference that making Escobar a "poster boy for homophobia" is wrong and that the Blue Jays organization should have done a better job of explaining that this kind of joking around is par for the course in any MLB clubhouse.
"He says he didn’t mean it in any offensive way and having spent time around Cuban baseball and witnessed the light hearted teasing and humour, I tend to believe him," Warmington wrote.
Aaron MacQuade of GLAAD spoke on Canada AM stressing that Escobar and the Blue Jays should "take this as a moment to educate other players, especially those who are just learning the sport: kids. To teach them that to be a player at the highest level, to be a true champion, it’s a bout respect, it’s about teamwork, it’s about sportsmanship and it’s not about slurs."
Billy Bean, and openly gay former MLB player, told Global Toronto
that he found Escobar’s actions disappointing, but that the incident "raises awareness of what the environment still is in baseball."
It is clear that Escobar’s behaviour has been noticed by many far beyond the baseball community, suggesting that the fallout is likely to last much longer than his three-game punishment.
