If You Think Slurs Are Part of Sports, You’re an Idiot.

There’s an epidemic in the world of sports, and fans are to blame.

For some godforsaken reason, there are fans that think it’s ‘part of the game’ when homophobic or racist slurs are levelled at professional athletes by other professional athletes.

Case in point, the fan response to Kevin Pillar’s slur and subsequent suspension by the Blue Jays.

Following the Jays’ announcement that Pillar would be banned for two games, the worst of the worst crawled out from their poorly-lit basement apartments to weigh-in on just how offended they were by how offended other people were. Here’s a small sample of those ramblings, to ruin your day.

Sadly, these opinions were quite common ones.

So to those of you that truly, in your heart of hearts, believe these things, I have only one thing to say.

You are idiots.

There’s no reason to sugarcoat this. These people believe that Pillar was innocent and that his only fault was that he was at the wrong place at the wrong time when the liberal-agenda witch-hunt caught up with him. And those people (and their opinions) are dumb.

And since we’re responsible for talking about sports here, and the people that follow them, we have a duty to examine how mind-numbingly idiotic these fan responses really are. Let’s begin.

Idiotic response #1: ‘PC culture is ruining the game of baseball’.

This is possibly the most hilarious and uninformed argument on this list (Although any of the following could fit that description). The logic goes that sports are an easy target for the communist-sympathizing, granola-snacking, liberal-leaning hippies of the world that are hell-bent on seeing good-old-boys play the game in bubble wrap and full safety padding.

Reality check: There is no bogeyman.

This is an issue of human decency.

Slurs are considered slurs for a reason. They go beyond mere insults, as they have a deeply rooted history in a painful shared experience. Yes, words are only words, but slurs are slurs because of the power they have to subjugate a person or group. So avoiding them is the decent thing to do as a professional athlete, let alone a human being.

If you truly believe that one of the main tenets of sports is ignoring basic human decency, then you don’t really understand what sports are all about.

Now about the ruining baseball part.

Huh?

When was the last time you were at a game, the smell of hot dogs and stale beer in the air, and you’re like, ‘You know what I could really go for right now? A home run, and someone calling someone else a homophobic slur. Yeah, that would really up my fan experience.’

Moving on.

Idiotic response #2: ‘In the heat of the moment, things are said.’

No, no it shouldn’t be enough.

Let’s level set for a minute here.

For a baseball player to avoid a suspension, there are roughly seven words they can’t use to insult one another.

Seven.

That’s a laughably low threshold to continue to do your job.

In the heat of any moment, no matter how angry you become, and how badly wronged you feel, you should be able to refrain from saying what amounts to less words than you have fingers.

Remove the human decency angle for a minute, and realize that if you, as part of your job, can’t summon the self control to stop yourself from using any one of seven words that are banned, meanwhile getting paid millions of dollars a year to avoid saying those seven words, then frankly, you don’t deserve to play this game.

Simple as that.

Idiotic fan rebuttal to the rebuttal of idiotic point #2: ‘But seriously this isn’t a normal workplace. This is a battle, and it’s…different.’

Get a pass…? During battle…? What?

Don’t get me wrong. I love me a good sports/war analogy as much as the next guy. But to equate trying to hit a baseball, with, like, being shot at and having a chance of dying, and then using that overblown analogy to justify this behaviour is beyond hilariously idiotic.

This is a workplace. Not a war zone. Let me repeat that, because it hasn’t really sunk in for everyone yet apparently.

This is a workplace.

Sure, it’s a workplace that’s on a larger stage, and an athlete’s exploits are constantly on display for the world to see. And sure, baseball is a physically and mentally demanding game, played at a high level of intensity. (Shut up. Baseball is intense. Stop laughing. It really is. Ok fine. Whatever. Agree to disagree.) But at the end of the day, this is still a professional atmosphere.

And don’t forget, there are many, many other professions that meet that exact same criteria as the ones outlined above. And yet, they don’t get the same exemptions from proper social behaviour. If you utter something like this in any other work atmosphere, there’s a great chance you’d lose your job. And Pillar isn’t losing his job, he’s being prevented from playing it for what equates to like an hour in baseball terms. So no, a sport doesn’t get a special exemption here.

Idiotic response #3: ‘Trash talk is part of the game’.

The best trash talkers of all-time are interesting, quick, creative, and devastating. They find weaknesses and exploit them. They demoralize their opponents, energize their fanbases, and rally their teams. That’s the point of trash talk.

Using a slur isn’t trash talk. It’s cheap, dirty, lazy, and does none of the above.

If you’re truly a fan of excellent trash talk in sports, what you should be really mad at is how low the bar apparently is for what’s deemed trash talk. If you’re a fervent defender of players trash talking their opponents, this shouldn’t be good enough for you. Pillar didn’t bring his team a win. Fans aren’t going to hold up signs with what he said. There won’t be t-shirts printed. This wasn’t interesting or creative, or rallying, it was stupid and embarrassing and offensive. That’s not trash talk.

Michael Jordan — one of the greatest trash talkers of all-time — was once famously getting chirped by Jim Jackson, during a game in which Jackson was on fire. Jordan, finally fed-up with Jackson’s mouthiness, told Jackson to ‘Check his shoes’. Of course, Jackson was wearing Jordans.

So to those fans out there that reacted so negatively and idiotically to Pillar’s suspension, it’s time you take a hard look at why you even watch baseball in the first place. Are you watching because baseball because the game inspires you, excites you, and leaves you screaming and speechless at the same time? Or are you watching because you want to see professional athletes use their fame as a justification for acting like assholes? If you’re in it for the latter, maybe this whole being a fan thing just isn’t working out.