Atlanta Braves starting pitcher Sean Newcomb was one strike away from throwing a no-hitter on Sunday.
Ultimately, he gave up a hit, but Newcomb’s near no-hitter would not end up being the headline from that outing. Instead, the media coverage was focused on the apology he issued for a series of tweets sent back in 2011 and 2012, when the 25-year-old was a freshman in college. Most of those tweets involved Newcomb using the word “fag” when referring to his friends. In one tweet he wrote, “skinny n—a, big balls,” a lyric from a Drake rap called “The Motto.” As a result of these tweets being discovered, Newcomb was forced to issue an apology and will now have to take sensitivity training, mandated by Major League Baseball.
“I just want to apologize for any insensitive material,” Newcomb said. “It was a long time ago— six, seven years ago— saying some stupid stuff with friends. I know I’ve grown a lot since then. I didn’t mean anything by it. It was just something stupid that I did a long time ago.”
“I think people that know me know that’s not the kind of person I am,” he added.
People may be upset with his actions, and that is their right, but there is certainly nothing productive about this new trend of digging up people’s old, potentially offensive tweets and trying to get them in trouble for it.
The same thing also happened to Washington Nationals shortstop Trea Turner and Milwaukee Brewers All-Star reliever Josh Hader over the past couple of weeks. What all of these cases show is that people make mistakes in public forums. Especially in the case of the baseball players, it also shows how immature some people can be when they’re younger.
It should not surprise anyone to know just how many people have posted things they wish they hadn’t on social media. According to a 2015 survey from YouGov, 57 percent of adults who use social media have posted something they later regretted, and 21 percent felt as though they had adversely impacted their career prospects on social media.
This is the phenomenon Chicago Cubs star pitcher Jon Lester mentioned when coming to the defense of the younger MLB players who have been under fire for their social media accounts.
Bro I get it but did you ever say anything in high school you shouldn’t have? I no I did. Again not defending what was said, just choosing not to live in a glass house.
— Jon Lester (@JLester34) July 30, 2018
What this means is that a lot of people could be hunted down for something unsavory they said years ago, without any context. It’s also worth noting that society’s standards change over time and something that did not seem like a big deal at one point can become a huge deal later on. Not to mention people can change their views as society continues progressing.
For example, Newcomb’s use of “fag” was always a stupid action, but the country’s opinion of gay marriage and homosexuality in general has shifted dramatically over the past seven years. Per the Pew Research Center, 46 percent of the country was pro-gay marriage in 2011. By 2017, that figure had increased to 62 percent. Remember, even the president was against gay marriage in 2011. Barack Obama did not support it until May 2012, when Joe Biden all but forced him to. If the leader of the free world was allowed to be anti-gay in 2011, then it’s hard to call an 18-year-old kid a bigot for his dumb jokes on Twitter.
If Newcomb had gone out of his way to hurl insults at the gay community this season as an employee of the Atlanta Braves, that would be a completely different story — especially because it would be a public relations horror show for the team. But those people who dug up all of the tweets from when he was a teen in order to draw negative attention to Newcomb should know what they did was a complete waste of time. A society that wastes time trying to get others in trouble for ignorant things they said years ago is not a productive one. Go outside, read a book, or do something else more useful instead.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a freelance writer who has been published with USA Today, the Boston Globe, Newsday, ESPN, the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Federalist, and a number of other media outlets.
